Now is the Time for We Who Have, To Give.

It rained this week for the first time in 7 months.

I took the time to go walking in the foothills so I could smell the sage brush’s sweetness thick in the air. These days I spend most of my time at home. We all do. Or should.

I commute down the stairs, shop in the kitchen, dine-out on the patio. I work on a screen with a keyboard and camera. The kids are at school upstairs. I can hear one running in place for gym while the other discusses a book with a teacher she has never really met. I talk and I type. I toggle from one platform to another, meeting after meeting, spreadsheets and PowerPoints.

I have ordered 23 bottles of non-alcoholic spirits online. I have learned to mix zero proof martinis, Manhattans, even a gin fizz. Seven months ago I had never mixed a thing. My hair is long. I have cut it once since we all came inside, I paid a private person to cut it in their kitchen. I think I like my hair long and my professional world doesn’t seem to mind, so it stays. It is like the young me is trying to peek through the wear, tear, and weight of the me sitting here now. He is welcome as long as he behaves and doesn’t try to crowd out the better me I have become.

I have oft complained about suburban life and its anti-social construction. Out here we put up walls and fences, gates to our neighborhood, rules about lawn height and house paint. We move about in isolated metal boxes only coming within ten feet of another person in the grocery store or the mall. No one comes into our personal space unless we invite them in to see our new granite counter tops or we need them to fix the air conditioner.

I find it incredibly uncooperative and over protective and now I have to admit it may be saving my life. I am relatively safe from COVID-19 and I am absolutely living in comfort.

A lot of people are not.

Many have jobs and homes but work in those grocery stores or hospitals. Some have lost their jobs and worry they will now lose their homes. Some are staying home with unpleasant people while others are locked down all alone. Some, too many, have moved from homes into hospitals. Others even worse. I should be, and am, grateful.

But gratitude feels a little like gloating if it isn’t accompanied by something other than taking and keeping. I feel there should be a next step. A more. But maybe not just giving back. Giving back to others who have given turns those gifts into transactions. Those are fine, if that is what they are, but in closing that loop we remain closed in- or off. These circles don’t help anyone outside a preexisting loop, and most of us that are doing fine, are doing so in large part because we are lopped in.

So I need to open up. We need to give out. Gratitude for what I have is best expressed by sharing with those without.

And how do I do that while locked inside my safe suburban home? COVID safe behind closed doors and community safe within my gated community? I have to do it. Me. I have to think, try, and follow through. If I can spend on mixed mocktails I can also spend on a shelter. If I can Zoom and click for what I want I could find ways to do the same for others, and I should. If I have comfort than I can surely give more. If others are without, I should help. I could give more. I could give almost all. I really could.

I know I could and should give more because in this time of turmoil, where I have a new couch and armchairs, where payroll automatically deposits checks into my bank every month, where the temperature outside doesn’t influence my clothing choices at all, where I click a button and people bring me things right to my door, the things that have made me happiest, are first:

the people in my home, but second- is the dusty smell of the sage brush wafting above the damp ground.

Now is the time for me to help those who don’t have those things.

I will be fine.