These are frightening times.

No matter how prepared we are, we know that something is coming that is just not what we’ve experienced any time in our lives.

Talking to my 86 year-old father, I asked him if he ever remembers anything like this.

“No!” he says with wide eyes. “This is the whole world.”

The whole world.

I watch images from Italy of people on their balconies, singing to and with each other. I see Chef Jose Andres from World Food Kitchen shaving his beard in order to serve others food while wearing a mask.I read about the elderly couple waiting anxiously in their car to ask someone who looks kind to take their money and go purchase groceries for them, because they are terrified to go into the store–they both have existing conditions that put them at risk.

I see air pollution drastically cut as factories are shut down. I see the fossil fuel industry being reduced in a way none of us could EVER have corrected on our own.

I think this virus has reminded us that we in the whole world are dependent on one another like never before. It has reminded us that we cannot control our entire ecosystem, but that we are simply a part of it. We don’t write the rules. Even when we think it’s all under our control…it’s really not.

It’s humbling. It’s humbling if we are wise enough to recognize these things.

As I write this, I am suffering from a sinus infection from a head cold I had two weeks ago (which I get every year at this time). Should I go to the doctor? Will I end up with something worse than a sinus headache?

I don’t have any answers.

Wait. Yes, I do.

We have the only answer that has ever really existed. (At the risk of returning to my sorry seventies self.)

Love is the answer.

Please take care of yourself, stay healthy, love one another, and support your local quilt shop.