On the farm where I grew up, the sky would shatter in the winter. It would drop shavings of frozen, clumps of ice sliver. It would breathe in all the months before and exhale a steady shivering of frost.
The roads would glisten slick, like the walkway outside my front door. And we, the people who tended to the ground, who planned for this - yes, we, who knew the sky knew best- we would make do.
We carried out large bags of salt and shook it all over the ice-layered paths.
The salting gave us a grip. It reminded our feet that the earth was still there, holding steady. It took down a fine layer of the new flooring, and though there were many more layers to go, sometimes just starting is enough.
...
Here, where I live, we have come to the one year anniversary of the pandemic. We had no idea then how much we would have to grieve, how many days we would have to count.
Like most people, I have accumulated a collection of era-defining experiences. I have swabbed my own nostril for an at-home test, sat in a rented theater room with just two other friends, drank a cocktail in a can outside in the street, had a blood draw in a drive-thru, attended funerals and job interviews through zoom. I have masks that match my outfits, and a favorite hand sanitizer now.
Like some others, I have reflected on the familiarity of such a time. Fellow disabled people- we who have always had to have someone else pick out our tomatoes and deliver our groceries, we who have always had to measure the risk of public spaces. Fellow formerly incarcerated people- we who sometimes find a calm in the safety of a too-small space, we who know what it is to stay inside for an indeterminate amount of time and make do. Both those groups, who know what it is to depend on the seemingly fickle whims of the state.
It has been a whole year, and as the anniversary passes, I listen to the memories shared.
...
There was a quote by André Malraux I heard a few times in various grief groups: "You have not come back from hell with empty hands."
And I know - believe me, I know - there are shinier hells and deeper hells and darker hells than this. And though I know this icy winter of a season isn't done with us yet, I understand the need to recognize this era. To declare a full year complete and reflect back.
Anniversaries are a salting to the grief that tries to upend us, the shock that we simply aren't built to tread without our tricks.
Time will slip right by us if we do not lift the bag up on our shoulders and carefully shake our memories and fears and hopes all over the earth, and if this time slips by- if this hell freezes over before we reflect, what will we have taken with us?
"You have not come back from hell with empty hands."The truth is, we have not all come back, and no amount of banana bread or lawyer cats can rebuild the losses of this time.
Sitting with this truth is heavy.
I remember walking on ice with a bag of salt on my shoulders. The weight and skid. Sometimes the work we do, the fear we face, is just enough to take us one more tiny step forward.
Sometimes the things we carry are supposed to leave an indent on your shoulders so you remember how you made it through. Muscles outlive the struggle.
The memory of the weight outlives everything.
"You have not come back from hell with empty hands."The truth is, we have found our way to new types of joy, found new ways to deal hope to each other, found new heroes, and acknowledging those things is a start to the return of stable ground beneath our feet.
We always find a way to move through seasons and challenges we simply weren't built for, and acknowledging the strength of human resilience might be our way to spring.
Sometimes just starting is enough.
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