Eyes wide open

These are long, hard days for so many of us.

May I suggest that you pay close attention to the moments of beauty and joy in your life right now and hold onto them with everything you’ve got?

Admittedly, I’m blessed with two hilarious and delightful children and a wife who I want to spend every waking and sleeping moment with anyway, but I’m also focused on everything else I can find:

• The hawk I saw circling a cul-de-sac yesterday afternoon during my bike ride
• The three ducks and two geese who almost always visit us when we walk down to the brook
• The father and son who play catch on the church lawn almost every day
• The appearance of the sun after days of overcast skies
• The smile and eternal optimism of my neighbor as he shouts a hello to me from his stoop
• The crocuses pushing their way through the dry leaves on Briarwood Road
• The rainbows drawings popping up in windows around town
• The pink buds appearing on tree limbs

I’m not blind to the reality of the moment. I probably read and watch more news than most, and I’m constantly engaging with Trump’s Twitter feed.

Having been one of the two dozen Americans who sued Trump and won, forcing him to unblock me on Twitter, I feel obligated to engage. The Knight Foundation spent a lot of money on my behalf, so I owe it to them to make the most of their investment by exercising my right of free speech.

I’m well aware of the dire straights that we face. I know people suffering with COVID-19, and this week, I mailed my first condolence card to a friend.

But amidst all of that, I force my eyes to find beauty, and when I can, I capture that beauty with photographs.

2020 will not be the year of the pandemic for me. The pandemic will be a part of my memory of this time, for sure, but it will also be the year I rediscovered my bike. Learned to cook for my family. Watched every Marvel movie for the first time alongside Charlie and Elysha. Wrote a book. Maybe two.

This will be the year I watched and listened to my kids more than ever before. The year that Elysha and I picked each other up and held each other together when things got tough. The year when crocuses bloomed in March and hawks circled overhead in cloudless skies and a small family of ducks found the time to say hello to a small family of human beings who like to toss rocks into a brook and breathe fresh air and forget about the troubles of the world for a while.

I hope you can find as much beauty in these long, hard days.