This morning we woke up early to see a perfect, glowing, globe moon hanging just above the westerly horizon over the forested hills in the distance. It is the Pink Moon, the year’s biggest and brightest supermoon. It is thought to appear bigger because it is closer to the earth and it is not pink really, but called pink because this full moon happens around the time of the bloom of the Phlox subulata, a wildflower native to eastern North America. Even though we are not seeing this carpet of pink at this time of year in Vermont, I love the name of the moon and will now always remember it. I will also remember the name of the last full moon, the Sap Moon, as the sap is running in March and the steamy fragrance of maple syrup in the making surrounds sugar houses around Vermont and in our neighborhood. It is a nourishing and wonderful thing to be in touch with the seasons and with the moon and the phases of the moon, our closest neighbor in space. Wherever we are, city or country, in North America or South America, Asia or Iceland, we see the same moon in the same phase. We are all, on planet earth, witnessing the rising and setting of this perfect, enormous, pink moon in the first week of April, 2020.

At the same time, we are in “lockdown,” practically everywhere around the globe. We are staying home, keeping a safe distance from everyone with whom we are not sharing living quarters. All non-essential businesses are closed, schools and universities and libraries are closed. Concerts, plays, graduations, all cancelled or postponed. And hospitals are overflowing and many, many people are sick or have died of the heretofore unknown virus called Covid-19. All over the globe we are living in a strange, sad, and scary time.

Our last blog post focused on many opportunities for organizing and finding learning experiences at home and online. Since then, there have been many articles about how hard, if not impossible, it is to be a full-time worker, parent, manager of a home, cook, and teacher.

I saw a post recently from Emily King, a family therapist, who writes: It’s not hard because you are doing it wrong. It’s hard because it’s too much. Do the best you can. When you have to pick, because at some point you will, choose connection. Pick playing a game over arguing about an academic assignment. Pick teaching your children how to do laundry rather than feeling frustrated that they aren’t helping. Pick laughing and snuggling and reminding them that they are safe.

Kim Simon writes in a Huffington Post article, “Parents: It’s OK if You are Barely Getting By Right Now,” Keep them safe, make them feel loved and feed them. That’s all you have to be an expert in. We show up. We try our best. There isn’t a schedule in the world that can teach our children that. But we can. Love hard and listen to your big feelings, parents.

In the midst of this tragic global pandemic there are uplifting stories…of reduced greenhouse gases, fish and dolphins swimming in the now clean waters of the canals of Venice, ordinary people helping people all over the world, the heroic medical workers and first responders, the brave janitors, grocery store workers, farmers, truckers, postal workers, and teachers. All the people who are paid the least and overlooked in our society continue to do the unending work necessary right now, while the rest of us do the best we can to find some new ways of life that are helpful and workable or just, to survive.

For some of us who are lucky enough to have a safe place to live, to stay healthy, and to have enough food and space around us, silver linings emerge.

Alan Lightman writes in his article, The Virus is a Reminder of Something Lost Long Ago in The Atlantic:

In bad times, innovation can occur in habits of mind as well as in new technologies. The frightening COVID-19 pandemic may be creating such a change now—by forcing many of us to slow down, to spend more time in personal reflection, away from the noise and heave of the world. With more quiet time, more privacy, more stillness, we have an opportunity to think about who we are, as individuals and as a society.

We live in an old apple orchard and the buds are just beginning to swell. Spring comes late in Vermont and this year we are home on our land most of the time. Often, we are traveling, with our children and grandchildren, or working with schools. March and April can be challenging months in Vermont. This period is called Mud Season because the ground is wet, goopy, and brown and the weather is often cold and sometimes it snows. This year, I am savoring every day, wet or warm, blustery or mild, delighting in the slow buds, the greening grass, the warmth of the sun and the necessity of the rain and snow for the earth to wake up and support new life. I feel so grateful to be able to walk outside, to take full breaths, to be healthy right now. I feel such sadness for the world. And at the same time, I feel the hope of spring, and the promise of possibilities that might grow out of our collective, forced stopping all movement and rush of the life that we have become accustomed to.

I found 2 poems the other day that seem to fit our time and have sent them to friends. The first is an excerpt from “Keeping Quiet” by Pablo Neruda:

Now we will count to twelve.

And we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth,

Let’s not speak in any language;

Let’s stop for one second,

And not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment

Without rush, without engines;

We would all be together

In a sudden strangeness.

The second is by Ada Limon, “Instructions On Not Giving Up”

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

We are apart and we are all in this together…everywhere, in every corner of the globe. This experience is bringing us all to our knees and tragically many to their graves. What will come of this time? What will we do with it? What will we take from it? How will we grow? How might we begin to live in balance with earth’s systems? How will we change? How will we change the world? So that we might go forward with wisdom, kindness, justice, fairness, understanding, and love…for all of us, no exceptions,…unfurling like a fist to an open palm.