Spirit in the Sky

Your dad's birthday passes uneventfully. He tests negative despite the persistent cough: we have all become experts at symptoms, yet the disease is steps ahead of us, morphing with each leap and confounding us with its secret menu. He celebrates with a glass of wine and falling asleep before the movie has even started. When this is all over, we whisper into the virtual void, we'll get in a car and just drive. The ginkgos on Second Avenue are beside themselves in sunlight and peace, they titter and gossip among themselves and burst like little green popcorn on spindly branches; the crab apples around the projects dare you to believe they weren't painted from a dream.

Coming out of illness, out of fear, is like being given your life all over again. When I remembered what it was like to breathe in simple gratitude at the world, I cried and laughed all at once, and it seemed apt. We are in the thick of it, now, but I'm back on the shore, I feel the earth steady underneath my feet. When all this is over, I said into the sunlight, I'll be right here, and that is fine just on its own.