Lately, everything joyful makes me cry.

It's not the sad things- they come too often, like a new normal. 

It's the kind gestures, the ridiculousness in our chaotic home lives, the wild generosity.

I think we're leaning into love as the tragedy reminds us just how human we are. And nothing makes us more human than our need for one another.

I sit on the back porch staring at a tall head of overgrown St. Augustine grass. It's especially green for early April, a sign that mother nature has been plenty gracious with rain coverage in South Texas this year. The birds are happy too, frolicking from one tree to another, with an occasional scurry between two up in the tree, potentially mating or fighting a contender for the mate. Squirrels make their appearance as well, ravishing branches for meaty acorns, which on numerous occasions get swiped from a bird overhead. The ruckus usually spreads out across the yard beckoning my four-legged mutt to break up the disturbance.  

It seems a bit unusual, in the grim time we find ourselves, to be experiencing a vibrant array of color, activity and vivaciousness. It's a reminder to me that life is never one way. It is not a time of doom, it is not a time of hope. It's a time to be present, and experience the paradoxical mystery of life. 

When the virus turned toward America and the global epidemic felt closer to home, I think at first, I was bummed that my plans were put on hold and my future was unpredictable. But as the beast has showed its grim, consumptions spread, and death has become something on the tips of all of our minds- I am trying to stare this thing in the face and understand this unique time we're in.

Someone said to me, "I didn't know pandemics were really a thing," which seemed ignorant at first, and then I thought of all the famines, plagues, flu outbreaks I've read about in books, they always seemed like a thing of the past- as if that were a different time period, but somehow we crossed a threshold in the past century eliminating human kind from seeing populations being swiped off the earth. So, yes it is strange to think that pandemics are actually a thing, and that our daily reality, that sometimes feels like a bad dream, is actually a sobering awareness that the earth is not done ruthlessly shedding civilizations from it's surface. 

The stillness can be numbing. Like you’re in a steady rut. The quarantine has been extended another 30 days, and it’s hard to think about what to do with all the stillness.

We couldn’t handle being confined to the home, we had to get out.

Having a map for the future is how I live. Without it, I struggle with the sad reality of life's stagnation. I need a pin, marking a future adventure, telling me that life will soon be better, and soon, I'll feel as if I am truly living.

Allergies have been kicking my ass lately- so, naturally, I wake up with a dry throat and earraches, wondering if I have the virus. 

Even though it was rainy and cool out, I was tired of being cooped up inside. I woke up, lit a propane fire underneath the awning cover and worked building a new garden box and installing the landscape lining underneath to keep weeds out.

Yesterday was Matt, my husband and my first day in full quarantine together. He's in his third year of medical school, and up until this week, has been working in rural clinics for his internal medicine rotation, but due to recommendations by American Medical Associations, all med students and residents were called to stay home, and not be exposed in medical facilities. In Italy, they have pushed fourth year medical students through the system and graduated them early. There is no sign of anything like that happening here, but the future is un-telling.