Stagger on Rejoicing!

It’s March. Named for the Roman God of War. Cited in Shakespeare’s “Beware the ides of March.” The month that will come in like a lion and go out like a lamb. Or vice-versa. 

 

And now it is the month when one year ago, the world shut down. On March 1^st last year, I was staying at an Air B ’n’ B in Marin County with my wife and two daughters celebrating her 70^th birthday with a long bike ride and dinner out at a restaurant. Indoors!  A couple of days before, I played piano while my friend Laura sang at the Jewish Home for the Aged. Note: she SANG! We all did. Without a mask. 

The next day I went to the dentist and was asked my first question about exposure to the corona virus. And then went on to school, where I began teaching what was to be (unbeknownst to me) the last two weeks of my 45 years of live playing, singing and dancing. The next week, went on a retreat with my Men’s Group—9 of us in a house together. And at school, I went on a field trip to see a dance show where 3,000 kids were in the auditorium!

 

Extraordinary to think of it all now. School closed around March 13^th (a Friday!), my grandkids came down to shelter with us for two weeks and still we were expecting that maybe everything would open up again by April 1^st. 

 

And so here we are, my grandkids with us again (without their Mom and Dad for the first time), we celebrated my wife’s 71^stbirthday with a lovely bike ride along the SF coastline and sushi dinner out on the street in the parklet with cars driving by. The world seems to be leaning toward a gradual re-opening, the crab apple tree in the Arboterum is beginning to blossom and Spring is in the air. Nothing to do but follow W.H.Auden’s advice:

 

“Stagger on rejoicing!”