Quarantine Bloglette: When Life Comes Knocking

In A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles, the Count recollects how many stories tell of death sneaking around and lying in wait for the unsuspecting. What we don't hear about as often, he says, is how life does the same thing.

Death and life take on many forms. There are people who, though they have a pulse, seem more dead than alive. And life, we know, exists well beyond a heartbeat.

It's spring. Life has been lying in wait all winter long. A friend of mine in Vladivostok, Lorissa, sent pictures of the first spring flowers. She also sent a picture of a man on a barren hillside planting some trees. How life-affirming planting is.

So I'm looking for signs of life in this pandemic.

Within a week of our arrival in Moscow, two separate people brought us food: a still-warm loaf of home-baked bread from one, and a complete Italian dinner from another. That's life-affirming.

The other day, I was practicing my recorder and figured out how to play a high B. That may not sound like much, but I've been skipping songs because I couldn't play high B. That's life opening up just a bit.

I have put together a small May basket for my friend Alice. I'm giddy in anticipation of dropping it outside her door anonymously. That's the two-way street of life delighting the giver as much as it does the recipient.

I like how Mr. Towles wrote about death and life sneaking up on us the way he did. Death, in the figurative sense, need not be as permanent as its literal sidekick. Life needs to be stoked. These days we are literally and figuratively making life and death decisions daily. I hope I always choose life, even if it's harder or less convenient. 

Here's a painting that has cheered me every time I've gone for a run. One of the residents on the compound painted it and put it in their back window for all to see.