Looking Back at Eleven Months of Sequestered Intimacy

 It was on February 27th that we responded to the increasingly sobering news about the spread of Covid, the lack of an organized effort to manage it and a sense that like a runaway train, the infectious virus could or would rapidly flow into Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho with impunity.

The virus is of course immune and ignores human desires and fears and cannot be opposed by government edicts, authority and human will. As Joy used to say, "It is what it is."

Now we can say it was what it was, it is what it is and will be what it will be. Our reaction? We limit our lives essentially to just the two of us. Any and everyone else are flashes in the heavens flying in and out of orbit around our world. Deliveries, home repairs and upgrades seem to be the only knockers at our doors. 

What remains is the slowly flowing and sometimes evolving pattern of routine. It begins in the darkness of dawn with a hug before I wander downstairs to regulate the heat, arrange the coffee maker, perhaps put away dishes and take a seat at my laptop to write whatever comes into my head, read whatever prompts my interest and wait with patience for the descent from the bedroom of the Beloved and her smile. 

The rest of the day in some ways is anticlimactic to that first morning vision, embrace, sharing of coffee and quite play or reading. Such has been our time of fear, trembling, hope and determination to succeed against something relentlessly dangerous that must be kept out of our home at all costs. 

And as of this day we have done that, we will do that and we will continue the bonding which only seems to solidify further as we learn more and more what sequestering ourselves with only each other truly means.