Coronavirus has stopped the world. As we drove home from Florida to Maine on the last day of March and the first day of April, we donned gloves, disinfectant wipes, and armed ourselves with bleach spray at our four gas stops, and deliberately planned our route to avoid stopping in New Jersey, New York or Connecticut altogether. The kids got out of the car once, in a deserted cut down cotton field in South Carolina to run. The children were amazing for the entire 27 hour journey. We peed in bottles and pickle jars. We ate food I’d bought for the trip 12 days earlier at the grocery store. The kids understood the gravity of the situation. We had debated leaving Florida early, but since I was still throwing up frequently with morning sickness at the front end of March we’d put the trip off until I was out of the first trimester, feeling a little better, and able to help with the driving. We didn’t want to risk an overnight in a hotel because I was too sick to drive.
As I normally do on our road trips, I drove the overnight shift. With almost no traffic except the truckers, we sped across a closed America. In New York I had to pull over for an ambulance, possibly transporting a Coronavirus patient. The fear and desperation were palpable in the empty streets of the cities we passed through. I spent the wee hours of the morning slowly eating my chocolate covered coffee beans,with careful calculation not to exceed my pregnancy caffeine limits. I am not a person who cries very often; I always joke that I’m a robot, and my thinking to feeling ratio in the Myers-Briggs personality test is 90% to 10%. I’m sure the hormones of pregnancy played a part, and the fact that everyone else in the car was asleep and I was essentially alone for the first time in weeks of quarantining and had time to think without interruption. I cried because I was scared for my family members who are high risk, for the people who were dying without their loved ones beside them. I was scared for Aaron who would be working in our store and in contact with the public each and every day, and staying on the mainland away from us, at least for the first few weeks we were home.
But through the tears I was simultaneously intellectually awed by our planet’s ability to self correct. For my master’s degree I studied rates of evolution through Earth’s history, particularly the explosive bursts of innovation after mass extinctions. I took paleoclimate classes, and earth system science classes. I love the intricacies of feedback loops and ecosystems, and the way the laws of nature seem to always dictate a path of eventual correction. I have always been drawn to the idea of devastation clearing the way for brilliance.
I’m not sure there has ever been a more heartbreaking human experience that is so completely intellectually and scientifically fascinating as this current pandemic. Such a shocking mix of blessings and pain. So much death and loss and fear and suffering but at the same time, stopping normal life worldwide has made pollution decrease, people are connecting at home with their families, people are thinking about where their food comes from, people are helping their children learn at home. The pandemic is highlighting the many faults of our healthcare system, political systems, social inequity, and food systems. It’s as if the earth itself sees our human character flaws of greed, excess, and selfishness. Earth has used a virus, a tool invisible to our eyes as a lens for people to view the faults, bringing into devastating focus just what modern society has done.
I have a long way to go in my understanding and reconciliation of God and science. For the moment, I think God set up the natural laws of physics, biology and chemistry, and that the perfection of those systems are the gifts which keeps our planet in balance. I seemed to be both awed at the power and brilliance of this virus, and grieving for the losses to humankind. A giant muddle of praise to God and pain. Gratefulness and grief. So much thinking and feeling for one tired pregnant momma who is caring for five kids and a farm alone at the moment. We must extend ourselves the grace to know that processing this pandemic might take a long time, I know it will for me. But in the meantime I’ll be grateful to God through the tears.
Raising Veggies and Humans 