Spirit Animal is a Turkey

Sewing in the time of COVID-19 – Week 19

It seems like every week now we are faced with making decisions about the New Normal…and you better not get used to that New Normal because it will change again in a couple weeks! This week we had to make difficult decisions about Sophie’s freshman year of college here at CU Boulder. We decided that she will not move into the dorms, but will live at home. She will take almost all credits online, only going once a week for orchestra practice. I do not envy the administrators, teachers and professors having to make big decisions for themselves and their students as we approach the start of this school year.

I had a great visit with Mom through the glass door today. She was a lot brighter and more like herself, so that was a relief and a mood-lifter. After our visit I encountered a mother deer and her twin fawns which felt like a blessing from Mother Earth. I turned a corner to follow them, and watched them munching on someone’s flower garden for awhile, until they wandered deeper into the neighborhood. A few days ago Sophie and I spotted a wild turkey in the foothills, and that felt very special also. (First time I’ve seen one in Boulder.) We had a laugh, that our Spirit Animal for the week was a turkey!

While driving home, I heard a story on NPR that made me smile. It was about baseball teams that are playing games with masks, with piped-in crowd cheers, and cardboard cutouts of fans in the otherwise empty stands. Then they interviewed a guy who had paid the $49 to send in his photo (dressed in his Oakland fangear) so he could sort of be in the stands as a custom cardboard cutout.

That’s what we are all trying to do – to be present and have even a small sense of participation and normalcy while we stay safe for our families and communities. We are saying no to summer travel plans and out-of-state houseguests, we are baking our own bread, buying eggs from the neighbor with chickens, supporting local restaurants with curbside pickup, and otherwise just trying to find a way to get through this by treasuring what we DO have instead of focusing on what we’ve lost, or what we have to put aside for the next few months. As long as we still have our sense of humor, we are wealthy indeed.

with Hope for the Future,
Luana and Paul