Tag: togetherness

Posted on

A Box of Chocolates

If your Valentine’s Day gifts have felt a bit light lately, there’s a reason.

In a story that’s sure to shake the nation, the Washington Post reported that the classic heart box o’ chocolates has more box than chocolate. Thanks to over-packaging, the nine to 11 chocolates inside take up less than half the available space.

Now, depending on how new you are to the packaging game, this may get a response ranging from “What a rip-off!” to “Duh.” After all, most of us have a lot of Amazon experience these days. Any time a cardboard box shows up at the door, we know to expect more stuffing than stuff – though at least then, it’s to protect what you ordered from damage.

My own response, meanwhile, surprised even me. I realized this felt familiar. And then I understood why.

This is something that most of us have lived.

I don’t mean that any of us have done shiftwork at a chocolate company. (Though if you do happen to have that job, I wouldn’t mind a couple of samples.) But all of us have been through a lot lately. Many are exhausted. Many depressed. More than a few are just trying to get by with what they’ve got – physically, financially, emotionally – while knowing inside that it’s just not enough.

But we’re really good at keeping the outside from matching the inside. After all, we don’t want to worry the people who care about us. And we still have to get through the day. So we take whatever we’ve got on the inside and arrange it as best we can, hoping for the best.

My English ancestors would have called it “Mustn’t grumble.” Some of my family still likes to refer to “Fake it ‘til you make it.” Whatever you call it, it can be exhausting. Like finishing an interstate drive on fumes, you’re constantly watching the gauges, just trying to make it one more mile … or at least to find somewhere safe to break down. And the whole time, the only thing the other drivers see is one more car like any other.

If that’s you, I get it. I think a lot of us do.

We’re there, too. And you’re not alone.

If you remember nothing else from this, remember that.

It’s an easy thing to forget. When the world has gone weird and life is bearing down like a boulder on a cartoon coyote, it’s easy to believe that you’re the only one in the fight. Especially if you’re the main person holding up a family, a business, a life. No one’s meant to hold so much pressure for so long, but so many of us do.

It’s hard to let someone in, give them a peek at the backstage. Just as it’s hard to see when someone needs help, past all the lovely set dressing.

But both are essential. All of us need all of us, whether it’s a helper seeing enough to reach in or a hurter needing enough to reach out.

And it starts by being willing to take the lid off the box and show what’s inside.

Not easy. Not comfortable. It’s not even something I do well, to be honest. But it’s essential.

Think about it, at least.

An awful lot of our boxes may be half-empty. But there’s still something sweet inside.

And it’s all the sweeter when it can be shared.

Posted on

To the Letter

This December, Missy and I have been reading someone else’s mail. And it’s been magical.

“Ok, Missy, are you ready for Father Christmas?”

The eager smile as I opened the book said it all.

Every year, our bedtime reading with Missy takes in at least one holiday classic. We’ve done “The Story of Holly and Ivy,” “How The Grinch Stole Christmas!” and even “A Christmas Carol.” But given how much Missy enjoys magical stories, I’m kind of surprised it took us this look to reach for “Letters From Father Christmas.”

If you’re not familiar with the book, it’s a slim volume by J.R.R. Tolkien. Yes, the Hobbit guy. His children, like many, wrote letters to Father Christmas each year … and in their case, Father Christmas wrote them back. The resulting correspondence from the North Pole (which included hand-drawn pictures) stretched from the 1920s until the early 1940s, when the last of the four young Tolkiens finally grew beyond “stocking age.”

During that period, they could count on getting all the latest news. One year might be the humorous misadventures of what the well-meaning North Polar Bear had broken THIS year. Another might tell of an attempt by goblins to raid the storehouses. And always, whether it was a quick note or a long tale, there’d be the sense of so much going on behind the scenes.

But the collection is also an indirect chronicle of the family itself. Each Father Christmas letter gives a glimpse of the children at the other end: the teddy bear collection, the railroad enthusiasm, the year one child tried sending Father Christmas a telegram in the off-season.  And as they grow, it’s clear that the gifts of love and wonder given by the letters lasted far beyond the holiday.

