“I heard you say something, but I couldn’t make it out. It sounded like you said there’s a tiger in the backyard.”
I laugh because by now, it wouldn’t surprise me. A tiger? Sure. Why not?
Because a pandemic and a heat dome and drought and a province on fire and grasshoppers and apocalyptic skies and endless ash and charred pine needles falling aren’t enough. Let’s add a tiger to the mix. Nothing surprises me anymore.
In 2020, every person in every place in the world was shaken. British Columbians in Canada learned to live in the liminality of waiting for a semblance of normal life to return while weathering an unprecedented heat dome and fire season, followed by flooding and mudslides. By the summer of 2021, a tiger in the backyard seemed entirely plausible.
This book chronicles quotidian days, in times that were anything but. It contains the thoughts and experiences of a wife, mother, and grandmother navigating a world groaning under the weight of change through journal entries, poetry, blog and social media posts, interspersed with government directives to provide context. It offers a glimpse into one ordinary life during two extraordinary years.
When the world settles into whatever the After looks like, the story that’s told about these times should not only be told through the filter of the mainstream media. To understand the human cost these years demanded of us, we must consider the experience of ordinary people in the culture and context of the time. Living Liminal is my contribution to that story.
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Linda Hoye lives in Saskatchewan, Canada with her husband and their doted-upon Yorkshire Terrier. She is the author of The Presence of Absence: A Story About Busyness, Brokenness, and Being Beloved and Two Hearts: An Adoptee’s Journey Through Grief to Gratitude. She spends her days wrestling the siren call of busyness by playing with words, paying attention through the practices of photography and watercolor painting, and leaning into stillness, solitude, and silence.