Some Messy Hope

I've got nothing today! Well, not nothing entirely—in a bit I'm going to sit down to write the last part of the first draft of my book, a part I've been researching for probably six weeks and am so excited to put to paper. But that's for the book, not the newsletter, alas. I was really hoping that if I sat down and typed "I've got nothing today," my fingers would keep moving and prove me wrong. But instead I'm sitting at the kitchen table eating leftover pizza and listening to the birds that have filled up the bare trees, watching my dog resettle himself in front of the heating vent, which isn't actually blowing any air, but he's hopeful. 

This morning I made plans to hug a vaccinated friend. My dad and stepmom are coming to visit this weekend; my mom and stepdad the next; and then the weekend after that, we're driving down to my mom's house to spend the baby's spring break there, for a bit of extra childcare help. (The perils of using a daycare that thinks it's a school.) I haven't hugged any of these people in over a year. It's going to be amazing, but it's also going to be weird to hug my dad knowing that he was on an airplane the day before, even if the CDC says it's safe. The CDC has not inspired the most of my trust lately. But I think it's safe, too. The question is just if my brain will be able to convince my body.

There's all this hope on the horizon and we don't know what to do with it. Especially as it's coming for us at such an unsteady pace. It's speeding up and speeding up, states racing each other to move their 16+ vaccine eligibility earlier and earlier—I saw a spate of April 1 announcements yesterday, and then Minnesota swooped in to outdo everyone with March 30. But it's unsteady, too, cases are rising and states are reopening just weeks before their vaccine sites open to everyone. I went to Trader Joe's last week in the brief spell between cases dropping and indoor capacity restrictions being lifted, stocking up for the first time since the fall and the last time before I'm vaccinated. But all week I looked at the yellow and white ranunculuses and thought, Maybe I can just go to Trader Joe's once a week for flowers, in and out, though as the flowers didn't last even a whole week I reconsidered how worthwhile that would be. But even in my good mask, maybe it's best just to wait. There'll be flowers outside soon, and then soon after that I'll be vaccinated. 

It seems too good to be true, still, that people are getting shots and that the vaccine works. Our bodies don't know how to let go of the fear, though that's not everyone, some people are ready to tear it off like a t-shirt at the beach, dropped in the sand as they run to the water. Twitter is full of tweets like Am I the only one who's not totally looking forward to things reopening????? And no, you're not, twitter is full of those tweets, but no one knows how they'll feel at their first party. We'll feel joy we didn't expect, we'll have panic attacks we never saw coming. 

I guess that doesn't sound reassuring. But I can't reassure you! Or any of us. Things are changing, is all we know. We're at the mercy of a million finnicky websites—I'm just talking about vaccine scheduling, not twitter or NFTs, heyo! The boat is stuck in the canal and it feels like a respite. You can't milkshake duck a boat, except there are 25 crewmen stuck onboard. Ships are going around the Cape of Good Hope like it's 1700, but they're powered by oil instead of wind, at least for now. 

And here I am, about to try to write a few thousand words about how we try to imagine the origin of life, inconceivably small molecules bumping around and sticking together in a way that sets the stage for more of those molecules to bump around and stick. And more and more and more until you get to us, not a pinnacle of anything but just what's here now. And whoever else might be out there.