That’s something worth recapturing now.

I know. By this time of year, most of us are pretty exhausted. And lately, when New Year’s starts to appear on the horizon, we greet it with more resignation than excitement. If Dec. 31 had a motto for the 2020s, it would probably be “Well, thank goodness THAT one’s over.”

But long after candles have been snuffed, trees have come down and lights packed away, we still have the gift of each other. And we have to give it well, whatever the time of year.

We give it to neighbors when we help each other face the challenges of the world, whether it’s a snowstorm, a pandemic, or just a chore that’s too much for one person to do alone.

We give it to friends when we celebrate their joys and ease their trials, even if all we can do is listen and understand.

And yes, we give it to our children when we help them grow with an open heart and a spirit of curiosity and wonder. That, most of all, ensures the gift will continue.

It doesn’t require handwritten letters with a North Pole postmark (though I suppose it never hurts). Even in Tolkien’s day, that was just the gift-wrapping.  It starts with awareness – noticing other people, remembering that they matter, and then treating them that way.

Sounds simple, I know. But when we remember to do it, it has the power of a child receiving Father Christmas’s personal attention: a reminder that they’re seen, they’re important and they’re cared for.

So don’t let that spirit stop at Jan. 1. Keep being the gift.

After all it’s always a good time to be living in the present.

Posted on

Music and Memory

As the online music rocked, Missy partied like it was 2020.

By itself, the scene could have come from a hundred different nights. Missy, our disabled relative who’s physically in her 40s but much younger in heart and soul, has never met a dancing moment she didn’t like. Crank up her bedroom stereo or a YouTube video and she’ll move and sway as only she can, her smile beaming like a lighthouse.

But this night? Call it “Recent Retro.”  For the first time in several months, her favorite group – the Face Vocal Band – was livestreaming a basement concert. No crowds, no driving, just the joy of good a cappella rock on the doorstep.

“Yeah!!”

If you’re feeling a flashback, I get it. Two years ago, this was the music of lockdown. With masks everywhere and a vaccine nowhere in sight, live concerts became one of the biggest potential super-spreaders out there. So instead, musician after musician recorded quarantine videos and livestreamed concerts from their homes, keeping the music alive in the only way they could.

And in an off-balance world, they became a source of light. That not-so-simple act said “We care. We’re in this, too. And we want to make it better however we can.”

Since then, of course, many restrictions have eased or been put to rest entirely. People mix and mingle and even attend live concerts again. On the surface, things look – well, similar, if not the same.

 But when we look closer, we know it’s not really over. Not yet.

Not while so many are still so vulnerable.

I’ve written here before about my wife Heather, a wonderful woman with WAY too many autoimmune conditions for one human being. Even with the COVID curve so much lower than it was, it’s still totaling about 400 to 500 deaths a day in the U.S. That’s way too much virus for her to safely go out unless she has to.

She’s not alone. There are many others – more than most realize – for whom the pandemic is still a reality and a threat. For whom “normal,” or even this current fun-house mirror of it, is still a long way away.

And so I want to thank Face and others like them. Because once again, a not-so-simple concert said something special.

And this time, the message is “We remember.”

Easy to say. Powerful to feel.

And even without an uploaded video and a really kickin’ backbeat, it’s a message all of us can and should echo.

We remember that not everybody can come out and play yet. That post-pandemic is still mid-pandemic for a lot of us.

We remember that caution and courtesy are not just artifacts of 2020, but remain vital for everyone. That it’s not just about ourselves, but about those around us.

And yes, we remember that even in the midst of stressful times, we can still bring light to someone else’s world by seeing them and reaching out to where they are.

When we remember, we lift all of us up. And together, we become stronger. Maybe even strong enough to carry all of us to a better place.

That’s a pandemic attitude worth keeping.

And when it finally helps us break through to the other side – that will truly be a moment to dance.

I’ll bring Missy.

