3/22/22, Hope

 

Hello Everyone,

 

I hope you’ve had a good week, and that some good things happened to you. Maybe Valentine’s Day got you off to a good start. I hope it went well!!!

 

It’s hard to find a suitable subject these days, with so many serious things going on. Fashion Week, in any city, pales by comparison, or cute shoes, or even my dogs. These are serious times. As we go through our daily lives in our various cities in countries where we are safe, our ordinary lives and problems are in sharp contrast to the horrors of war that we see on the news from Ukraine, where an unthinkable battle/war is being waged, where innocent women and children, and ordinary civilians are losing their lives and their homes and their country is buried under debris from the bombs, the images we see are heartbreaking, and millions are fleeing, while being peppered with bombs. It is more than sobering to watch, and the children break my heart.

 

In England, France and the US, we’ve moved into a new phase with Covid, where tests are no longer required, vaccine passes are no longer necessary, and masks have been dropped—only to be warned on the news that it’s too soon, and that there is a new variant, Ba.2, which is thought to be THIRTY TIMES more contagious than Omicron, which was something like 50 times more contagious than the one before. So how are we supposed to feel relaxed with that lurking? I am keeping my mask on any time I go out, and am feeling squeamish about very public places, and won’t go to indoor restaurants. In France there are still 100,000 cases a day, and in Germany 300,000. That doesn’t sound like it’s over to me.

 

War and Pestilence, it still sounds biblical to me.

 

But even with that going on, I took a card my daughter sent me to be framed, I had publishing and legal and insurance meetings today, seeing my accountant tomorrow, when I’m not writing, I have to do all the grown up very boring stuff that keeps life on track and sure isn’t fun. I dropped by to see a friend today, and bought cute plates for our Easter brunch.

 

Life is a strange mixed bag of ordinary tasks sometimes, with HUGE issues to ponder in the world, like Covid and Ukraine. While I sit quietly at my desk tonight, writing to you, someone is crawling out of the debris of a bombed burned out building, a child is crying, people are hungry and thirsty and freezing cold….the harsh realities of life woven in with the ordinary tasks, and then a brief, fleeting happy tender moment, of friendship, of love, and hope, a smile, a hug from a child, and my dogs snoring next to me when I finally get to bed at night.

 

We have to seize the beauty where we see it, and catch the rays of sunlight and moonbeams when they happen….and always in the midst of tedium, and chaos, and even heartbreak, somehow we have to see a ray of hope, and hang onto that.

 

Be safe, and well, and happy, and careful, with all my love,    Danielle

 

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