I hear a gardener’s blower and the swoosh/pulse/clanging in my tinnitus ear. I am up early for me. Since the pandemic started, I sleep longer and later. Sometimes awaking at noon. Some days I am up at 7am.

It seems the world has no order anymore. We are no longer slaves to clocks and calendars and the expected of us. We don’t communicate with those we had to because their daily proximity was forced upon us. We now say ‘no’ to the things we said ‘yes’ to before and it feels comfortable, though perhaps a bit lonelier. Time is more precious now, not squandered on events we barely want to attend, or time spent with people we know don’t care about us once we are out of their patient and barely tolerant gaze. We have morphed into older wiser versions of our 2019 selves. We are chronologically older but use the _____ days/months of downtime to strain the gizzards and ashy foam from the stock, leaving us with a translucent bouillon that our palate welcomes with a closed-eyed appreciation for the simple taste of something not perfect, but comforting. The little things. The smallest gestures. The brief thrill of the first scent of a rainy morning.

The constant ringing in my left ear is suddenly quieter than usual, a gift and delight I wouldn’t have noticed over all the noise and prerequisites of my pre-pandemic life.

The little things are now the best things. They were there all along. Our lives were just too loud and etiquette-abiding to notice them.

Now I know.

All the people swirling within our closest ring, those are the people who matter most. The ones whose hands, hearts and voices have always been our faithful satellites, beaming invisible but loving reception, even on the stormiest days when our usually florid screens reflect nothing but black drapes and sad silhouettes. They are there for us, orbiting the same galaxy of joys and sorrows, paying the same daily dues for our brief membership on earth.

These days are strange and trying, but what I know for sure is the best life can be extracted from acknowledging the smallest details and enduring the biggest burdens.

If only my ear would stop ringing and clanging, for even a minute. A quiet left ear of my past is something I can barely recall now. So, I will live with it as happily as I can. When my head finally goes silent that will mean my earthly membership has expired and on that day I will float away quietly to settle and jostle among my satellites. I hope we will occasionally tug on each other’s ethereal cords to prove we are still there for each other, in some mysterious particulate form, just like we are today on this sweet-smelling January day in the peculiar year of 2022.

(Originally drafted on January 27, 2022)