Posted on

What Counts … And What Not To

In “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” Douglas Adams declared that the answer to life, the universe and everything was 42.

So this year, maybe Heather and I have all the answers – but we’ve got them exactly backward.

Yes, it’s official.  The charming couple of Chez Rochat has logged 24 years together.  Twenty-four years since a brief moment of sunshine on a rainy day, with my hair refusing to stay down as we said “I do” in a friend’s garden.  

Fast forward to the present. My hair stays down perfectly now – mostly due to lighter population density. We’ve lived in four different places, only to end up just down the street from two of my childhood homes.

And after all this time, we’re still grabbing for moments of sunshine anywhere we can find them.

It’s weird to look back like this. At 24 years, a marriage has started to go beyond “Aww, congratulations!” and begun to reach “Wow, really?” You’ve gotten past all the bizarre anniversaries you used to joke about – the paper anniversary, the tin anniversary, even the yes-it-exists furniture anniversary – but you’re still a year away from reaching the ones that everyone’s heard of. You know: the silver, the golden, the diamond, the bearer bonds and so on.

I suppose that’s not all bad. After all, if you haven’t quite reached your silver anniversary yet, you can still lay claim to being crazy kids, right? Right?

Well, it was worth a try.

But it does sound strange to say “24 years of marriage” when in your head, you’re still 25. In a way, time stopped on our wedding day. I guess it does for a lot of people. Oh, the days go by with plenty to fill them. But it’s like driving across the plains on I-70; there’s no obvious clue to tell you how far you’ve gone until you happen to check the mileage.

And once you do, you wonder how the car’s kept running this long.

But maybe it’s just in how you look at it.

If you’re a Broadway fan, you probably know the song “Seasons of Love” from Rent. It famously opens with the phrase “525,600 minutes ….” Which sounds pretty gargantuan until the song reminds you that it’s just one year.

More than half a million minutes. But we’re not counting the minutes. We’re living the year.

And at the other end, we’re rarely counting the years. We’re living the days. Live enough of them, well enough, and the minutes and years take care of themselves.

I know, I know, easier said than done. Even at our first anniversary, Heather and I were joking about “When does the ‘in health’ part start?” Over the years, we’ve weathered disasters, mourned family, stacked up medical bills like a game of Jenga, and watched a leaking ceiling “rain” all over our kitchen table.

But we’re still standing. A lot of times, we’re even smiling. Sure, sometimes we’ve had to fight for every bit of sunlight. Sometimes we’ve been going on a mixture of routine and caffeine just to make it through the day. But we keep reaching for the next day. And the next. And the next.

Reach for enough of them and it can be pretty amazing. Maybe even amazing enough to rival life, the universe and everything.

Maybe when we reach 42, we’ll know the answer for sure. But for now, it’s enough to be looking for it together.

For now, this answer’s pretty fantastic. Backward or not.

Posted on

Beyond Words

Heather hurts. A lot.

I wish I could say those words felt unfamiliar.

She’s had a lot of practice. Since her teen years, my wife has put together a list of conditions that sounds more like a pre-med syllabus. Crohn’s disease. Multiple sclerosis. Ankylosing spondylitis. By now, if we ever hit a Jeopardy! category called “Autoimmunity,” we’re sure to clean up on the Daily Double.

Yes, we joke about it sometimes. We’ve had to, the way Londoners in World War II sometimes joked about the Blitz. (“Last night’s raid hit Monkey Hill at the zoo. The morale of the monkeys remains unaffected.”) We’ve quipped about how Heather’s conditions mostly have the courtesy to take turns, flaring one at a time, or how catchy some of the medical terms would sound when set to music. In a situation you can’t control, sometimes absurdity helps get you through.

And sometimes nothing does.

The last few days have been part of that “nothing.”

Heather’s control is amazing. Most of the time, she carries on so well you wouldn’t realize anything’s wrong, at least, not until she went upstairs for an extended nap. So when the breakthroughs happen … well that’s when you know it’s truly awful.

That’s when 3 a.m. comes and sleep doesn’t.

