My bio-mom asked me to do something special for her this spring, something her grandkids could remember. She has stage IV metastatic cancer and we are locked down in California, so no one can see one another. Some of my closest friends and I are among those with underlying co-morbidities, too, so I am not going to lie: I am super-cautious and the information/disinformation makes me anxious.

50 out of 50 states have emergency orders, so we all know what it’s like. I have friends and family I haven’t seen in a month, like all of us. We have been sharing through Skype and FaceTime and Zoom, but it just isn’t enough. (But isn’t it interesting that we are all trying just a little harder to be in touch with each other?)

Flouting the rules a little, my son and his new wife had a super-secret, socially-distanced wedding in a meadow in a park this month. Love rules! Also, may privacy rest-in-peace: I was thrilled to see shots of the illicit gathering from neighbors on a Facebook feed (in the image above).

Take a look at the diversity of life shared here: bees and beers, flowers and fauna. These images are from all over the country — from Rhode Island to Colorado to California to Hawaii.

The point is this: I am not on social media. One of the stats I saw recently said, if you have 200 friends, one of those will die in this epidemic. Sobering and somber and not to be taken lightly. But that “200 friends” is a Facebook estimate from 2011. I am sure we all have more IRL connections than that whose lives we should celebrate. My uncle used to say, “You can count your friends on one hand and cut off three fingers.” (How mob boss is that?) But I count my friends by the positive impact they have had interacting in my life, even for a minute.

To make my mom’s and my best friends’ week, and to remind us why we are making these sacrifices and  about the light at the end of the tunnel, I decided to ask friends to do a little non-denominational scavenger hunt. I want to have a visual “stat” about the exponential growth of kindness and human spirit in this difficult time. 

Stones in your way—those news items and letdowns and roadblocks—shouldn’t be distractions. Instead, times of crises should be a moment to remind us that success means learning to forge ahead and accept other paths.

“Everything happens at the time it should.” — R.P.

Thanks for joining in and sharing your images to create this Springtime Photo Quilt: Luke, Kate, Patrick, Lisa, Ellie, Grace, Tom, Natalie, Martie, Gail, Joel, Kim, Lisa, Lucy, Carl, Delsin, Nate, Laura, Carol, Andrea, Joyce, LaWanda and those anonymous contributors. 🙂 I appreciate you taking the time to create something fun here.