Just Another Normal Pandemic Week-end

This has been a strange week-end, as so many week-ends/week days/weeks have been strange.  It's been a mix of unexpected wonderfulness, crushing moments of grief, a tingling current of rage, sadness leaking out at various seams and hemlines that I didn't even see before the pandemic swept across the planet.

Let me put the above in quantifiable terms. 

In terms of wonderful, we made pizzas in the cast iron skillet, which was just what I wanted to eat.  In fact, I may have it for lunch again.  I had a Zoom meeting with my small group from my spiritual direction certificate program.  I relaxed by the pool in the backyard.  I sat on the front porch and enjoyed pleasant weather; there's always the realization that summer is coming which means days on the front porch may be numbered.

In terms of sadness, it's tough to think about how life may change.  If it's not safe to gather together on the seminary campus, we'll do our next intensive in January by way of Zoom.  It's better than nothing, but it's not what I wanted to be experiencing.  It's tough to think that the way we do fall and winter holidays may have to change.  I'm trying not to leap forward to thinking about that--much may have changed by the time we get to October.

I had time to read, and I finished The Second Sleep by Robert Harris.  I had really looked forward to reading it; it sounded like this generation's A Canticle for Liebowitz.  It was not.  The ending baffled me so much that I went online to see if anyone had figured it out.  I'm not the only one with questions.

It was strange to spend Friday restocking some supplies and then to listen to my spouse teaching his Philosophy class by way of distance learning--they're using a Blackboard version of Zoom or Go to Meeting.  I tried to keep from thinking about ways that my Friday would have been different, if my spouse was meeting his students in a face to face classroom.  In the past, I'd have met friends for happy hour or dinner or gone over to a friends' house for a get together.  In the past, if friends were busy, I might have watched a movie at home; on Friday, I didn't want to watch a movie in case it disturbed the class.

Here is a memory that I don't want to slip away.  On Saturday evening, my spouse was looking at a text for his Logic class adoption.  It includes Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress."  My spouse read one line, and I said the next from memory.  We went on this way, an interesting call and response.  My spouse was amazed and impressed that I could say so much of it from memory, word for word.  I've taught that poem for years, saying it out loud several times a term, several terms a year.  Clearly it has sunk in.

I miss teaching poetry that way, in front of a room of students, reading the poem out loud.  It's a sadness to realize that we shouldn't be teaching poetry that way for awhile.