Living the life, he writes from a 230-square-foot studio cabin while penning a yearly update to family. Panoramic views stretch expansively into public lands from the windows liberally flanking three sides of the studio. In the center stands a pot-bellied wood stove. Water reaches toward a boiling point for tea. Hardbound classics stand upright on knotty pine shelves. A vintage microscope, typewriter and various state of the art wireless word-processing devices conveniently litter a sweeping 24-foot, built-in desk space. It can be assumed he is clothed in wool that is very smart – in more ways than one – and featherweight down. 

This is the life, she says. And she is eternally grateful. For over 60 years she has longed for the time and solitude to write. And now she is living the life; living in a well-equipped authentic Victorian row house; rising before dawn and writing for a couple hours; bathing in a vintage claw-foot tub with hot running water that she doesn’t have to fetch or heat; hiking for two hours a day,  every day at whatever time of day suits her fancy; keeping fit, keeping well-read, indulging in virtual choirs and virtual bass workshops and adding to her piano repertoire and strumming her pain with her fingers on a handsome acoustic guitar she never had time to caress until this year.  Most of the time, she is vastly content.  She has done what she said she would do 13 years ago – write.  In the space of eleven months, she brought two novels to print, novels begun in the 80s and now historic. She resurrected a children’s book first published in her initial crusade to become a writer.

But they are tired, these siblings, tired of not being able to meet in a cozy coffee shop, tired of not being able to travel by train or plane to exotic places to expand their intellectual horizons. Tired of restraint from family reunions where laughter is shared by people who overlap with common inherencies. 

Sometimes she grows tired of living the life; tired of not being able to go to a ballroom just every once in a while and find herself in the arms of a man who can really lead and who can dance to boot – or dance in boots if the situation is western; tired of singing virtually without the felt energy of leaning in to match the blend; tired of hawking and signing her books electronically – missing the smiles uncovered and the handshakes hearty and the spontaneity of laughter that does not mute the audio of everyone else.

And as for him? He is living the life – in the lap of all that he loves and has earned, but he is tired of talking to colleagues, about bears and nutes and biodiversity and the human genome, via Zoom. He longs to go global once again – lecture and discuss in Zumbian zoos and the Tanzanian tropics and rustic Denalian lodges. 

And so they coexist, these two siblings, closely related by blood yet often differing in opinion, a few hundred miles apart, in virtual solitude and partial isolation.

Yes, they are living the life in so many ways and they acknowledge it with heartfelt gratitude.

 But in some subtle way, they are tired of living the life. Something needs to change.