Words become inadequate. Gestures of comfort feel small. All you can do is try to make it through the night and hope the next day brings more strength to face a painful world with. Sometimes it does. Sometimes you’re just fighting the battle again.

Even without a diagnosis, I think a lot of Longmont is fighting a similar battle right now.

We’ve all grown used to bad news in the world. Maybe too much so. When life keeps screaming in your ear on a regular basis, your mind has to push some of it away out of sheer survival, just to make it through the day.

And then it hits close to home. And you can’t not hear.

You can’t not feel the pain.

You know the story. By now, I think we all do. I don’t need to recount the mailbox shooting point for painful point, where one life was taken and at least two more forever changed. Some of us knew the people at the heart of it. Some had never heard their names before Wednesday.

But all of us are hurting now.

We don’t want things like this to be real. We want to understand why, as if that would forever keep the pain from returning.

But we don’t understand. We can’t.

And a sleepless 3 a.m. comes again.

I don’t have any miraculous words of wisdom here. I don’t think anyone does. Nothing that wouldn’t feel like trying to wrap a wound in tissue paper. The tools aren’t strong enough for the task.

All I can offer us is each other.

When the incomprehensible comes, whatever form it takes, we need someone there. The friend who can listen as the pain pours out in words. The partner whose gentle touch is a reminder that we don’t stand alone. The souls beyond our own who can walk with us and face the unimaginable together.

It may not be enough. But it’s more than we have alone.

And together, maybe we can reach the morning.

Posted on

Laboring in Vrain

On the first day of the Big Flood, a photographer and I covered southern Longmont like a blanket. We watched Missouri Street turn into the “Missouri river”. We saw washed-out train tracks and rising streams and people dangerously trying to wade a flooded-over Hover Street.

And when it came time to return to the Times-Call newsroom, we saw one other thing. Namely, that getting back home was going to be a lot harder than we thought.

If you were there in 2013, you probably remember. The rising St. Vrain Creek had cut Longmont in two. Within town, there was exactly one north-south connection left – from Ken Pratt to Third – and that was being reserved for emergency vehicles.

And so began the Journey of Exploration.

The photographer knew the area well. He had to. As he drove east, we picked our way between small county roads  like a child’s pencil through a maze, trying to find just one clear route that would let us outflank the St. Vrain.

It took about an hour. It might have been the first time that anyone had gone from Hover Street to the downtown by way of Mead. Wings would have been great to have, or maybe sails.

But we made it.

True, it had required much more work, persistence and time than anyone had expected. Much too much.

But at journey’s end, we were just glad to be home.

**

Eight years later, it sometimes feels like we’re back in the flood.

Once again, we have a people divided by disaster. Some are trying to help. Some are already hit hard. Some are desperate enough to try anything that offers a way out. Most are simply trying to survive until it’s all over … whenever that might be.

And just like that drive home on those rain-swept roads, the journey back is turning out to be a lot longer than we thought.

Maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised. Pandemics don’t end as quickly and neatly as a Hollywood movie. Or if they do take their cue from Hollywood, it’s from all those interminable sequels where the old threat keeps getting recycled with new abilities and special effects.

We wouldn’t survive as a species if we couldn’t hope. And so we keep crossing our fingers that this time we’ve turned the corner, that this wave will be the last, that things can finally start to subside and normalize again.

And when we turn the corner and find another corner, it’s draining. Frustrating. Even crushing.

But we have to keep driving.

We need to remember the things that got us through the flood – helping neighbors, staying alert, doing what’s needed to stay safe.

It hasn’t been easy. It won’t be easy. Like outmaneuvering a river, it’s taking more time and effort than anyone thought.

But with persistence, with awareness, with careful attention to the road … we can move forward. And we will make it home.

True, home might look different than we expect. Like rivers, “normal” doesn’t stand still. Sometimes it transforms, like the St. Vrain changing its course. Sometimes it needs to transform, like the efforts to widen and deepen the river channel to make a second flood less likely.

But we still have a destination to reach. The way may be long and the vision ahead may be unclear, but we know where we want to be and it isn’t here.

