ear Health Workers,

I am in rural Pennsylvania and I am thinking of you. It’s March and I’m staying at the house I grew up in. I haven’t been here this time of year in years, but the fields still smell like they did when I was a child—mud and daffodils—and the sounds of spring are the same—robins, doves, and other creatures waking up to what is warm. Evenings, the peepers come out in full chorus—the tree frogs I can hear but are invisible to me. I’ve been thinking about something our professor Terry said, about things we can feel but not see, and I’m remembering being in my body as a child. Climbing into the wild yellow branches of forsythia, for example, and feeling held.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about childhood. Nights, I shut off the news and look through books my brothers and I used to read. In one, kangaroos are dressed as nurses, taking care of a roomful of babies and holding ice packs to fevered foreheads. In another, a boy builds a snowman and invites him inside while the parents are sleeping. They play together in the lamplight and ride a skateboard around the room. So that the snowman doesn’t get hurt, the boy guides him away from a fire in the fireplace. He opens the door of the refrigerator, and the snowman stretches his limbs towards the yellow glow. 

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about bodies, and ways of adjusting. I’ve been thinking about kinds of care. This morning a friend who lives across the ocean texted me a video of her two-year-old playing nurse. She was holding a plastic stethoscope to a doll’s chest, saying "don’t worry" in French. The language was different, but the gesture of compassion familiar. I was thinking how it’s something so many children like to practice, and that doctors and nurses enact. 

I don’t know you, I can’t see you, but here in Pennsylvania where the peepers are singing, I have been thinking of you. I’ve been picturing you with your own beating hearts, tending to the lives and hearts of others, and feeling hugely grateful for you, in awe of the quiet, brave, life-saving work that you do. Look for the helpers, says Mr. Rogers, and these days when I’m scared I’ve been remembering you. I hope it’s ok to say that, with my deepest heart, I’m drawing yellow circles of love around you, and holding you, like the kangaroos and the boy and the snowman in these stories do, towards all that is healing and light. 

With deep gratitude and admiration,

Julianna