Thinking about hugging tighter

We realized how tentative our hugs had become in the last two years, our very bodies dangerous to each other.

Saturday morning, Jeff and I walked up to the farmer’s market to pick up our monthly chicken and eggs. It was warm enough we could almost convince ourselves we were on the beach after all. The market was outside instead of in the church and busier than it had been for a while with the buzz of good weather and the Girls’ Weekend visitors in town.

We stopped at the beauty salon to pick up shampoo and our neighbor was getting her hair done. For the first time since the pandemic started, there were no masks and we chatted about how nice that was.

Later, I walked down the street to get gin and ice for my little birthday gathering. I saw more friends, leaving the winery, driving in golf carts, tapping on the window and waving.

This weekend, people were, in a word, giddy. Giddy with the 70-degree weather in early March. Giddy with the possibility that if the pandemic isn’t ending, it might at least be moving into a phase that is more livable and more humane. I breathed out a long sigh. It felt like winter was ending—the season itself, but also the season of darkness that the last two years have been.

At my gathering that night, we sat out in the party pavilion, a space we built during those first heady days of the pandemic. The days when we were lucky enough to have more free time and thought it would all be over in a month or so. The party pavilion is the opposite of a bomb shelter, an opening up of a building rather than a closing in. We remembered all the times over the last two years we’d huddled together in its shelter, with heaters and blankets when the weather turned cold, stretching out the spaces where we could be together when being together was so complicated.

We all hugged tighter and longer than we had in a long time. We realized how tentative our hugs had become in the last two years, our very bodies dangerous to each other. Was it safe? Were we breathing each other’s air?

I made the same cheesecake I had for a similar gathering two years ago. Citrusy cheesecake. I thought of the night as a reversal spell as I stirred and baked. What is witchcraft after all but cooking and gathering? We would eat the same cheesecake. We would hug tightly. We would feel closer to being human again.

Citrusy cheesecake

We will never get to a place where something horrible isn’t happening somewhere in the world, or at least, not in my lifetime. We can’t be certain that this moment will last or be stolen away from us again as so many others have. We can’t undo the last two years. We can’t bring back the people we lost.

We can only take these tiny, intentional steps forward. Make a ritual which opens a door into a new life, whatever that ritual looks like for you. In the end, it’s all we can ever do.

What rituals are helping you move forward at this particular moment?

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