Melding. Pieces. Together.

Kintsugi.

It’s this old Japanese tradition of mending broken pottery with gold. 6:30 am. Wake up and roll over – alone in the guest bedroom of my childhood home. I mean, it’s not exactly the gold that holds things together. It’s gilded tree sap, really. Turn off the alarm and turn on the light. Wash my hands and clean my phone. Immediately. Sometimes the broken and fixed pottery was more prized than the original. Throw Clorox wipes into my college backpack and swallow some eggs which my little sister made. There was even a business in breaking the pottery just to mend it. I have to sit in the passenger seat of the car – fewer items to contaminate and wipe down later. Are we more beautiful when we’ve healed than before we’d ever been broken? Open the door through the barrier of a paper towel, then sprint up to the attic of the animal hospital. Start small: the empty dorm rooms of all my friends won’t get a standard graduation. Flip open my laptop and connect to the hospital WiFi – it’s classtime now. That still seems too big to wrap my mind around. What can I wrap my mind around? Everything is familiar here, at the hospital, but tainted by time – tainted by the times. As you probably guessed, we do curbside veterinary care nowadays. Eventually we’ll have to shut down, quarantine for two weeks, and honestly we don’t know where the sick and injured animals will go then. (That’s a Covid-consequence I can ALMOST wrap my mind around) There was always tension in the air at home, but ever since I’d left the nest, coming back was getting harder and harder. The duration of this stay, and the cause of it, has sort of soothed that tension somehow. I get to eat lunches with my Dad now, and live at home again, even if I’m not allowed into the room which I shared with my sister for 18 years. Or the kitchen. Or anything really. Somehow, I avoid petting our dogs and cats. I hear that my cousin dines across their long table from her parents, and no one is allowed to visit Grandma. I silently wonder if we’ll ever get the chance to. Mom’s phone call: ‘We’ll say if and when we’ll need you again at work.’ There is no need for physical therapy in the empty hospitals now…no need for recovery yet. Sometimes my family members are frustrated that I can’t do the laundry or cook dinner. They seem to understand though, and I feel that some of our quarrels from years past are softening as we accept our new situations. Friends living in strange places sending messages and swapping calls. So many friends who can’t go home yet…so many friends who are afraid for so many reasons. I hear my friend’s voice on the other end of a telephone call. He’s drinking on his birthday, all alone. We were going to have a joint party this weekend for both of us. I never knew there were so many birthdays. Never checked Facebook this much or had need to seek out celebrations… I hear that someone’s plants are dead now, and stinking up the dorm rooms back at school. My Dad looks up from his paper. “You kids are going to know people who die from this.”

Mom’s talking with a friend on the phone. “…increase in gun wounds and child abuse…” This friend happens to be an ER nurse. I have an obituary to save already. Facebook group: Angel Shopping. Because: Almost everyone who I see in the grocery stores, standing in those long lines for odds-only registers, has grey or white hair. “You’re gonna get it if you’re gonna get it!” one lady laughs while rolling up a little too close to the frowning person in front. I used to swim about five miles per week at the University’s pool. Now I tie up my tennis shoes at home, trying not to slip into the negative feelings which I’d always associated with running. It’s time to fix that broken mindset. It's Wednesday. I’m allowed to cook today. Homemade bread and cheese…I finally lie on the floor with my dogs. Both of my little siblings poke me – “We can touch you again?! Look out!” I still can’t give my father a hug. Not until Thanksgiving at least. Kintsugi. It’s this old Japanese tradition of mending broken pottery with gold. This was supposed to be about brokenness….Hasn’t it all been broken for a long time though?

20% of the Amazon biome has already been lost (WWF)

On average, there are 132 suicides per day. [in the USA alone] (AFSP) 815 million people of the 7.6 billion people in the world, or 10.7%, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2016 (WHO)

60% of reefs are already seriously damaged by local sources such as overfishing, destructive fishing, anchor damage, coral bleaching, coral mining, sedimentation, pollution, and disease. (Ocean Health Index) Approximately 1.35 million people die in road crashes each year, on average 3,700 people lose their lives every day on the roads. (ASIRT) Nearly 700,000 children are abused in the U.S annually (NCA) Conservative estimates put U.S. direct subsidies to the fossil fuel industry at roughly $20 billion per year. (EESI)

This is no comprehensive list. Add your own statistics and concerns, whatever keeps you awake at night; I don’t want to speak for you.

And I don’t want to say that this pandemic isn’t horrible or that it’s not worth everything that we’re doing to fight it.

I’ve just…never been more brutally awoken.

Never checked the news this much. Never been so awfully worried, concerned, or inspired to do everything within my little bit of power to just try and do something right now. Maybe you feel the same way? I hope that you feel at least two cups of inspiration for every cup of worry. And I hope you know that you’re not alone in this journey. “We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.” – Mother Teresa Kintsugi. It’s this old Japanese tradition of mending broken pottery with gold. I’m trying. Working hard, listening a lot, and running when I can’t take it anymore…. Trying to fix myself. We’re trying. Shopping for others, petitions, phone calls, blood drives, yelling at our politicians… Trying to fix us.

And the world is spinning around, just like always, waiting for something to happen. Are we really more beautiful when we’ve healed than before we’d ever been broken? Well, we certainly are broken anyways.

I think I owe you a picture of kintsugi after all of this:

~Eleanor Welch