I’m afraid that our nervous systems have forgotten what the mundane, nonthreatening days feel like.

I’m afraid for my sons and the thoughts that I hear in their heads.

I’m afraid of choices ahead and of lack of choices ahead.

I’m afraid of where will thousand of people sleep as winter is coming.

I’m afraid of meanness and harshness and the forgetting of our deep tender humanness.

I look at a brand new baby, born early and perfect. And somehow, I become less afraid because in her perfection, She reminds me that Life also, truly is perfect.

Two years ago was my mom’s last birthday. We knew it. She knew it.

She barely had enough breath to blow the one candle on the pink frosted cupcake I bought her from the pink hotel across the water. The hotel that had welcomed my family when they first arrived from France, a lifetime ago.

Probably to make up for not being able to hold her and tell her sweet words, I had asked many people who loved her to send her a happy birthday video message. As she listened to one after the next, I’ll never know whether they brought her more joy than stress.

Last night, a wave of sadness crashed over me as I was about to dip my paintbrush in a jar of water. It kind of took my own breath away. It was physical before it became emotional. Or at least if felt that way.

Life keeps a tight calendar and very few big anniversaries go by completely quietly.

In a world more and more devoid of rituals, we don’t get to bypass all of them, and I am grateful for the built-in sacredness.

I wonder.
Is this a test?
A reset?

Reading about the fires this morning, I am brought back to that morning in Mexico earlier this year - when I woke up from a dream about very, very contagious Red Hearts.

That’s before I knew much of anything about the virus.

There was such a strong strong sense of contamination, of how fast and quickly we can pass things on to each other.

In my dream, we were passing Red Hearts and everytime someone caught a Red Heart, they were filled with a deep sense of peace and love.

This dream was the impetus to launch The Big Gratitude Project.

And now the fires. How incredibly quickly they spread. How contagious.

It brings me back to the dream and makes me wonder if maybe we are not supposed to learn, really really learn, how connected we are. How quickly things can pass from you to me and me to you.

Things like viruses, fires, fear - and also love.

I don’t know. But I wonder.