Bonni Knight

Hope sends me on a quest for solace. I begin my search in music. I force myself to try on various versions of Ode to Joy.

First: A string quartet (too sedate). Next: A mad German chorus wailing “Freude, schoener Goetterfunken” (too angsty). Finally: Desperate, I go punk with the raucous rock of the Adicts (too cynical).

Hope tells me to abandon my trip to Italy on the miraculous miniscule-butterfly-effect chance that my distance will somehow spare my elderly family there.

Hope digs deep, gouging into my non-spiritual soul until I feel secretly, silently, slightly envious of those with faith.

Hope gives me words and actions to comfort others, because this is my survival skill: being there. But I find no song for myself.

Hope pushes me back to music. This time What a Wonderful World cues up. I’m angry and scared, but still clinging to hope by a musical thread. I wander to Louis Armstrong (too optimistic), swing by Innocence Mission, of all places (too naive), until I land at Joey Ramone (hmmm, maybe?).

Giving up on hope, I take an empty egg carton, a small pile of dirt, and some lettuce seeds. I mean, who doesn’t love a good salad in the midst of a pandemic? Absurdity wrestles with anxiety. But still, I scoop another helping of rich damp soil into the carton, tamping it in, before I dig a small divot, sprinkle in a couple tiny seeds, a tinch more water, and cover carefully with another dose of dirt.

And, as I tuck the seeds gently into the soil, I envision the little sprouts snuggling in their beds, growing, reaching toward the sun. I can almost see those babes stretching their tiny green tendrils of hope. This act of planting and watering and sunning these egg cartons of dirt, this is a leap of faith, which is almost hope.

As I scoop and dig and sprinkle and tamp, Joey Ramone’s desperate, cancer-shaded rock wriggles in my ear, and I find myself humming, “I see trees of green, red roses, too. …”

And I think to myself … hope is the thing I hum.

Bonni Knight is a storyteller who struggles to write. She taught French and all the communicative arts for 30 years before setting off into the woods with a husband, two slobbery, affectionate dogs, and one willfully indifferent cat.