Seeing the Unexpected Shooting Star

I did see a shooting star yesterday, the day after I spent a chunk of the early morning hours with my neck aching as I looked for signs from the Perseid Meteor showers.  I'm not sure why it matters to me to note that.  It does seem like a fitting metaphor for the time we're in:  we may find what we're searching for, but not in the time we expect, the setting we expect, the volume we wanted, the part of the sky where we've been watching.

It's the kind of metaphor that can be vastly hopeful or tinged with sadness--or both!

It's been a hopeful tinged with sad kind of week.  Let me create a catalogue:

--The corona virus draws ever nearer.  We have had to do our first contact tracing this week at work.  In the past, when we've had a student or instructor let us know about a positive test, we've determined that there's been no risk of exposure.  Yesterday, we let HR know all the people who might have been exposed.  I feel a bit sorry for our head of HR.  I think that the bulk of her work in the past 6 weeks has been doing this kind of notification of possible exposure.  She said that our campus was the most calm and cool in our reactions of all the campuses she'd had to notify.  She seemed a bit mystified.  I think most of us have known that it was just a matter of time before we had a much closer risk of exposure.

--In the midst of hopeful campaign news (Kamala!), there's the fear of this campaign season growing ever uglier.

--It's been a week of upheaval in terms of friends.  The friends who are moving left this week and were so busy with the end process of selling the house and leaving town that we had no chance to say goodbye.  She wrote from Georgia to tell us that they had left.  I thought of that old folk song:  "Are you going away, with no word of farewell, will there be not a trace left behind?"  But I was always the one going away when I sang that song.  One of my other friends is in the hospital with a broken hip.

--I want to get in my car and drive away too, preferably to a hidden mountain cabin.  I am tired of this relentless heat, and we have had no breeze this summer.  Ugh.  I find myself yearning for the kind of autumn we won't get down here, and might not get elsewhere in this pandemic time:  apples and hot cider and cinnamon donuts and pumpkins and cozy sweaters and putting an extra quilt on the bed.  

--I'm finding my brain going back to happier times in the past.  I can't tell whether it's better to linger in those memories for a bit, even though they make me sad and wistful, or to try not to think about them.

But let me remember that at some point, I may look back on some happy memories from now:

--One of my church friends said she's come to look at me as a Mr. Rogers for our time.  I thought that was the best compliment I've ever gotten.  For a taste of some of the ideas from our Morning Watch time that inspired her to say this, see this blog post.

--I've been enjoying the opportunity to walk in the neighborhood.  I've even started running a bit.  This entry might belong in the above catalogue.  I'm happy about walking and running, but I'm distressed about my weight gain.  I weigh at least 10 pounds more than I did last summer.  Sigh.  Let me remember that 2 summers ago I was at this weight and thrilled because I was working my way down the scale not up.  I can do that again--as I always do.

I've been enjoying my extra sketching time each morning.  And each day, I create a card for the temperature check in station that gives the date.  Here's the one I did for yesterday.  I was trying to capture the spirit of the daisies that were in my wedding bouquet so long ago: