Epiphany’s past. Now 40 days in the wilderness, with the last seven veering from triumph to catastrophe, then to eucatastrophe.

What will I give up for Lent?

Plenty left to give up. I am privileged, fortunate, well (so far), warm, dry, not hungry, able to telework. Power’s on, larder’s stocked. Movies and music and books in the queue. Many pleasures to consider as candidates for my mortifying, the process of remembering that I come from dust and will return to dust.

Then I remember all that I, even in my privilege, have given up, many of them things we have all given up. Hugs. Visits from our children, our kin, our friends. Holiday gatherings. Outings. Varied possibilities for gathering to listen to music, or make music together. (So cruel that singing together stimulates contagion–what fresh hell that is.) Seeing a movie in a cinema. Not being hyper-careful.

Given up: Trust. Relaxed non-vigilance. Loud convivial shared meals in restaurants. Browsing in bookstores and record stores.  The pizza slice I’d buy each day at a pizza place near my office at school, where I’d enjoy the added deliciousness of greeting the cooks and the staff, who would sometimes ask me what I was reading that day, and who other times would tell me of interesting conferences they’d attended the week before. All these infinite worlds of folks I’d see in a workaday world who’d stand revealed, moment to moment, as portals to a multiverse of infinite interest and human kindness.

Hard to stop once the list gets going.

And then the losses that were on the way, anyway: I’ve lost a friend and mentor and colleague who died a few months before the pandemic, a beloved father-in-law who died just before lockdown, a mentor and a complicated, flawed teacher-scholar-hero who died just after.

My sense of time is blurred, less reliable than usual, sometimes deceptive. I begin and end many days feeling murky.

And then there’s democracy, justice, equity. Good faith. All fragile. All torn.

So what will I give up for Lent?

What will be suitably mortifying in a season of such death already?

I want to give up silence for Lent.

I have gradually hidden myself behind all the things I must not, should not, dare not, had better not write about. To write anything would be to bring it all to mind in a way I believed to be dangerous to my ability to do the things that had to be done, carefully, deliberately, consistently, vigilantly, especially during a pandemic when it seems that literal and metaphoric contagion would blast their way into any opening–especially the openings here, on Gardner Writes.

Better to keep quiet, better not to write, better to be very careful indeed. Better to hunker down.

Looks like the English-speaking world is approaching peak hunker. I’m glad to think it’s not just me.

At times I think my hunkering has been like that second definition, at least I hope so. But today, Ash Wednesday, I must also say that I have, for several years, taken shelter in a defensive position of silence. And I want to give up silence for Lent.

I don’t know exactly what that will mean, except that I will do my utmost to write in this space each day during this season. That’s as far as I can see right now. That’s probably enough.

And now that I’ve said what I’m giving up for Lent, perhaps I have made a little vow, here where you’ve heard it. Perhaps it will help.

A special thanks to Jon Udell, who inspired me to stop being silent, and to Tom Woodward, who sealed the deal with his post on Shrove Tuesday.

See you tomorrow.