So we keep on. Together. Eyes on the road.

The sign for Mead is out there. And when it comes, we’ll be ready to take the turn.

Posted on

You’re a Scarce One, Mr. Finch

Psst! Want a line on the next hot commodity? Lean in close and I’ll tell you.

Zebra finches.

No, I haven’t lost my mind. Well, not in that regard, anyway.

For some time, Heather and I had marked out Friday on our mental calendars as “Z-Day,” the day when we would finally restore a zebra finch or two to the house. It had been almost a year since our tiny D2 had flown this world, and we needed some energetic beeping in the house again. Apparently, so did our cockatiel Chompy, who had been getting excited ever since seeing the new cage go up.

There was only one catch.

“What do you mean, you don’t have any zebra finches?”

That was the theme of a long Friday afternoon and evening. Store after store after store in a 75-mile radius gave the same answer: Sorry, nothing now, try back in a couple of weeks. (Well, except for the one that said “Sorry, we just sold our last two this morning.” Sigh.)

If you want to blame COVID-19 … well, you might be right. This is a world where many things are slowed down by precautions and quarantines, and I suppose it’s not surprising that live birds aren’t an exception.

Still, while it may be reasonable, it’s still hard.

That’s sort of the theme for this stage of pandemic life in general, isn’t it?

You know what I mean. We can all feel “normal” getting closer. Most of us by now know someone who’s gotten the vaccine, or even several someones. There’s been hints of hope in the air, signs that maybe the drawbridge can start to open this year, that by fall or winter we’ll have regained more pieces of the life we used to know.

But “close” isn’t the same as “here.”

And reminders of the gap between the two still abound.

Thinking about it, grade school was great training for this. You spent a lot of time doing things that were necessary, whether you really wanted to or not. And the closer you got to summer vacation, the more interminable those last few structured days and hours felt. To an anxious third-grader, the last week before summer is a lot like the last 20 miles of a long car ride: “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”

Then and now, the answer’s obvious. It’s not the answer we want, but it’s obvious all the same.

And we really don’t want to be kept into summer school this time.

And so we go on. Teased every so often by the promise of what’s ahead, only to run up against one more reminder of where we still are.

Frustrating.

But time will pass. Things will change. Finches will come, along with many other things.

We’ll get there.

Oh, it won’t be the same world. It never truly is from day to day, even without a sudden pandemic muddling things up. Just as with any other crisis in our history, there’ll be lessons we learn, behaviors we change, newfound strengths or scars that we carry with us. “Normal” is a moving target, one that we redefine with each generation.

But more normal than now? Less isolated, less wary, more “a part of” than “apart from?”

Yes, I believe that. Absolutely. We’ve got a lot of rebuilding to do, but we’ll get there. And when we do, we’ll have a new appreciation for the precious things in life. Like togetherness. Hugs. Mobility.

And, of course, zebra finches.

You don’t get much more valuable than that.

Posted on

2020, Get Me Rewrite

Not long ago, a friend posted a cartoon where the unspeakable horror Cthulhu arises from the sea … side-by-side with Godzilla doing the same.

“How strange 2020 is ….” Cthulhu mutters as the confused monsters try to untangle their schedules, just in time for the planet-eating Galactus of Marvel Comics to make an apologetic appearance.

“Ahem – am I early?”

No, sir. This year, you’re par for the course.

In a way, this year feels like 1989-1990 in reverse. Back then, every headline seemed to bring news that was amazing beyond belief. The Berlin Wall came down. The Soviet Union broke up. Nelson Mandela walked free. The World Wide Web took its first baby steps.  Absolutely anything seemed to be possible (which made it all the more devastating when the Tiananmen Square protests in China went so terribly wrong).

Today? Well, we’re amazed all right. Or is “stunned” a better choice of words? It says something about the present day when horrific wildfires on the Western Slope are the most normal thing that’s happened all year.

No wonder a new “Bill and Ted” movie sounds so good. Who doesn’t want a time-traveling phone booth right now?

