“it costs $0.00 to be a decent human being,” the meme read on my niece’s page. i took a screenshot of it, not unlike the screenshots i have taken over the last year, these times unparalleled, this era of pandemic.
scrolling through these images on my desktop just now, i am gobsmacked at the limitless spectrum, a country-full of schizophrenic views, passionate opinions, factoids and untruths. i read things like, “i pray we are not going to have any kind of required coronavirus vaccine!” and “people in countries whose leaders told them the truth about covid didn’t ‘panic’. they responded. and as a result, far fewer of them died.” i read “my face, my choice!” and “masks can be worn to protect the wearer from getting infected or masks can be worn to protect others from being infected by the wearer.” i read “i’ll pee in my end of the pool if i want to” and “when you choose to act out of kindness, compassion, and love, you are already aligned with your true purpose.” a country divided into primary colors kaleidoscoping about the galaxy on planet earth, people-as-crayons all given a spot in the earth-crayola-box simply by being born, yet arguing with achromatic abandon.
on a frigid february day we got the call. all was frozen after the skies had dropped many inches of snow on our town. it was a friday. it was 4:35 and there were two vaccines left, about to expire. the overburdened-yet-infinitely-kind community health center asked if we could come immediately. we were on a waiting list for anytime there was a vaccine that might go to waste – something to be avoided at all measures. we dropped everything and jumped in the truck. they called us while we were on the way there, to make sure we were really coming, to make sure we would arrive in time.
the drive-through lane at the old bank was marked with cones. as directed, we pulled into the spot at cone #1. there was no time to be nervous – about having a shot, about the side effects of the vaccine, about any long-term ramifications. there was just this unbelievably fortunate opportunity to be decent human beings in a world raging with disease and dying. the windows of big red were frozen-shut, so, with masks on, we opened the driver and passenger doors to exuberant nurses dressed in layers upon layers of clothing, gratitude our common denominator. we were vaccines #199 and 200 that day. it cost us nothing. zero.
i couldn’t help but hope, as we got our second vaccine at cone #3 on a slightly warmer day, soon fully inoculated because of vast medical and scientific research, the proud new recipients of a wait-15-minutes-vaccine-flag, that maybe kindness and compassion and a sense of community responsibility, the brother’s/sister’s-keeper-thing, was an ingredient and that the immune systems of humans everywhere, in protecting against covid, would also be stimulated to push back against all things peeing-in-the-poolish.
beaky thought greg norman was pretty, well, handsome, shall we say? she was taken with his tall blondness and, though she didn’t follow golf much back then, she kept an eye on him. she would be proud of him these days as he cautions us all not to take covid-19 lightly. stricken with coronavirus, he urges, “do what is right, not just for you, but your family, friends, co-workers and other people around.” he adds, “i wouldn’t want anyone to experience this hideous virus. please take care.” i imagine she’d write him a letter.
the headlines say it all – a surge upon a surge. choices made during this holiday season will deliver blowback to people’s health and well-being, their very lives, decimating the healthcare system, and there is no one to blame for that but ourselves. every single choice impacts us all in the time of this shared pandemic. disney world and large family gatherings and traveling trips to other parts of the country all play a role; there is no escaping accountability.
i recently read of a discussion about authority and accountability. the open question was this: who has authority and who has accountability? wow. really? this seems, without any undue thought, a no-duh. those who have authority to make decisions are the same as those who are accountable for them. escaping from responsibility-taking is off the table. if you make a decision then you must support that by taking responsibility for it. in any arena. if you travel on an airplane or a train or a car to a different part of our country and you bring covid as luggage, you must take responsibility. if you gather and covid is a silent guest at the long dining table laden with treats, you must take responsibility. if you don’t wear a mask and you are with others who become infected, particularly those at high risk, you must take responsibility. and i wonder – is it worth it? we each have the authority, the liberty, the freedom to make decisions. but that also makes us responsible. it makes us accountable. in any arena.
dogdog, as we rapidly approach the end of 2020, just asks this one thing. with this two-ply cotton fabric mask on his head, he looks up at us and queries, “this? this is what all the hubbub is about? this tiny cloth mask? it can literally save lives?? pshaw!!”
as we watch him looking at us out of the corner of his eye, i imagine him adding, “just WEAR the freaking thing!”
i’m guessing greg norman and my sweet momma agree.
the unknown is often worse than reality. i had all kinds of monsters in my head battering my nerves, just thinking about having a covid test. i wasn’t feeling well and, with my symptoms aligning with the utterly vast myriad of symptoms attributable to coronavirus, i was checking the list and checking it twice. worried and already quarantining for 14 days since we had been exposed, we scheduled tests. and i started getting nervous. it felt like we were living inside a sci-fi movie.
my adrenaline was rushing before we left the house. i felt shaky. it was a big response to what must have been a letdown for that adrenaline rush. the test itself was easy, painless. it was a rapid test and we knew we would find out our results in a mere half hour.
