Counting your blessings during the crisis

We can only hope that a lot of you feel the way Sharon Osborn (no, not that one) feels during this crisis. At her home just outside Onancock, Virginia, on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, the world has turned upside down as it has everywhere else. But she’s looking at the bright side.

Every morning before I’m really awake, I lie in bed mulling over the day to come. Run the dog. Feed the birds. Drop off trash and recycles. Then, yay, breakfast at Janet’s Café, where young Zack the counterman spots my Jeep rounding the corner. He has my tea ready (with lemon) as I walk through the door.

Then my eyes open and reality dawns.

No Janet’s. She’s been closed for several weeks in the face of the pandemic. Oh bummer.

I give myself an inward shake and recite the mantra friends taught me years ago: “Flexibility is the key to mental health.” Time to get up.

A year ago my husband and I moved from a resort town on the New Jersey coast to the rural Eastern Shore of Virginia. I figured we’d be trading crowds and McMansions for green fields, wildlife, and no cultural life to speak of.

I was wrong. Within a month after moving south, I went to a lecture by Doris Kearns Goodwin, saw a current movie in our downtown Roseland Theatre, and took in a rollicking performance at the local playhouse. I found the nearest library, run-down but well run, and joined a fundraising committee for the new regional library and heritage center.

I met booklovers, gardeners, supporters of the ERA, the NRA, and animal rights. Musicians, artists, farmers, baymen, independent thinkers. Took a Master Naturalists course taught by experts, opening a world of beauty and volunteer activities.

I found that people here really do say “Y’all.” In the stores they stop and visit like folks commonly do, but their encounters— “Well how are you girl ? Your mom feeling better?”— create tiny oases of kindness as the questions flow back and forth, unhurried.

I began to wave at every truck I passed on the road and learned not to panic when they pass me on a double yellow line. On a curve.

The dining room of Janet’s Cafe.

Then came the virus and everything, as they say, turned ass-over-teacups. The theaters are closed. People chat a little less, and at a six-foot distance. Fewer trucks whiz by. Kids are out of school.

So I’m learning to hold on to what I can of all the good new things. I can’t have Janet’s, but I can take my tea down to the town wharf, watching the water drift. I can enjoy a donut from the one store still open in town, the Corner Bakery. (They’re not actually on the corner and they’re not open Sundays, but hey.)

No library meetings, but I can gather magazines and kids books and drop them at the laundromat.

Sharon Osborn

No Naturalist work crews either, but I can bag roadside trash. Plenty of that. I can prune trees on 2-½ acres too.

I can realize that for many folks, this strange new world isn’t just inconvenient, it’s heartbreaking. Kids who counted on school (they’re all closed) as a place to be safe and cared for and fed. Thankfully, school buses now deliver food, and online classes help.

I can count my blessings.