Beginning to Become Again

My body is a topographic map of the past 13 months. There are mountain ranges of undulating flesh that keep record of far too many sitting hours and arid places of skin cracked by excessive cleaning and creased by thought and consternation. Though pale and misshapen, seeming to hold only the strength of survival, my body responds to the water’s call. “Come,” it says. “There is no work to do here. I will just hold you while you float.” And, so, I push my body into a bathing suite and drop myself into the water from the deck edge. For thirty minutes I move slowly up and down the lane, marking its length with the wavy rectangles of white sunlight dancing on the blue floor of the pool. When I get out, everything in me feels a little more awake—a little more familiar. In the locker room I find myself full of joy when an older woman asks me how the water is, as if it could be any ordinary Thursday.

Good friends are in town and I head to their family home for dinner. It’s cool, so we won’t be sitting outside. I’m looking forward to the company and don’t think too much about the logistics. Everyone is vaccinated and we’ve been similarly safe. Still, it’s only the third house other than my own that I have been inside of in the past 12 months. I enter, a bit uncertain, wearing my mask. But then there are hugs and laughter and the smells of garlic and dinner cooking…wine and music. Relax… At the table I realize that the hairs on my arms seem electric. My skin vibrates with the energy of people sharing a space. It is not unlike, I imagine, when someone feels the sudden cold presence of a spirit. All these months of impassable boundaries and distance have made a ghost of physical touch. And now an empty void suddenly pierced by a flash of visitation is a bit thrilling. The sensation of energy returning does not frighten me. Instead I am extra attuned to something I would surely have missed in another time.

It’s a warm Easter Sunday and I sit at a wooden picnic table in the Botanical Gardens with family members who have comprised my bubble mates this year. We’ve been in this park hundreds of times before. There are flowers and new leaves and birds all around us. Everyone has agreed to keep the food simple. There doesn’t seem to be the same energy to prepare or drive to be especially clever this year. People are telling old stories and we’re all laughing like they’re as funny as they have ever been. Suddenly I realize that I’m not feeling sad or anxious or anywhere else but right there. I’m no longer pulled so tightly into myself as if to decrease the surface space for some unpredictable person’s viral load to land. For this afternoon, everything inside of me is placid and pleasant and I feel completely me.

As this year of far too much and way less begins to turn a corner, I start to be willing to carefully trust it. I begin to become all over again.