The LBDs and I leashed up and took off down the road this morning, as we do every morning, for a jog to the river hayfields. There, the little brown dogs, unleashed, are commanded in my gruff voice to “stay.” I walk away, pretending to be busy watching birds, then squat down and say “OK,” as they come galloping full speed, grazing my face with theirs. A routine repeated for years begins the day with a surge of endorphins and an eye on the seasons.
We begin our days this way during normal times and during times of quarantine. We began our days this way even in March, a month of home hospice care for my husband. Between the two faithfully quarantined neighbors who came every day, my husband’s daughter and three grandkids who moved in with us, and the hospice caregivers, someone was always here.
Carl died April 4. We had a green burial with just the few people who had quarantined together. We sang Bosnian songs and recited poems, including one he had us memorize in Russian when the grandkids were young — Anna Akhmatova’s poem of the muses. We told stories, and took turns shoveling the rich dirt on top of his wicker coffin.
On April 5, the hospice workers went off to help others. The medical equipment was carried away. The grandkids and their mom got to go home again to be with their own brown dog. I looked around my neighborhood and realized things had changed — the sky was quiet like after 9/11, the roads were empty, the few people I ran into at Coburns’ had only eyes showing. How was I to have them see me smile and see their smiles? It was hard to talk and to hear others, as I am a lip-reader.
Over time, it has begun to feel normal. My daughter moved in with me, working from home, but now upstairs in Carl’s office. We take turns treating each other to special meals, even eating outside at a firepit we rigged. Her big black dog, Buddy, joins the LBDs for the morning ritual run along the river. I spend my days boxing up Carl’s thousands of books on the Ottoman Empire, the world wars, the Balkans, and on writing. They will live in boxes in the living room until the quarantine is over and I can find their forever homes.
As I am finding great comfort in routine, I am also finding hope our in adaptability. Our species has been rather careless on this planet and now is humbled by a microbe too small to see. I hope we can adapt, evolve to be better citizens of the world. If we do, this time will be one of many doctoral dissertations, many stories for grandkids to grow tired of hearing, many books to fill the shelves. As the birds begin to migrate through or nest here, it seems there are more than in other years. Perhaps fewer are dying from collisions with cars and airplanes. Perhaps the air and water are cleaner from this hiatus from flying and driving. I am choosing to be hopeful.
Micki Colbeck, of Strafford, is an artist, a conservation biologist and a member of the Strafford Conservation Commission. Write to her at mjcolbeck@gmail.com.