Letters

Month to Remember

Posted

It started March 14, when my pastor suggested I keep a journal on the pandemic. On March 17, I saw the environment and ecology begin to recover from stress as the air became fragrant, and birds seemed more musical. I live near a wide creek with a walkway alongside it. I was sitting near it in my car on Holy Saturday, when a goose and gander strolled the promenade before me. There was a still life beauty in a young man holding a pole on a large boat raft in the creek; he seemed to be Huckleberry Finn on the Mississippi River. 

By March 19, God’s voice became more perceptible. I can assume that more people hearing the voice of God means that calls from God to the priesthood and religious life will be heard more clearly. Helping others when inspired to do so in a pandemic shows an overcoming of self as well as a challenge and test of virtue. 

A neighbor offered to put my garbage in the common dumpster April 8. Another left little bags of sanitizer on others’ front doors. Three neighbors with families took turns calling single neighbors who were strongly affected by the isolation. Friends I have not heard from for 20 years called.

Supermarkets were not exempt. A woman insisted she unload my too full grocery cart into my car trunk. When I asked a couple in the store if they knew where light bulbs were the man delighted in finding them and telling me which ones lasted longest. As I was leaving another store, a young woman approached in the parking lot and gave me a facemask. On March 30, a woman asked me where I got my mask and we joked about our masks. These little miracles of mercy have all been in a month’s time.

Gloria Ausubel
Port Ewen