Aftermath

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
So much has been destroyed.
I have to cast my lot with those who, age after age,
perversely, with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.
--Adrienne Rich.

I’m coming back. I’ve been in a haze of illness for a couple of weeks, but with time, antibiotics, antihistamines, and steroid nasal spray, I’m coming back. Today I met with Cristina to discuss some modifications to the way I take care of the children when she and Seth are away at work, modifications to reduce the strain on my immune system. She is a marvelous problem-solver. Felix will go to a kennel. There are some new rules; I will have to ask the children for help sometimes. I am two years short of eighty. She told me about her grandfather, whose doctor said he must stop driving when he was eighty. He had endured great hardship and many losses, and she had never seen him cry till the day he gave up his car keys. She respects the link between aging and loss.

After she left, I strolled around the garden where my Chinese neighbors have their tiny plots and are trying to save their vegetables from the ravages of the heat dome we endured this week. You can see one of them in the background behind the fallen tomatoes. As an extra, a tiny bird in the garden has miraculously survived the days of 108F/42C, perhaps in part by pecking at collapsing tomatoes. I was indoors in the air conditioning throughout the heat dome.

I thought about the people of Lahaina, Maui: their terrible losses. The First Nation people of Yellowknife, in Canada. Polynesian people whose ancestors cared for the land called Hawai'i, people whose ancestors were stewards of the land we now call Canada, the poor all over the world: they have done little to create climate change, have gained little or nothing from the industries that have created it, but they are losing everything. 

We have smoke here too from fires in Canada, fires in eastern Oregon and Washington. Climate change is ravaging lives all over the planet. Yet we who are still breathing, we who can still come back from the brink, we cast our lot with those who, like us, have no extraordinary power but keep starting again, reconstituting what is left of the world.