I live and write on Lingít Aaní, and gratefully acknowledge the past, present and future caretakers of this beautiful place, the Jilkaat Kwaan and Jilkoot Kwaan.

In yoga yesterday (via Zoom) Mandy talked a lot about hope, or as much as a person does talk in yoga, and while she always reminds us to set our intention for the practice (for non yogis that means your good thought for the class. Your intention is the word that your mind comes back to when it starts to wander toward what’s for dinner or how exactly do they split ventilators and who will I get to share one with?), this time, Mandy said to cloak our intention in hope. She’s a gardener, so there are plenty of images and metaphors about hope and seeds and spring, to remind her to keep the faith that this too shall pass, and that being scared doesn’t change anything. My intention was faith, since I have needed it to remind myself that brilliant scientists everywhere are trying to make a vaccine,and my fretting won’t cure Covid 19. But I can stay home and save lives, so by God I will.

Right after yoga, Becky knocked on the door, which is so startling right now in a couple of ways. It’s so quiet here in Haines, with us all sheltered in place, that not even the Jehovah’s Witnesses are coming around, and my friends don’t normally knock. ( Becky usually walks right in with a “Hello???Anybody home? What’s a gal have to do to get a cup of tea around here?” or something like that. I miss her interupting my writing, since I always work at home. The hardest part for me in this is not working from home, it’s that everything else about being at home isn’t.) She stepped back about ten feet as I opened the door,  and said she knows we can’t talk– but she has finished the quilts for the kids’ bunk room. She pointed to a bag on the doormat.

“I miss you,” I said.

“Me too,” she said. ” At least I have lots of time to sew,” and finish projects she said. She’s working on the new quilt for our bed that I assumed I wouldn’t see for at least a year.

She waved me off and  hopped toward her car, and I said “I love you,”  but I’m not sure if she heard me.

I didn’t cry until I opened the sack and saw the inscription. When will I tuck those little kids in again?

But you know what? And this is providential — my yoga intentions were indeed very good– of course they helped, so did the twists and stretches, but as St. Paul says, faith and hope are fine, but the greatest intention any of us can have is love. And I love those grandchildren, and I love this world so much that I took the faded mismatched blankets off the bunks, and made them up with the new ones. Now I can poke my head in every day and remind myself why we are all being so careful to stay apart for as long as we have to  —  it is so I can fill up this house again with all the people I love.