I’ve seen some people joke about living in a horror story. To be honest, they’re not far off the mark.

And that’s more hopeful than you might think.

Horror has two key qualities: uncertainty and isolation. You know something’s coming for you, but you don’t have all the information – it’s out there, ready to come at any time, just beyond sight, building the tension. And you’re facing it alone. Maybe you’re in an isolated place, or cut off by a disaster, or simply in a situation where no one else believes you, but for whatever reason, no help is coming.

Alone in the dark. It’s the core of every scary story since campfire days.

But if you change those qualities, you break the story’s power.

Uncertainty’s the harder one. We plan and strategize and arm ourselves with information, and it undoubtedly helps. But none of us have yet been gifted (cursed?) with the ability to see the future, so our extrapolations only take us so far. That’s not an excuse for not planning, of course – just an admission that reality can be even stranger than our imaginations.

The real key is in isolation.

That’s going to sound ironic in a year where social distancing can save lives. But while physical isolation is crucial to survival, mental isolation is deadly. That’s when we stop being a community and turn into a collection of despairing or self-centered individuals.

Alone, we’re overwhelmed.

Together, we can make it.

We make it by thinking of the safety of others and not just our own ability to tough it out.

We make it by reaching out to friends and neighbors and finding ways to help.

We make it by breaking down the anger and fear that drive us into a corner and reaching for a hope that can open doors.

We make it by being us. By caring. By standing behind others when they need us, and being able to trust that someone will stand behind us, too.

It’s not easy. It takes more than just misty optimism. We have to work and build, not just wait for everything to magically get better.

But if we do that – if we look to our neighbor and do what needs doing – something pretty wonderful can arise.

Maybe it’ll even be in time for Godzilla.

Posted on

Meeting in the ‘Moonlight’

“Hi, guys!”

It could have been any other virtual meeting, any other day. We all know those, right? Check your cameras, hit the link, grumble at forgetting to turn on the microphone again.

But here in Chez Rochat, Monday evenings aren’t just any virtual meeting. They’re a chance to get some real insanity back again, of the best  kind.

Mondays are when we take the stage.

***

“You went into production without a screenplay?”

“I thought I HAD a screenplay! I’ve been working on it for three years!”

—  Ron Hutchinson, “Moonlight and Magnolias”

 

Some of you may remember that back in February, I went over to the dark side. Dramatically speaking, anyway. This long-time actor became the new assistant director of “Moonlight and Magnolias,” getting a ringside seat to the screwball madness. And madness is exactly what you get when three characters are trying to bang out the script to “Gone With The Wind” in five days, with a faithful secretary guarding the door.

It’s a story with everything. High-speed dialogue. Studio gossip. And WAY too many peanuts and bananas for one’s sanity. It couldn’t miss.

And then, midway through rehearsals, COVID-19 arrived. And our can’t-miss comedy suddenly found itself without a chance to pull the trigger.

***

“I need this, guys. I need it. You have no idea how badly I need it.”

– Ron Hutchinson, “Moonlight and Magnolias”

 

The virus closed the stages. Unsurprising, really. When mass gatherings can spread a disease, crowding into a darkened room with strangers for two hours or so is the last thing any health department would advise. We had reached Shakespearean heights: closed by the plagues.

But like the hero of “The Princess Bride,” we were only mostly dead.

Moon Theatre didn’t cancel “Moonlight.” It put it on hold. The Rialto gave us new performance dates in the fall, hoping that by then, they’d have found a way to safely reopen.

Our show had survived, but our weeks-long rehearsal process had become months-long – with no way to rehearse physically.

That’s where the magic of Mondays began, turning rehearsals into a new “virtual meeting.” Hop online. Work the lines. Work the characters. Keep the story alive, the feeling alive, the company together. Keep the show breathing, waiting for its chance to once again come out in the open.

I wonder what Shakespeare’s bandwidth was like?

***

“So what do we want our specks of light to be? This time? When we’re sitting in a movie palace and the lights go down …and the theatre disappears and the magic starts to happen?”

