Endless Snow Days

I feel like we are experiencing endless snow days. Life is on hold while we get the streets plowed and driveways shoveled. We see our neighbors from a distance and wave or yell a greeting. We go inside and feel ok about watching a movie in the middle of the day. Except, unlike snow days, Michael and I now cut elastic into seven-inch pieces or count cut fabric rectangles into bundles. We wave, through our window, at the people who hurry up our steps to collect packages of mask parts or drop off finished pieces. Over 200 people are helping to make face masks of last resort.

I try hard to acknowledge deliveries but sometimes there is no note and I have no idea who left what. I send a quick little email when I can, but it hardly expresses my amazement at the overwhelming outpouring of love and support for this project; for our community.

 Whoever says we aren’t a caring people hasn’t seen the boxes and bags of menstrual supplies that come to my house or the unexpected gifts. They haven’t seen the hundreds of people who come to MoonBees over and over and cheerfully give of their time and talents. And now as we shelter in place, people continue to write and say, “What can I do?”

We are still receiving donations of menstrual products for local shelters and food pantries — which are so needed.

When we found out that hospitals, for the most part, don’t want cloth masks we started to hear from shelters, food pantries, animal shelters, and others that definitely do. We have 300 masks ready to go out tomorrow and more will be delivered later this week.

 Thank you to whomever left the hand sanitizer and gloves! Thank you also to the others who have left, homemade bread, eggplant parmesan, handmade note cards, a lovely microwaveable cozy, fresh greens, and others. Who says there aren’t angels here on earth?

Finished masks with the precautions we send with them.

I have been reading essays by people way more eloquent than I.  Here are a few of my favorites. They help me remember my blessings:

 Mr. Rogers: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, look for the helpers, you will always find people who are helping.”

 Dan Rather : “We have to start considering what comes next. For all those who want to get back to where we were, that is an understandable urge. But where we were was also a system of great inequities, vulnerabilities, and unpreparedness. What comes next must be built on the spirit of the heroism we see today. But it must be a system that requires less such heroism and much more equity, security, and justice in the future.”

 The Morino Institute: “people from all backgrounds and walks of life are doing their part, summoning their better angels at a time when our world really needs it.

Thank you all from the bottom of my grateful heart. Ellie