Outside my window, just beyond the top of my laptop, there is a tree. In deeper spring, it blooms and blooms with small fluttering pink flowers that rain down on the sidewalk and all around– the air becomes absolutely profligate with petals. But at the moment, the tree remains bare. All that is happening with the tree is happening internally, and there’s no sign to my untrained eye of what will come next for it.
If I turn around, away from the window and toward the dark, cool hallway that leads to our bedrooms, I see shadows, and a basket of dried laundry that still needs to be folded. It still needs to be folded, but I dread this task less than I have in the past. Because now, in quarantine, with a spouse and two children who are with me all the time, I have partners, people who will fold a few things with me. And maybe we’ll chat about our plans for the day, or the funny video of that dog and the treadmill. Or maybe we’ll just fold together.
In the time of coronavirus, love is easy alignment on the tasks at hand. There’s no push and pull on what I have to get done, and on what you have to get done. There’s no negotiation and compromise. Love always meant sharing the tasks, but love now means that things that got shorter shrift in our capitalist world of endless work productivity now get to unfurl a bit.
The tiny pink blooms of writing, or of quiet creative pretend play, or of reading books that have waited so long on the to-read shelf– those blooms are preparing to burst forth and turn the air into a joyous swirl of fragrance and color, and I might believe they’re infinite.
