On February 14, 1977, Dolly Parton released New Harvest…First Gathering, her eighteenth studio album which Cashbox, a music industry trade magazine, called a “package of tailor-mades for the progressive rock listener.” What total horseshit.
While the album includes some covers, “My Girl” which Dolly sings “My Love” and “(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher and Higher”–so gospel infused the original is hard to recall, most of the tracks are pure Dolly. The stand out track on the album, though, the first one on side A, is what I’m thinking about today: “Light of a Clear Blue Morning”.
The last two years have been hot bags of garbage, friends. In November of 2019 Michael started reading Laurie Garrett’s Twitter feed closely and saw something big was coming. We ordered our first N-95s from Amazon in December, began stocking up on dry goods, and had a delivery from Omaha Steaks just in case we couldn’t get meat once the world caught fire. We didn’t think of it as if. We were living in when.
When the first strains of the pandemic promenade began echoing across America, I wouldn’t say we were ready, but we weren’t surprised. Years of working in academia means we’re both researchers, logic seekers, and meaning makers. We try to assess a situation, determine our way through it, make plans, and then laugh when all our good work proves for naught.
On March 10, 2020, I woke up to find my darling Zelda, the Golden Lab I’d raised since she was seven weeks old, lethargic and ill. We made a mad dash for the vet and within two hours had to say goodbye to her. She was 11 and 1/2, there were health issues that would have made her quality of life suffer. It was heartbreaking and terrible and I still cry when I think too much about holding her in those last moments, telling her over and over how much I loved her. How she made me a better person. Four days later, we went into quarantine.
Michael was notified that he’d possibly been exposed to Covid at work. This was early days when such notifications were like smelling smoke as you turn down your own street: is it your house engulfed in flames? Is all you’ve worked for potentially gone? It turned out he was in the clear, but we didn’t know for several days. At the same time, my job moved to an extended spring break which became remote learning and then months and months of what next. The strangeness and strain of that time was alleviated by online dates with friends, many puzzles, streaming The Deuce and The Leftovers and 75% of The Good Witch. Honestly–can we all agree Martha of Middleton is just a little too much most episodes? And we were saved by the absolute miracle of our marriage. We both know, had we had to move through all of it alone, in the before times–before Covid, before the divorces that led us to each other–we wouldn’t have managed well.
For years, before Michael, I doubted the happy couples who only ever wanted to spend time together. I thought they were deluding themselves; I thought they were too lazy to make other friends; I thought they were codependent. I was wrong. When we married, and then especially when Covid hit and we spent nearly every minute of every day together for over a year, I realized what all those other couples must have known. When the right person is next to you, there’s no room for anyone else. This is not to say other friendships aren’t important. Far from it. I love my friends and wouldn’t trade them for gold. But, and this is a BIG but, if given the choice between a social gathering of 20 or a night in with my husband, I’ll always choose Michael. The race won’t even be close.
So much loss brought us together. The loss of our daily routines, the way we had done our jobs for years, the day to day interactions with friends and students, time with our families. We lost my grandfather in 2017, Zelda in 2020, and most recently in November we lost my beloved Nanny. Add a biopsy of lymph nodes (thankfully benign) in my neck in December and, well, it’s been a helluva a few years. At every turn, though, when I’m slowing down to the blue pace, the sad rhythm that punctuates my silences, Michael has heard me and seen me and said the two words I need most: “You’re okay.”
In the quiet moments in the car, though, on the way to work or in the basement doing laundry or chopping vegetables for dinner, I find myself, lately, completely overwhelmed by the undeniable truth that we are all going to die. All of us. Every single person I love will one day shuffle off to the great what’s next, and I hate it. I am in love with being alive, with holding my people close and giving everything I have to the subtle art of loving them. The thought of not getting to do that anymore can break me in two. You’d think the past few years would have stolen that from me, but the truth is the more I think about all that can and will one day go, the more I want to hold on and love for as long as I can.
Dolly sings:
And I can see the light of a clear blue morning
I can see the light of brand new day
I can see the light of a clear blue morning
Oh, and everything’s gonna be all right
It’s gonna be okay
and I think she’s right. Most days. Or, I convince myself she has to be because what is the alternative? Sitting around terrified, waiting for the inevitable, living every minute in fear rather than in joy? The awful truth of existence is that if we do it right, if we love so deeply that our hearts swell like rivers after days of rain, cresting banks and covering everything in sight with the weight of our love, then we know the unbearable crush of pain is coming. We know the more we love, the harder it will be to let go. So the only way to get through it is to welcome the pain in, to greet it each clear blue morning like a lighthouse, grateful for the love that made it possible to feel so broken.
Shannon Carriger 