Day 365

It’s a set of anniversaries today. Two observances observing one another.

Today marks a year of Isolation Time, a modest elongation of the fourteen days we were told to prepare for, going in. Still, each morning, I unlock the Remote Command and Control Vehicle. I activate the glowing screens through which I transmute myself. I live my day out virtually. Still, each evening, I lock the door again, gather up my corporeal body, and carry him back inside the habitat.

A hundred times and a hundred times I’ve walked the loop around my neighborhood. I’ve watched those trees—those same, same trees—bud and leaf, color and fall, freeze and thaw, and bud again.

So many signs have bloomed and faded. First it was the window signs that praised the front line workers for their bravery; then the sidewalk chalk, the hopscotch courses, invitations to play at lonesome games. After that it was the Black Lives Matter pennants, most of which yet wave, at least in my neighborhood. The star spangled banners came quickly, too, with their thin blue lines, offerings of blood to the status quo (someone else’s blood, of course). Then followed the political pickets. Those stayed up so long—too long—contesting that which was over and done. Winter finally blew them down, and the town looks so much better now.

A year ago we wondered if we ought to plant a garden at all—if there was any point to it. In the end we did, and there was. We ate the peas. We ate the beets. We let the fennel grow too tall, but we gathered the seeds, and they’ve been seasoning our soups all winter.

Today we donned our breathing apparatuses and ventured forth to the greenhouse at my sister’s habitat, where we planted not a few seeds, but a thousand. Enough for fifty gardens.

The second occasion we mark today is the change of hours, the return of the evening sun. For the Habitat Mate and I, who never gave a farthing for Benjamin Franklin, it means the beginning of the Brighter Days.