Monks in their cells in the Middle Ages rose before dawn to pray. Instead, they walked that narrow room, back and forth, back and forth, all day. Some called this a sin, this rocking in their stiff chairs, the unwillingness to kneel, to pray.
The days of cloistering went on eternally, it seemed.
We’ve been sheltering for months, the agitated monk inside us growing, growling, longing to be free. Still he paces, frantic and passive. Call it a sin. Call it malaise, a fever. Acedia has risen from the ashes to mark this time.
As the months and then years of the COVID-19 pandemic entered our lives – and then stayed – and stayed – and stayed, we all found ways to deal with the time of social isolation and the range of activities we had come to take for granted: visits to museums, concert venues, movie theaters. And we all survived – for years. As I look back now, it seems a dream. I wonder: how did we do it? how did we journey for those long months that stretched behind and ahead of us?
Jeff and I began a tradition that we did not know would become a tradition, early in 2020, after the quarantine – “sheltering in place” – began in March of 2020. Every Sunday morning – we felt so free of our long years of pastoral ministry, when every Sunday was filled, with worship, with meetings, with visits. Sunday mornings rose quiet and free of schedules. We woke and got our first cups of coffee at 5:30 AM for most of the pandemic, a habit we hold today. On Sundays, though, we thought about where we could go for a walk, a change of scenery, a gift to us as we looked to the long days ahead of us that week.
We walked in San Francisco. We drove to the shore of San Francisco Bay at Brooklyn Basin and walked amid the growing development of apartment buildings there. We walked on the beach at Half Moon Bay. And we discovered the Martinez Slough.
The tide comes into the slough, which is something still new and strange, something note-worthy, to this Midwestern raised couple. When we first drove the 30+ miles to park at the ranger station at the slough, we discovered paths, some along the water, some further in toward the City of Martinez, whose downtown was less than a mile from the shoreline. Some times, we’d watch the water lapping along the beach, the tide in, the tributaries filled to the brim. Sometimes, we’d see the wetlands with the muddy shores and the sea flowing outward toward the Bay. Some days, we’d catch sight of a ship coming through the passage from San Francisco Bay and into the inlet, on the way to Stockton seaport. A train often roared past us after we’d crossed the tracks to the edge of Martinez and parked in the small lot near the water.
One Sunday in May, the sky was filled with kites and the voices of children and happy adults accompanied the floating delights, the holders of the kites’ strings on the shore nearer the Martinez Strait. Every time we walked, we were delighted again, as we passed early morning dog-walkers who greeted us, happy, as we were, to see others out during this difficult time. And every time we walked, we noted the tide – in or out – and called out to one another as we watched the sea birds, the geese.
We talked about going to the slough again today, and we left our home early to drive on the quiet highways, east out of Oakland and north to Martinez. We talked the whole way there, and we talked as we walked. Today we stood on a walker’s bridge and saw the pussy willows; we were reminded of Wisconsin, then.
So this time, when the world seemed to stand still for a time – did that really happen? we wonder now – is behind us. But we continue to go out early some Sunday mornings to that place, where walking and talking comes easily, where the sea breeze accompanies us as we walk.
Martinez Slough, photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, May 27, 2024.
Except for the beer, I did roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer in the Midwest. Here in Northern California, summer arrives gently, the rainy winter (hopefully a rainy winter in this often drought-parched place) giving way to the longer days of spring and summer.
In retirement, I’ve had the luxury to notice the lengthening days, to note the time of sunrise and sunset, to watch the sun setting over San Francisco Bay through the giant redwood trees to the West of our house on a hill. Having grown up in the harsh climate of the Midwest, I have not forgotten the preciousness of summer days and nights.
After the Fourth of July, summer seemed to disappear quickly in Wisconsin, and the hot days of July and August gave way quickly to the cooler evenings of September. By October, there might be a frost. Summer was precious, and I miss that preciousness, that sense that time is passing too quickly, that these blessed days will not last.
