I am living in a Facebook moment this morning. Many of my friends are posting tributes to the lion of the folk world, Pete Seeger, who died last night. It is clear that my FB friends and I are cut from the same cloth – a cloth in which we were weaned on Seeger and the Guthries and the Weavers and Joan Baez and Dylan … the list goes on. It was music that could lead you to think, to act, to protest. Pete Seeger was one of the first musical voices of my youth, and he made me think I could make the world a better place.
I am having a hard time concentrating, because all I want to do is sing “If I Had A Hammer,” and “Michael Row Your Boat Ashore” over and over again. And cry.
But there are actually many other reasons why my concentration is shot.
It’s 10 degrees out – again – and I am once again wrapped in layers of wool, feeling trapped inside and as blue as the sky is gray.
It has been a really trying couple of weeks, with illness and death perching on my front steps over and over again. Within the course of a week, both my husband’s father and my father have been hospitalized, with near brushes. We are feeling nervous, vulnerable and unable to predict the future.
The mother of a close friend died last week, and I was unable to get to New York for the funeral and shiva. Her mom was one of the people who, in my teenage years, reached out to me and held me in her embrace with love and affection, when it felt like my family was falling apart. I haven’t seen her in years, but I miss her already.
Someone we’ve known for many years – who is our age – has fallen ill and is now undergoing chemo. We are saying prayers, but with no trust in their impact.
My sister had a clean scan – always a cause for a small huzzah. After two bouts with early stage breast cancer, she is a survivor, and for that I am grateful. But each year it lurks, taunting us, making us wonder if there will be something more chilling to fight down the road.
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