2 April

Our quarantine period ends tonight.  Tomorrow morning I plan to make a trip to Ipercoop, the big hyper-market in the shopping mall.  There I can buy everything from food, cleaning products, and toiletries to printer paper to an electric razor so we might trim my husband’s ever-shaggier hair.  There’s no hope for mine until my favorite salon re-opens.

I don’t mind saying I’m a bit nervous about leaving the house after two weeks of confinement, but I will go masked and gloved, armed with hand sanitizer and wipes.  I’ll go early with a detailed list, divided by product category so I can get through the aisles and out again quickly.  In the checkout line I will observe the distanza di sicurezza—the safe distance of two meters between persons.  I’ll buy some extra groceries—pasta, rice, oil, canned tuna—to contribute to one of the informal food banks springing up all over Italy, points where one may deposit a few items for anyone who might need a bit of help right now to feed themselves and their families.

Early spring weather is another up-and-down affair—two days of warm temperatures, sun and clear skies; four of chilly damp, heavy overcast, intermittent rain.  We bound outdoors on the fair days, stay close to our fireside on the foul ones.  Yesterday after lunch the sun came out; we bundled up against the north-easterly wind, jumped the little watercourse at the bottom of the meadow and walked into the woods.  We climbed an old road bed, saw our house from a new vantage point. 

I picked a small bunch of the wild violets pushing up everywhere through a thick mat of fallen chestnut leaves.  Back on our terrace, facing west and sheltered from the wind, we drank tea until the light faded.  In these moments we hold the sad news, the staggering numbers, the whole frightened world at a safe distance. 

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come, to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

JOHN O’DONOHUE