“These Days,” by Mary Bonina (Poetry ’85)
Mary Bonina, a 1985 poetry graduate, recently wrote an essay for Ovunque Siamo. Read an excerpt of “These Days” below:
These Days
Many things we enjoy and which enrich our lives have been taken away in the last months of stay-at-home orders. Like others, I lament not being able to dine out at new restaurants with best friends and colleagues, not seeing newly released films at the cinema, and viewing featured exhibits or perusing the permanent collection at the MFA and other museums. I am also missing dinners shared with family and friends around our table or theirs, the trip my husband and I were finally going to take to Sicily in June, the hugs from my son when he visits and we have to speak to each other from a distance of yard to porch. And recently, I’ve learned that there is a strong possibility that our August Maine vacation will also be cancelled, since my husband and I would be crossing State lines into the Pine Tree State, and therefore required to quarantine for 14 days in our rented house—definitely not why we head to down east Maine for two weeks every summer.
Because of necessary limitations on social gatherings, I missed the funeral and the comfort of my father’s family, when his sister, my Aunt Marguerite died in a nursing home, after contracting Covid-19, which complicated her already existing health issues.
I miss, too, the writing studio where I diligently work in downtown Boston—much more diligently than I work at home with distractions. I even miss taking the unreliable and crowded MBTA Red Line train over the Charles River from Cambridge to Boston and back several days a week, when I go to work at that silent communal space, where I can schmooze with other writers at lunchtime in the kitchen, or on a stone bench down the street at Long Wharf on sunny, warm days. I miss the social aspect and the inspiration of going to readings of poetry and prose and celebrating my friends when their new books are released—Zoom readings aren’t the same, although I’m glad some people offer them.
My freelance coaching of writing students has been limited during the days of confinement, but my husband is teaching his university students online two afternoons each week until the semester’s end. When he is not online, he has planning to do and tests and exams to correct, and I try to sit in my home office at my desk researching publishing possibilities for my finished novel, working (rather half-heartedly, to be honest) on editing my new poetry manuscript, or catching up on reading from the pile of books my friends have published in the last couple of years. I go for a run on most warm or warmish days.
But there is one thing I am not missing, something I used to do much more frequently in the past. I have—happily—been going for hikes on trails in the towns neighboring Cambridge—in Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Waltham, Belmont, and venturing to Cape Ann on the North Shore. I love to hike, and it seems that in recent years, my hikes have become fewer and rarely take place in winter or spring. I’ve blamed the New England weather, my husband’s recovery from a knee replacement, and my busy life, for keeping me from hiking, especially in spring. We generally get more social in spring after our dark winters, and so, there are parties, events, and fairs, and shopping for warm weather clothes, and planting gardens, rushing the beach season, or going to baseball games—so much else to take up our time. So hiking has been of late, put off until summer, hiking Maine’s Bold Coast and trails in New Brunswick, Canada, or foraging with my husband for mushrooms in the woods around Concord or in Gloucester.
Read the full piece here: https://ovunquesiamoweb.com/covid-19-issue-2/mary-bonina/
