Dark Chocolate, Deep Connection
By Joan Presley
If life as we once knew it was like a box of chocolates, then life amidst pandemic is that same box now gone empty, and if chocolate is the symbol of deep love and true connection—of Valentines and birthdays and holidays spent together—then its absence means indifference. Indifference leaves me cold: cold as if unsheltered, unsheltered as in lost; lost like truly hopeless, and that’s just exactly where you’ll find me. I’m distressed and half-despondent this year two of the pandemic, as we ride another surge of yet another variant, a variant that might not have happened if only we’d…but we didn’t, and so I miss my box of chocolates, miss my people and my places, and the possibilities inherent in our pre-pandemic life.
My today—in this first month of this second year of this fifth surge of ungodly virus—looks eerily like my yesterday and my tomorrow. Unless tomorrow is a weekend, because Saturdays and Sundays get crowded on the trail behind my house. So, on weekends I set out early to push my old dog, Katie, in her carriage up the hill so she can walk down unimpeded by other dogs and the people they have on leash; people who may or may not be contagious to me, the person she depends upon to feed and walk and groom her, to keep her safe and breathing.
I see my neighbor from the trailhead on this pre-dawn Sunday morning. She is walking west towards the Sierras and the Wolf Moon just above them, on its descent towards California. I slow up at the bridge across the first pond that I come to and lean against its wooden rail–although it’s much too early to be looking for what I’ve come to call my ducks—two surviving Pekins abandoned by their owners. These survivors are important to my spirit because of theirs. They flap and quack and swim and play and mate—or try to—with the native population, having taken this change in their situation in stride, as if it were inevitable. They seem happy and well-adjusted, unlike me, who rails against her new normal lately, nine days out of ten. I wasn’t, initially, like this.
Year one of the pandemic I felt dutiful staying home. I mean, I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it either. I do these days, or maybe resent it is what I mean. I have trouble understanding how people given a solution, i.e., the vaccine, could reject it, especially when that rejection constitutes a threat to those around them.
The mallards, geese, and my two ducks don’t sleep in this pond or any other water along the trail, at least not that I’ve seen. They must roost somewhere in the bushes, despite the coyotes who also live here and leave their scat as evidence; scat I do my best to avoid, along with the dog poop, some in bags (which thoroughly confuses me) scooped but not deposited. Why leave it sit for others? Dog poop contains bacteria and parasites harmful to other pooches as well as people, not to mention that, left unattended, it seeps into the streams and lakes and rivers that provide our drinking water. The picking up of pet waste is not merely an aesthetic; it’s the law.
I used to pre-retirement as the City of Reno’s fire marshal talk to kids who’d started fires, unintentionally or otherwise, and among the many things I’d cover was our responsibility to one another. I’d explain that of course the trucks and engines and the men and women who staff them would come and quench the fires they—the kids—had, accidentally or not, started, but then those crews would be unavailable for other emergencies and people who might need them. The kids might or might not have gotten it, but at least they heard it once. Citizens of communities have responsibilities towards one another.
Katie’s carriage rumbles on the bridge’s wooden planks, alerting my neighbor to our presence. She turns and calls good morning, and she asks how I am doing. I swallow the many whiny, needy, complaining responses that come to mind and tell her I am fine and ask how she is doing on this clear but icy morning.
Sick of this pandemic, she says. Square One, can you believe it? Right back to where we started.
Square One, I say and nod, although I don’t, in truth, believe it. If I were brave, if she would listen, if it wouldn’t sound obnoxious, I’d tell her what I really think: we’re nowhere near Square One. If Square One was 2020, then we’re behind, below, and backwards. I’d pin us west of zero, because Square One meant Italians and New Yorkers clanging pots and pans from balconies or in the streets outside of hospitals to honor those who cared for the sick, inside, alone near death on a ventilator in a hallway strapped to a gurney because all rooms, all beds were full. Square One meant we, the uninfected stayed home as ordered and washed our hands and mail and groceries. Square One meant Zoom, a shirt and tie, nice blouse or sweater, no zippered pants or pencil skirts, just sweats and socks or slippers. Square One meant homemade bread browning in the oven.
The sky behind the Sierras goes pink then orange and blue. The Wolf Moon pales to white as the sun peaks, east, over the Virginias. I free Katie from her carriage, and we walk, slowly, down the hill towards breakfast. The pond inhabitants come waddling back to stroll or swim, eat grass or worms, insects, snails, small fish. My big white ducks, survivors still, are tails up in the water. They bob and eat and splash and play as if they’ve always lived here. Pandemics come; pandemics go, like birthdays and like Christmas. My Pekins remind me daily that attitude is everything and life goes on, regardless. The air is still. No clouds today. The sky turns brighter bluer.
Photograph courtesy of Joan Presley.
Joan Presley worked in fire prevention for many years for both the City of Reno and the Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District and retired as fire marshal for the consolidated departments. She studied creative writing at Truckee Meadows Community College and the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) and has an MFA in fiction from Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon and an MA in English from UNR. Her work has appeared in The Brushfire, the Evening Street Review, The Meadow, Painted Cave, and Slab Literary Review. She and Katie live in Reno amongst their family of friends.
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