I loved the East Side of Milwaukee, where I went to university at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, often driving my Dad’s ’67 Bel Air two door hardtop along the shore of Lake Michigan from the lower East Side to Capitol Drive. I thought those summer days would go on forever, and I expect that University didn’t last long enough – for me. I liked being a student, I liked the freedom of being a student, I liked choosing my own classes and walking across campus from one brick building to another.
And while I sometimes recall the winters – the cold winds, the blowing snow, the icy streets, the treacherous driving – I mostly remember with sadness the luscious summers of that time.
Budding cactus, 4454, Oakland, Spring, 2024 Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert
We’re coming up on the Fourth of July. The Fourth comes as just another day here in Northern California, so the Fourth has come as just another day for me for many years now, many more years than when the Fourth was a day of spectacles.
Milwaukee had an old-fashioned Fourth of July parade, downtown. Even when I had graduated college and was living on my own, I made sure to make it the parade along Wisconsin Avenue, the parade route lined with mostly families, little children holding flags, their eyes wide as they saw another float following the one they’d just seen, filled with loud music, animals, and waving strangers. I loved the Fourth of July parade, in particular the “20 horse hitch,” a team of horses whose driver held all twenty leather reins in his massive hands, his eyes on the team, who had arrived in the city for the day from the Circus World Museum in Baraboo.
One year, I was sick on the Fourth of July, and I watched the parade from my old black and white television set. I didn’t want to miss it.
A favorite memory is a relic of the Fourth of July: laying on a blanket in the grass on a in hill Washington Park, also home to the Milwaukee County Zoo – which has since moved, many years past. I was little. I lay with my Dad to my right, and as the night came on, and deep dusk surrounded us, we watched the fireworks flashing overhead. Dad “oooohed” and ahhhhed” at the sight, and from time to time, I looked over at him as he enjoyed the fireworks – apparently as much as I did. I had a safe feeling, then.
The Fourth of July passes like just another day here in the Bay Area. A few times, when we heard the booming begin in the distance, Jeff and I climbed to the top of a small hill on the strip of land we call The Panhandle, leading from our fence to the next street, and we looked at the fireworks flying across the San Francisco Bay, from cities up and down the Peninsula. I can’t replay the Fourth as I remember it from the Midwest, though, where summer is so precious, and when the Fourth means that in a month or so, it will be time to think about getting back to school.
San Francisco Bay from Floor 9 of Kaiser Hospital, Oakland, 6/24, photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert
When I was a young teenager, I began to long for the days when I would be 17. I had a “calling” to 17. Of course, 17 came and went, and my life went on and on until I am writing to you now, from the wisdom years, the elder years.
When I walk down the street now – and I walk often in my “walkable” neighborhood in Oakland – I know that I am a senior citizen: one young woman, pushing to get past me in a parking lot walkway, called me: “granny.” OK. I’m old now, or elderly, or “getting on in years,” as my Dad used to say. Jeff once heard the couple next door – overheard them over the tall fence that separates our yards – tell a friend that there was a “nice older couple” next door.
But I know that I’m stuck at 17 – inside. I’ve done the work: years of therapy, growing pains, coming to terms with my family of origin, self-help groups, classes in personal growth. I’ve done all that; maybe I’ve done too much of “that.” So I’ve done the work I needed to do to become an adult. I’m grateful for the work I had in life that required me to grow, to always grow, to look deeper into myself to find who I am. I’m truly grateful.
And I’m still 17.
Many years ago, I gathered a group of women to a meeting room in the church where I was Pastor, to see our way forward to begin a new women’s ministry. I started the group by asking everyone to think about how old they were inside. Around the table we went, listening to one another’s answers, nodding at what we heard. An “older” woman – probably about the age I am today – said: “I’m 18.” She looked at me. I looked at her. Yes, I thought, she is 18. I’d found a friend!
Sometimes now when I’m with friends, I wonder how old they think they are – inside. Through the years, I’ve asked. And the answers they have given resonate with who they are to me.
I haven’t asked him, but my husband is older than I am, by a few years. I know he thinks, probably even knows, that he isn’t, but he is. He’s in his late twenties. And I’m 17 – although I might not look it!
How old are you – inside?
Jeff and Me at the Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, California, April, 2024
