dual personalities

The only way to maintain equanimity in the face of seemingly eternal Covid Theater is to find a distraction. For example, this recent headline from our local paper made me smile, even as it got my imagination going.

High crime in the North Country! Dying to know all about it, I did some research and discovered  that there’s a big black market in catalytic converters, because they are made of rare metals. The world IS more than we know!

When I wasn’t stewing about mask mandates or learning about the illegal trade in car parts, I read a wonderful book called Gathering of Sisters: A Year with My Old Order Mennonite Family. My DH gave it to me last Christmas and it’s a good thing I didn’t read it right away, because I sure did need it this week.

The author, Darla Weaver, grew up on a farm in a Mennonite community in southeastern Ohio, with her four sisters and four brothers. Now married adults, she and her sisters pack up their children every Tuesday and bike or buggy over to their parents’ farm to spend the day together cooking, gardening, sewing, reading, playing and talking. Nothing dramatic happens, no one ever gets angry or upset, and everyone – children included – works away happily. Even when facing a difficult or unpleasant chore, they just get to it without complaint. It’s a very refreshing read.

The author is funny, thoughtful and self-aware, and she writes well. At one point after singing “This Little Light of Mine” and “Jesus Bids Us Shine” to her youngest son, she muses, “Sometimes I look around at all that is wrong and realize again there is very little I can actually do to make anything better, or even much improved. But I can shine in my one small corner, and there I can serve God faithfully at my simple duties.” The small life has a lot of appeal for those of us who do not enjoy the relentless press of popular culture.  

On another Tuesday, when all her children have gone to school and Darla is the only sister without a child in tow, she consoles herself, “Even if my children are growing up too fast, here are my sisters, growing old, or at least middle-aged, right along with me. The years are passing one by one, a little like the shadows that slip across the mountains each afternoon, but we are sisters still. Even the surprises that the years often bring can’t change that.  Decades ago, when we all still had the same last name, we were sisters by chance of birth and took for granted the bonds of our heritage. Today we are friends by choice as much as we are sisters, and we feel amazingly blessed to have grown from these roots. It’s not something to take for granted anymore.” I can relate to that, can’t you?

Remember, there are plenty of regular people out there getting on with life.  We do not have to get sucked into the media maelstrom. We may not be able to control most of what life throws at us, but we can control how we deal with it. I guess that means I’d better learn to deal with Covid restrictions  — even when they make no sense.