Cinnamon Raison Bread

Right now, as I sit down to write this, I am terrified. Not in the top half of my brain, in the penthouse where the executives are planning and putting together schedules, but in my gut. My stomach has been in a knot for about four days now, especially at night when the lights go out and it would be a great time for sleeping. It feels like a gnome is in there wringing my stomach like a wet hand towel. It’s hard to sleep with this kind of thing going on.

I take a break after setting up the trailer at our new campsite to eat half a grilled cheese sandwich—on Dave’s Cinnamon-Raison Bread because that was the only loaf of bread at the store last weekend—left over from last night’s dinner. The towel-wringing gnome hasn’t left much room in there for an appetite either, and I find I have to remember to eat something now and then. As I bite into the sandwich, the unexpectedly rich, sweet, nutty taste of it rolls over me, and suddenly in that moment with the buttery flavor on my tongue, I feel unexpectedly and acutely alive.

The second bite isn’t quite as good. There’s nothing like the first taste of something. Everything past that is kind of like thunder rolling off down the valley after the first heart-stopping crash of overhead lightning. But that first bite shocked me into paying attention—all the feelings of sweetness, not only in my mouth, but melting down into my limbs; even the fear-train in my stomach making room for something a little softer and warmer; the executives in the rooftop suite pausing for a moment to look out the windows and comment on the little clouds sailing across the sky like sheep’s tails—and I can feel the day rise up to meet me, warm and dusty, a fly buzzing at the window, the sound of horses from the road below.

I am grateful for a little ordinary moment of peace.

*******

We just arrived back in Cascabel, Arizona today, where we plan to stay for the foreseeable future. We are camped at the property where we stayed for several months last year. We intend to lay low for two weeks as we have been traveling down the coast to get here. What a difference from all the other years we have been living in our trailer! Cities grinding to a halt, businesses shutting their doors, events canceling, the state parks closing just after we left California. The virus growing from something “somewhere else” to a presence everywhere and on everyone’s mind within days and weeks. We feel like we have been pushed by a crest of a wave for the past three weeks since the day we rolled through Seattle just as the counts were starting. We are beyond grateful to have a place that we can settle in, call home for awhile.

It has been hard to write in this blog for awhile—this winter because I was busy with other things; now because I don't even know where to begin. But it helps to start. And I can feel how the act of writing grounds me. I know how much I appreciate hearing the "voice" of the writers I know in my life. It is almost more important than the things they write about—just the sound of the way they put words together, a sound that is unique to each person. I miss it when their voices are not in the world; and I hear that there are people who miss mine.

So I would like to continue doing this for awhile—noticing the little things, just checking in with myself, letting my voice out to run around a little, not taking it too seriously or trying to make anything spectacular. Seems like this is a time when we all appreciate hearing our loved one's voices. When we are appreciating what we have today, right now.

Like Cinnamon Raison Bread, the last loaf on the shelf.