Casa de Cartas
27 de Mayo de 2020
The day Aurora called me I had to ask her twice.
“Por favor, puedes repetirlo? Lo puedes repetir?”
Not because I hadn’t understood. There was nothing wrong with the phone connection halfway around the world but I couldn’t, I didn’t want to believe her the first time she told me about the pandemic.
Aurora is Martina’s mom and an ER doctor who lives in Málaga, in the region of Andalucía, Spain. It was early in March and I had only had one dream that clearly connected me to the horrors she related, but that I had yet to accept.
Nights earlier I dreamt that I was falling back into the soft aqua polyester comforter on my bed. I was a playing card, in a house of cards. There were murmurings and sentiments of fear all around me. Each of us in the house of cards knew that we had to stand absolutely still, in order to stay erect, with only each other to support us but we all knew that there was something ominous, something coming that we could not see. We could not see behind ourselves and some of us, blocked by shadows or by other cards or by the structure itself, could not see ahead. All I could do was feel for the different elements of my suit on the card and peer down at a slim part of my image. I could not change position even if I’d wanted to. I tucked the dream back behind my consciousness and went about my daily busy-ness.
I have lived a life filled with serendipity, constantly reminded of my interconnectedness in this world. Sometimes things have happened to me that few others have believed, so fantastic they were. As a result of my awareness of this other world I’ve had to grow stronger and reassure myself that the undercurrent of energy is real, and really will keep me aloft.
The day after the dream I encountered a sign. I was listening for it, at least, I remember thinking I was. It was just after school had let out at Odyssey, the Portland Public lottery-in school where both of my daughters study. I had to drive up the winding green hill of SW Scholls Ferry Road and cross over Highway 26 on a small concrete bridge. A tiny strip mall decorates the two sides just over the pass. There is a Starbucks on the right and a gas station and pizza place, dry cleaner and convenience store on the left. Once we had bought rocket-shaped ice cream from there. It is called Plaid Pantry.
After parking my gray and elephantine minivan in the non-spot along the edge of the already full lot, close to the chain link fence, I went to get the girls.
First I walked around the asphalt to the left of the school’s brick façade. I passed a shallow field and newer and colorful playground with soft red bark chips to fall on. Then up to the back door of the first grade room. Other parents stood, hands in pockets or eyes on cellphones, a few were chatting to each other but most were there to pick up and head out to the next afternoon activity. On this day we would have a good chunk of time to play at the school before heading down the hill to snack and get to swim lessons.
Mrs. Howard called Simone’s name when she saw me and Simone ran to hug her goodbye and then came out to catch my hand. Her rainbow heart-covered backpack making her look tiny. We headed up the steep mulch path on the other side of the school to find out if Liliana’s class had yet exited the building. I nodded and smiled at some of the other parents who I knew. Liliana had already velcroed herself to a friend and they both hastily asked if they could go play back behind the school. At my “yes!” they were off and we all trooped back around, again.
The dads stood in black trainers and matching jackets up near the soccer field, chatting and watching a game. Some of the moms who were clearly good friends stood in groups of two and three, their fashion choices not uniting them so much as their posture. Cool kids, hanging out hovering over their own kids’ backpacks. As I walked by I could hear them talking about obedience school for their dogs and what camps to sign the kids up for this summer. Generally, they were so much nicer than the women from the neighborhood school we’d transferred from. I still didn’t know many people, as we’d only been here for 6 months.
Other parents talked on their phones or offered silvery-wrapped snacks to their kids. There were a fair number of nannies who looked to be grannies at first glance. I always wondered why they needed to say what their role was, instead of just saying hi and talking about the eagles flying overhead or the prospect of ordering pizza for dinner.
That week I had seen them, and I’d told myself that this meant something wonderful. An entire family of bald eagles had circled and returned again and again above the school one afternoon, at least nine of them. Nine! Juveniles and their parents, I guessed. I am not a professional birder, but I am always looking up for some awesome surprise. There were so many that it made me dizzy with joy.
[That number of birds reminded me of a trip I’d made to Vancouver, B.C., where I’d seen more bald eagles together at one time than I’d ever seen in my whole life. My friend Robyn, who I was visiting, told me that they lived at the nearby garbage dump.
“Free food!” she’d exclaimed, “Easy pickings!”
It felt like she was leaving some big magic out of that explanation. Then again, she and I had always agreed on a deeper connectedness of the energy of all things. We had met on a trip around Tasmania a decade before.]
I walked down the hill and put the kids’ backpacks into the van, which I’d parked nearby. I returned to the picnic table where a guy who I’d thought was a grandpa but who was just the 70-something dad of another first grader, sat looking at his phone. He looked up, I said hi. Paul, I think he was called.
Paul looked out at our kids, swinging like monkeys from a rope ladder and said,
“You know, I’ve been contemplating my own death a lot recently.” He suddenly had tears in his green eyes and they continued to well up as he spoke unapologetically,
“This thing that is coming, it’s going to catch us like a house of cards. These systems we’ve built, they’re not sustainable, they’ve got to go. This is the only way. We might all be destroyed in the process, but it’s just not working. The house will fall.”
I looked at him, immediately recalling my dream, which, at that moment, I felt safe enough to share. Paul nodded and told me to trust in my voice, to write poetry and tell stories and use my intuition for what it was meant to do: good. That was the last day I saw Paul and Lilikoi, his 7 year-old. That was 10 weeks ago.
Yesterday I got an email message from Aurora, in Spain. She’d survived the virus herself and is now wondering if I can help her with her English so that she can emigrate if she needs to. She is worried about the economic aftermath of this crisis. She sent me a photo of Martina running on an empty beach, and noted that there are positive aspects to this plague. Be patient, she wrote to me.
I sit on my bed, with my feet under the aqua covers. Here in Portland, we have yet to experience the first wave of the virus, at least not the way that Aurora had warned me in March that it would be happening, soon.
“This virus is a genocide,” she’d implored, her eyes fixed on mine through my small cell phone screen. “They will try and tell you that it’s not true,” she said, “I have seen the people coming into the ER and the government is lying.”
I believe that people need an enormous amount of motivation to change their ways and that until they have had to build their own house of cards, they will have no idea how hard it is to sustain. What a silly game. In fact, until death comes to their own door, they are unlikely to change.
I look up to the eagles for a sign.
