Up to Us

So here's how I see it, in these brittle, aching times: We only have each other going forward. Nothing is matter of fact—not our jobs, not our clients, not our favorite shops (I go out, I seek, they are gone), not our favorite people in our favorite familiar places (suddenly they have been vanished, too), not our future. And those who once seemed straightforward, firm, reliably reliable are doubting, less certain, wracked by caution.

There is less of most things. There is more ache ahead. There are questions nobody can answer. And so it is up to us to fill the gaps and erase the voids, to shore these days up with our attentiveness, our kindness. To live these days, too, because we won't get them back—live them, walk them, photograph them, write them, love them, share them. We'll be older when this is over. We'll look back. We'll wonder who we were, and how we lived.

And on another note entirely (but not really; this is connected): Thank you, Jane Satterfield at Loyola University, for teaching Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River to your gifted students today. They are lucky to have you.