Muffin Days

ENVY. Yes. Full blown envy is what I feel when I contemplate the photos of natural landscapes on Facebook: a woodland trail by friend Allyson’s Toronto home, Scarlett’s miniature roses with a background of rolling California hills, sunset at the ocean by Chile’s coast. In response to a FB post by the Nature Conservancy, dozens send in snapshots of their local woods and lakes.  Such good fortune to live in those places, I think, while I’ve been in quarantine for four months in this city, currently of 8 million. I grew up in a place of great natural beauty and now in these pandemic times I long for the country.

flowering tarweed at Phoenix Lake, Marin Co. California

        Connecting to Nature is my salve, my comfort and my delight especially in these hard times, but most of Nature is out of reach for city dwellers for now. What to do? I pay attention: to the deep blue sky dappled with glowing puffs of white clouds, to the carpet of lemon-yellow leaves at the park, to the exhilarating sight of fresh snow on the Andes.
    Today, ignoring the strict lockdown, I take a walk to a small nearby park. There I feast my eyes on lemony yellow leaves carpeting the ground. In the distance I can just make out the fresh snow on the Andes. Yes. We’ve had several good long rains after many years of drought. On my walk I pull my mask down below my nose to inhale the tingling sharp scent of wet leaves. 

my local plaza

        My walks to the park have become a daily routine. I discovered that walking improves my physical stamina, eases arthritic pain and corrects bad habits formed while being homebound.
        From the start of the quarantine, I found that following my usual routine has been beneficial for my mental health. Yet I still have days of feeling down. Early each morning, I have an inner conversation with myself, a sort of pep talk. What do I have to look forward to today? Maybe a son will call by FaceTime so we can visit with grandchildren. (Family hugs are what I miss most.) I look forward to the rain forecast for tonight. I don’t know why but I get satisfaction from sweeping and mopping the kitchen floor. Unfortunately for my waistline, meals have become bright spots in my days. Both my husband and I have been resorting to comfort food, especially chocolate. But then I had a stern talk with myself to be more disciplined regarding food. Now, if I need comforting I turn to an absorbing book. Comfort reading rather than comfort eating.
     This is an ideal time to develop greater self-control and patience. Each week that the government extends the total quarantine for another week, I’m able to adjust. Another week. Another month. I know it will end eventually, yet as a ‘senior’, I hold a very different perspective of the terms ‘eventually’ and ‘future’ than do the younger generations. It helps me to imagine the immense joy I’ll feel when I can have family over for Sunday lunch or make an outing into the countryside or make that long-awaited trip to Scotland.
        While I make herb-cheese muffins and order online groceries to be delivered, neighbors at the other end of town are organizing soup kitchens. They’re plugging up the leaks in their fragile homes, built of cardboard, sheets of tin and plastic, while I delight in the sight and sound of rain. Families that hunker down in their small crowded spaces, where it’s impossible to practice social distancing, would feel envy and maybe resentment if they were to see my spacious home where now only two of us live and even enjoy the green of our small garden.
        Life in these pandemic times puts society under an enormous magnifying glass, highlighting glaring inequalities: inadequate housing, irregular incomes, students with no computers to do online classes and no Wi-Fi connection. Inequalities have always existed, but now on the television screen they are in our faces, headlined in giant red letters, impossible to ignore or forget; the woman attempting to sweep the water and mud from her house; wet mattresses upended (where will the children sleep tonight?); belongings piled high into a dry corner; buckets and pots filling with rain leaks.
    The Covid-19 restrictions reveal our true colors. Are we willing to forego today’s satisfactions for the long term common good? Televised scenes of massive pool parties and crowded bars reveal a society of young people unwilling to sacrifice for the well-being of their country.
        This quarantine also has made known the positive: public and private campaigns to help the needy; an abundance of time to reflect, to read, to bake muffins, to write, to share humor on social media, to call a sister-in-law who lives alone or to feed the backyard birds.
        Today I’ll go online to contribute once more to an organization that distributes food to the needy, although I know it will never be enough.

Happy Anniversary?

My husband’s first words to me this morning. I panicked. Did I forget our anniversary? Wait a minute. What month is this? July. We were married in December. What? I said. July 14^th, he answered. Oh. It clicked. Forty-eight years ago I arrived in Chile to pursue our relationship – cut short when his U.S. visa expired the previous October. Our courtship needed more time. Forty-eight years later….I’m still in this beautiful country and mother of two sons and grandmother of five.

    Enough time to have witnessed a socialist government, a military coup and dictatorship, the return to democracy, and recently, severe social unrest and… yes, Covid-19 quarantine.

    I still have moments of homesickness, ‘home’ meaning San Anselmo, the town where I grew up. Though I no longer have any family there, I miss the dark green curves of Mt. Tamalpais, the peace and fragrance of Phoenix Lake cupped in a fold of the mountain, the scent of redwood trees, the grassy dome of Mt. Baldy, those geographic landmarks of my early years to which I return yearly, except now in 2020 due to the pandemic.

    For years I struggled with the question: where is ‘home’ for me? I dealt with my struggles by writing two books: Marrying Santiago and Notes from the Bottom of the World.

    Now, after forty-eight years of memories and four months of quarantine, I know that ‘home’ is Santiago, Chile, where my family is – husband, sons, grandkids, nieces, nephews, sisters- and brother-in law. Because of them, this place is ‘home’ for me. Instead of Mt. Tamalpais, I have a view of the magnificent snow-covered Andes.