I want to help.

I have friends, classmates, working up at what is so euphemisically called “ground zero” right now. They are veterinarians and vet techs treating the search and rescue dogs on the scene (for injury and exhaustion), treating pets that were in the apartments in the district (many of whom were unattended for days and are in bad shape), and helping to find temporary homes for strays in the area and for pets whose owners have been left homeless by events. I want to be up there with them, but I can’t easily abandon my post here, nor do I have any special skills to bring with me that they’d need. They need emergency vets and people with contacts to the right organizations, and I fit neither description. I avidly follow the newsletters they are sending to the rest of us, waiting for an opportunity to show that I too can rise to the occasion, but the opportunity isn’t likely to show in the near future.

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of my mother’s death. In the face of so much current tragedy, it seems wrong for me to grieve at that. What is one small personal tragedy in the face of a world that is potentially on the cusp of war? My own griefs are unworthy, and I am unable to rise to the larger tragedies of the world.

And yet …

Last night was cool and crisp, and the Professor and I spent much of it on the balcony of our apartment. We watched the passenger planes flying high over head in their holding patterns for the city airport about forty miles away. We watched kids from neighboring apartments playing in the parking lot. We talked of current events and of what might come next. When it got dark, I brought a pillar candle out to the balcony and lit it, and we continued to talk by its light. We watched a spider spinning a web and dashing to and fro on the balcony railing. It gave me a peace of spirit that had been lacking since last week.

I’ll grab hold of moments like that, and let the rest take its course. I’ll find how to rise to both the small and large tragedies of life if I just give it all time.