I asked readers of my newsletter to write to me and tell me what they see out their windows. PART 1 RAN LAST WEEK. This is Part 2. (the photo above is what I see.)–cary t.

4. Peacocks and mangoes

Mumbia, india

Dear Cary,

Greetings from India, where 1.3 billion people are in lockdown since 25 March.

For many weeks, all of us have been doing our best to keep to ourselves. This is no small feat, not only because of the sheer scale involved (do you know how many zeroes there are in 1.3 billion?). It is also amazing because Indians are incredibly social beings and to ask us to “social distance” is to ask us to stop being ourselves. We talk to everyone, all day, and we get up close and into each other’s affairs because we are all one big family. How does one stop talking with one’s family member? In this, we may share quite a bit with Italy, so you probably understand how deep this runs.

And yet, we’re doing it. The roads of Mumbai are eerily empty of people, as are those in other Indian cities, towns and even villages. Peacocks and other creatures, hitherto in hiding, are venturing into these newly opened spaces, much to everyone’s delight. The trees seem to be breathing easier too: the leaves are playing with the wind much more, it feels, and even the wind is dancing more freely. The mango tree outside my window has more mango than leaf. Things are, on the whole, more light, clean, and clear.

Though we are maintaining new distances with each other, we seem to also be leaving our individual, self-absorbed worlds and finding a shared humanity. My local grocer takes the liberty to fill my basket, advising me to add things that I have missed on my list so that I don’t have to make another trip soon. When I ask for something he doesn’t have in stock, he kindly offers an alternative, seeing my disappointed look. When I pass the garbage collector, I look at him and wave in gratitude. What he is doing is a service to humanity. He smiles back, which I see from the crinkling around his eyes, above the mask he is wearing. It feels good to acknowledge each other this way. Pre-Covid19, we probably would have passed each other without a glance either way.

This lockdown is hard, but it is especially hard on the lesser-privileged Indians. As businesses have had to shut, work has dried up, and their income has disappeared. Many of them are daily wage earners, without a safety net. It is heart-wrenching to see their anguish. It is about survival for them. There are many good initiatives being done by the government, NGOs and even private citizens. For this, I am thankful, and pray that nobody goes hungry during these weeks, until this is brought under control and businesses can re-open and hire back these people.

Life after the lockdown will be…I don’t know what. It will be a relief to hug my friends. Doing the ordinary things will feel like a blessing, like ordering a pizza or being able to walk into a supermarket without having to stand in line first until the crowd is thinned. As distressing as the virus’ effects have been, it also feels like the virus has knocked us on the head and made us look at our lives and our priorities and question them. In various ways, at varying times, I am sure you and I have wondered if we’re living life in the right way, valuing the right things. This tiny little bug has forced all of us to stop and seriously pay attention to that question. I hope we come out of this with a better sense of how we want to live going forward.

I hope you are well. I think fondly of our workshop in Tuscany still; even though it was many, many years ago, it feels like yesterday that we sat under the blue summer sky and I gave voice, literally, to my writing for the first time. I continue to be grateful to you for creating the kind of safe and friendly environment that enabled me to do that.

Keep taking care and staying indoors. It is the single best thing we can do for ourselves and our communities.

Archana

5. THE CHIME IS RINGING

Ohio

Dear Cary,

Out my window to the west is a box of stones from the distant ocean, a silent chime, maple limbs draped with silky flowers, a quiet street, a neighbor’s house front. One light is lit, one has burned out.

Out my window to the west an occasional car passes, serenely, almost grandly, as if cars were still novel and those who drove them extraordinarily privileged.

Out my window to the east robins are building a nest on a narrow rafter of a neighbor’s shed. I watch them intermittently through binoculars. So far the nest looks like a very rough draft of a nest, a nest built by robins who frankly have no idea what they’re doing, and they’re doing it anyway. Perhaps this is their debut nest. Birds get better at building nests over time, I’ve read. Of course they do.

Out my window to the south is a mess of greening mulberry limbs, the peak of a neighbor’s roof, a wrecked yard that was meant to be reborn as a pollinator garden, but is a very, very rough draft of that too.

There is no window to the north. That direction, that cardinal, eludes.

There is a sort of window down to the earth: which direction is that? Through it, I see a sliver of the basement floor. There is a window up to the sky, not in this room but in another. It has a crank, and on warm days I turn the handle, letting in the actual sky to mingle with the domestic air. They behave well together.

This is what I see. And the chime is ringing now. The chime is ringing, though I never saw the breeze move in.

Audrey H.

6. My son has taken to praying

Mountain View, California

Dear Cary,

It’s quiet. Very, very quiet. I hear the birds and the squirrels chirping and scratching. The other day I heard a woodpecker, I think. Nature is thriving while humans are dying.

It’s Easter, but I only have brown eggs. But at least I have eggs, they seem to be in short supply. It’s not easy to dye a brown egg, but they scramble just the same.

There is a church in the neighborhood that has bells ringing all the time. I don’t know if it’s this church, but I picture it as the gleaming white one down the street that was completely remodeled a year or so ago. I never noticed their church bells before. I wonder if this is new, or if the holy sound has just risen now that the din of humans and cars and trains and life has abated. One day maybe I’ll suit up, mask up and go for a walk to see if that’s the church who’s bells are ringing.

My son has taken to praying. We are not a religious household, but at 13 he has decided to celebrate all religious holidays he can find. First it was Chinese New Year, than the Hindu Holi festival, and now Easter. He’s made his own rosary and says the prayer of the rosary each day. I don’t understand all the different prayers, but I’m sure the Italians do.

We are lucky, I have a secure job, I can easily work from home, and he is self-entertaining with his art projects. The two of us have had many precious moments during this time of being safe at home. We are healthy, as are our loved ones. I’ve found ways to connect with people and play games (Cards Against Humanity!) over Zoom, and Skype with my parents in New Mexico.

We miss our family and friends, and hope this is over soon, but not too soon. I worry that the world will not learn if this is over too soon, that we will put money over life again, that we will not have enough time to realize the importance of nature, or even of our drivers and delivery people and warehouse workers and teachers and doctors and nurses and health insurance and politicians who care about their constituents, and, and, and…. I also hope it doesn’t go on so long that we forget how to hug, how to touch.

I am sending warmth and love from Mountain View. Thanks for encouraging me to put this into words, Cary.

Melissa