In a Holding Pattern

I’ve been searching for a way to describe my feelings, and all I can come up with is that I feel I’m in a holding pattern. Not waiting for any big event, just for clearance to land — finally! — and get on with ordinary life. Waiting for a return to normality, that is — which has enough problems and complexities and challenges of its own, God knows. I don’t kid myself about that. Normal life has enough craziness for anyone. But living in a country at war with itself, as we do now, goes beyond normal craziness (and I don’t mean that to be taken as an oxymoron) and into outright daily insanity. It either exhausts the heart or drives it underground, into hiding, but meanwhile we cannot afford to check out or let ourselves fall asleep. We still have to keep our lighted, fully equipped, and heavily freighted ships — our lives! — aloft, all parts running and in decent working order, and we have to remain alert and engaged and keep sending and receiving signals —. . 

So for now it’s the holding pattern and the quiet, sometimes desperate hope (one must maintain hope) that fuel reserves will hold out and that we will, one day, walk out on solid ground again.