April 8, 2020 In the Fog

We are in the fog, literally.  The sunny morning has been replaced by a cloud that has nestled itself around our home in the Sierra Nevada foothills.  The normally expansive vistas are blanketed by grey.  I know they're there, but I can't see them.  I know the snow covered peaks and ridges and the green hillsides are out there because I have seen them.  I saw them this morning. 
However, I don't know when the shroud will lift but I do know that it will lift.  I have experienced this before and I know the sun will shine.  It could be a matter of minutes or hours or it might be tomorrow morning before we see the panoply of color that usually greets our gaze.  It won't be never.
Fitting.
This morning's fog showed me ironically how clearly we had been enveloped by a cloud for the last few months.  We've been living in a fog.  The upheaval of the coronavirus has removed clarity from our lives.  I live for clarity.  If I can't see it, I can imagine it.  I can't see the mountains but I can imagine them.  I know they're there. 
I thought I knew the future.  I am a teacher.  I teach high school history.  I teach seniors who were on their way to graduating.  I teach juniors who were supposed to go to Angel Island this Spring.  I teach sophomores who were supposed to go to Yosemite for their field trip.  I thought I was good at predicting the future that I knew was out there for them.
From time to time I would tell them that the future was not preordained.  I used George HW Bush as an example.  He was a senior in high school when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.  His life course was completely diverted.  Instead of going to Yale and studying economics and sociology when he graduated with his classmates, he went to the Navy and became a dive bomber pilot.  His plane got shot down and he was the lone survivor of a raid on a Japanese base.  His future was completely different from what he had planned...
Our present is different from what we had planned.  Tell me something I don't know.
Well, that's the future...
Back to the fog.
This morning I realized as I looked out at the fog that the grey and lack of color and lack of detail completely fit my lack of certainty.
When are we going back to normal?  When are we going to back to school?  When will we get our lives back?
No one knows.  No one.
People can speculate and they do all the time.  The president said it'll be Easter.  Some say 18 months.
When will the fog lift?  When will I see the mountains?  When will I see the future?  When?