And yet.

You know that feeling when you’re standing in what feels like a precarious place like the top of the Seattle Space Needle or the Capilano Suspension Bridge in Vancouver, BC? That sharp intake of breath, that palpable lump of fear in the pit of your stomach, that heaviness in your chest? I’m having flashes of those same sensations while I’m sitting on my sofa or going about the business of everyday on days that seem far from every day. Maybe you too.

I wake with two words tumbling around in my mind: And yet. And yet. And yet. And I’m not sure of the message they’re trying to deliver.

So we go about our day, grateful. Careful. Grieving for a world in crisis. Lamenting. We consume just enough news to have a sense of current events—The Current Event—and focus the bulk of our attention on the better things instead. We bake bread and do crafts. Piece jigsaw puzzles. Play games. We take drives, because the cheapest thing of all right now is gasoline, past playgrounds cordoned off with yellow tape and empty stores and business with signs in their windows. Closed due to COVID-19.

And we think about the aftermath and the recovery that will take years and a parade of cars driving past a house where a child is celebrating a birthday inside. And a flock of robins on the lawn hunting for worms. And green sprouting in the garden. And rain quenching the thirst of a parched earth.

I stand at the window and watch as the first rays of morning sun kiss bare branches on trees.

And yet. And yet. And yet.