MAKING MASKS

I may be sheltered at home but my mind is often elsewhere. I am thinking of my daughters, those humans who carry my DNA as well as a part of my very being around with them. They have been knitted to my heart and are permanently fastened there, the yarn stretches across this country and I still feel the tug with their movements. These ones I can no longer wrap my arms around, let alone be in the same room with. My heart aches to be in this with them, to mother them, maybe more for my own comfort than theirs.

I feel straight-jacketed by the unrelenting advance of Covid-19, seeping across continents, countries, into my province and finally my town. What can I DO? I am programmed with a desire to help, to fight against what is upon us, but feel helpless against this approaching wave.

For days I obsessively check the news reports, read of the gradual shutting down of life as we know it. I am no longer able to catch a plane to see my children, mother and father, siblings. I cannot meet with a friend, go to work, or receive care for my injured body. My freedom as well as millions of others has been restricted and it feels like a death.

I ride the waves of anxiety and fear, easing and swelling, never knowing how each day will be. I read the Psalms and find an ally who rode these waves before me. Another who railed against suffering and injustice and found himself held, sheltered.

I make scrub bags for the nurses in an attempt to construct barriers against the spread of this virus. As if by this small act I can forbid the pathogens from entering into the homes of our healthcare workers. This helps.

My friend is hurting so I bring flowers, stand the required distance away, but cannot comfort her with a hug as I see the tears begin to form in her eyes. I meet another friend and a simple question causes tears to flow. Our hearts are exposed, the layers which once covered and protected us have been peeled away. Now we cry or rage easily, feelings overflow without our consent. Collectively we are trying to be strong, preparing ourselves to do battle with covid-19, steeling ourselves against the feelings which threaten to overwhelm. But a word of compassion opens the dam and the emotions come pouring out.

I have cut down on my consumption of the daily horror stories in the news. The hallways of hospitals littered with patients on stretchers, refrigerated semi-trailers full of the deceased. How can we bear it? And then to see a world leader attempt to hoard supplies for that one country. How can such evil be happening?

So, I start stitching masks. I make them for my daughters, my husband and myself. I find other people in my circle who require one and I sew for them too. The cutting and the stitching become a liturgy, a way to ground myself, even perhaps an attempt to right some of what has gone wrong. I make loops to encircle the ears of my loved ones, a poor substitute for being present with them, but all I can offer.

I hear stories of unimagined kindness, parades for our healthcare heroes, songs sung from balconies to cheer each other on these days of darkness. At no other time in our history have the peoples of this world been united as they are in this struggle. All the things which have divided us have also been stripped away revealing our common fragility and interdependence.

My sewing of masks and scrub bags seems like a tiny drop in the vastness of our oceans, but maybe I am the boy with five loaves and two small fish, and maybe you are too. Perhaps our meager efforts planted with a mustard seed of faith can grow into a sheltering tree for the sick, the scared, and the grieving.