– Ron Hutchinson, “Moonlight and Magnolias”

 

There’s an irony here. Our show is about three men locked in a room with limited supplies, asked to do the seemingly impossible, with anxiety growing at every turn. The temptation is huge to just quit. But if they do, everything falls apart.

We’re living that. Every single day.

And it’s the same kind of single-minded focus that will get us all through this together.

We all want normal. We all want a world where isolation isn’t a need, where we can visit friends, browse a library, stop by a baseball field that has people on it. Maybe even go to a theatre now and then, heaven forbid.

But to get to “normal,” we have to pass through “safe.” It’s hard. Especially since viruses aren’t kind enough to set deadlines, letting us know how long we have to be careful. It’s like walking blind through a room where the floor’s been covered in thumbtacks and Legos … slow, careful steps trying to feel a path through, with no certainty of how far we have left to go.

If we stay focused, if we help each other, if we find ways to adapt and support and comfort and care, we’ll make it. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But we will see the door unlock, taking as many of us through it as we can.

And when that door opens, even the most ordinary things in the world will seem pretty magical.

Maybe even as magical as a Monday.

Posted on

Harmony of Hope

As music poured from the speakers, Missy danced. And squirmed. And smiled.

How could she not? Her favorites, the Face Vocal Band, were back on the microphone.

Well, in a way.

Like everyone else, Boulder County’s own a cappella rock band had been pushed off the concert stage and into shelter by COVID-19. And like so many performers, they were finding a work-around  – a periodic livestream that mixed behind-the-scenes commentary and familiar videos, each time culminating in the debut of a brand new piece.

By itself, that would be more than enough to keep the flame burning in the hearts of the Face-ful followers. But on Friday night, Face cheated.

It’s really not fair to bring in magic, too.

“From now on … these eyes will not be blinded by the lights …”

The tune would be familiar to many: the showstopping “From Now On” from the movie musical “The Greatest Showman.” Face was supposed to be bringing that song to Carnegie Hall, backed by a mighty community chorus. Instead, they were bringing it to the world, voices stitched together from a myriad of homes as band, chorus, and fans united in the only way they could.

At any time, it would have been a beautiful song. But at this time – blended with images of joy, hope and togetherness from the families of their fans everywhere – it did more than sing. It resonated. And as the hook repeated over and over, I realized for a moment that sometimes life really does have a soundtrack:

“And we will come back home, and we will come back home, home again …”

Isn’t that what we’re all waiting for?

OK, put like that, it might sound a little strange. After all, we’re all spending a lot more time at home lately than any of us had planned on. Some are climbing the walls while others are bunking down in introverted peace, but surely all of us are looking to the day when home can be a base instead of a world. Aren’t we?

Well, yes and no.

Sure, most of us want the front door to open again for something that isn’t a weekly grocery trip. But home is more than a living space. It’s a mental space. It’s a life that we know and recognize, a state of mind where we know how things fit and where we belong.

That home has been distant for quite a while now. We want it back. And we sometimes fear how little of it may remain, how much may have changed beyond recognition.

I can’t claim a gift of prophecy. I don’t know what the far end of this looks like any more than you do. But I suspect we’ll keep more than we think.

And that’s because we’ve already kept more than we know.

When everything familiar is taken away, it puts the essentials in a spotlight. There’s time to see what’s really important and what was just noise.

Maybe that’s why, even in the midst of so much isolation, we’re still finding ways to be together.

I’m not blindly optimistic. I know there’s anger and debate and contention – I do have a social media account, after all. But I’m constantly struck by how many people are doing so much to add a little beauty, humor and hope to the world. Not because they’re ignoring the situation – is it ignoring the darkness to light a candle?- but because it’s what we do. As friends. As neighbors. As people.

We help. We listen. We howl in the night. And yes, sometimes we sing.

And through all of it, we heal.

Yes. We will come back home again. Not unchanged. But not alone. And when we do – that will truly be a time to dance.

Missy is ready.

You can see it in her Face.