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Dear Friends,
Over the past week, I’ve spent several rainy days watching the Canada geese descend upon the muddy patches around my neighborhood. Hundreds of them, turning empty fields into their own personal tailgate party, undisturbed even by the few brave dogs who chance a visit. I told my sister about the geese, and she said that because of climate change, lots of once-migratory geese have become residential now. (Which would explain why, in the autumn, I’d often see them flying north instead of south.) Every once in a while, though, a goose that’s lived her whole life in, say, Alexandria, Virginia, might suddenly remember that she’s supposed to fly to the arctic. “It’s usually a mother goose who’s lost her nest,” my sister told me. The trauma of the loss unlocks something in her--a generations-old reminder to pick up and fly. “It’s like...Eat Pray Love, but for geese,” I said. After my father died in 2018, I read that when you experience a loss, the feeling of it never gets any smaller within your body. Instead, your life grows bigger around it. In some ways, the trip to the arctic must be a way to fast-track the healing. Fill your senses with new stimuli. Pack your little goose mind with entirely new memories to build a buffer around grief. I think this might be part of what makes the pandemic so incredibly difficult. For one, we are stuck in a traumatic event with no endpoint, and our bodies are still trying to cope. And the losses keep piling up. Lost loved ones, lost jobs, lost way of life. Even, as Abby Norman puts it, “the loss of respect for people that we once were close to based on pandemic behavior.” (THIS.) And if we have that impulse to fly, well, have you gotten your COVID vaccine? No? Me either. Back in the house we go. At first, the gripe of “I miss traveling” sounds like 1st world influencer problems. But what if it’s more than that? Our evolutionary goose-selves are trying to heal. Trying to make our lives bigger to hold all of this unbearable grief. I know some people are combating this by planning their fantasy vacations for the minute this is all over. “HEY!” a friend messaged me. “You went to Santorini, didn’t you? Would you recommend?” Personally, I’ve lost the ability to think that far ahead. Instead, I convince myself I’m adapting. I’m residential, now. I put on my mask, go across the street to the field, and tromp around in the mud I’ve got. Take good care, Dot
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