david’s came – “negative,” read the email. my email asked me to come back inside for a confirmatory test, a specimen that would be sent to a lab for results that might have a slightly lower degree of fallibility. we went back in, standing on the dots stickering the floor, slathering with hand sanitizer, speaking through two-ply masks. and now, we wait.
we have been inordinately careful. we’ve been wearing masks, washing hands, our fruit, the bottles of wine gift-delivered at our front door. we’ve wiped our groceries and kept our mail separated. we have distanced and not gathered. we have worried about ourselves. we have worried about my girl and my boy. we have worried about david’s parents and all our family members out of town. we have worried about the people in our community, the customers and staff at the corner store, the people in line at the grocery. we have tried to be respectful. it has mattered.
a friend re-posted a meme today that read, “it shouldn’t have to happen to you for it to matter to you.” this feels like the baseline, a low bar of compassion, the starting gate of people taking precautions to protect other people. it has been stunning to watch people of this country ignore all cautions about a pandemic raging across the nation. a dear friend, way earlier in the year and in the early arc of this devastating disease sweeping the world, wrote that the lyrics “you would cry too if it happened to you” were on replay in her mind. a number of people were quoted as saying, “i don’t know how to explain to you why you should care about other people.”
what does it take?
there truly are no exceptions. we have been instructed in the use of masks, the advantages of social distancing, the merits of proper handwashing. as things have been escalating up the devastation scale, we have been encouraged to limit our gatherings, to not travel, to not have parties, to not make exceptions. because, truly, there aren’t any. every one of our lives is valuable. every single one. to be cavalier is to take chances. big chances. it is all an unknown.
healthcare workers and hospitals are overwhelmed. they are at the brink of collapse. yet, households of people are gathering together, playing a russian roulette covid game. citizens of this country are dying in situations that are “harder, scarier and lonelier than necessary.” yet, people are refusing to wear a simple piece of cloth on their face. the statistics of this pandemic are exponentially climbing. yet, people on the trail fail to move six feet away as they pass, people in the grocery store have masks around their chins, people regularly scoff at the science – S C I E N C E – that is guiding the medical experts.
on monday evening, in the middle of our quarantine, i had intense pain breathing. my lungs, my windpipe, my trachea were on fire when i took a deep breath. i had a video chat with a nurse who told me to go to the ER and have an EKG to rule out a heart event. i did not believe i was having a heart event. to me, it seemed pretty clear that it was a breathing issue, but there are definite limitations to having a medical visit online and i understood her desire to err on the side of caution. because of the sheer arrogance of people who scorn the restrictions to help with this pandemic, our healthcare system has been forced to regulate that only patients are allowed into the hospital. the very idea that i would be going A-L-O-N-E into the hospital, perhaps with something serious, was more terrifying than not going. thank you to all those people in this country who have foisted this gross unfairness on anyone suffering, on anyone in a medical emergency, on anyone hospitalized for absolutely any reason. the lack of compassion for others is abhorrent.
one morning we made a big pot of texas chili. we loaded a folding table into little-baby-scion. we packed plates and plasticware and cups. we drove over to 20’s and set up our folding table at least 8 feet from his folding table in his open garage. and we had chili together with our coats on and blankets covering our legs in the open-air cold garage. two days later he had symptoms and two days after that he tested positive. his covid was gifted to him from a friend of his sister’s who casually walked into his sister’s apartment while he was working there. she wore no mask and boasted of a party she had attended. she clearly did not care. it did not matter to her that 20 has chronic asthma or that his sister has a compromised immune system. her freedom to not have a piece of cloth over her face was more important.
he called us to tell us. that was the beginning of our 14 days. we didn’t go anywhere except outside to walk. no stores, no gatherings, nothing. nowhere. it was unknown to us if we were contagious. it was unknown to us if david was asymptomatic. it was unknown to us if my symptoms were covid. but it mattered to us.
meanwhile, 20, who needs a new cellphone did not purchase one. “why not?” i battered him with questions. he told us that he didn’t want to spend the money if he wasn’t going to live. the unknown. i want to shake the supposed-friend of his sister’s who just didn’t care. “what is wrong with you?” i want to scream at her.
and now. waiting. by the time this publishes i hope that i am done waiting. but in the meanwhile, i am waiting. for the unknown.
the little red schoolhouse on cuba hill road was the place i went to kindergarten. built in 1903 it was a place of important early learnings – the stuff you learn at five and six – things this back-in-the-day first teacher, who you fall desperately in love with, would impart to you through kind, objective, steady lessons. it wasn’t that my sweet momma or poppo weren’t teaching me kindergarten-level-rules, but learning them in a place where i was surrounded by other children and could practice them immediately in-real-life i would guess had more impact. lasting lessons are often those that come through experience, through feeling and doing rather than simply hearing.
share your toys. take your turn. say please and thank you. wash your hands. do your own work. hold the door for others. keep your hands to yourself. be kind. help others. listen when others speak. be respectful of your elders. follow the rules.
i don’t specifically remember days in kindergarten but i know that i have always been a rule-follower in school and would not imperil another’s playground time by not paying attention, by disobeying, by being impervious to an adult’s directions for work that needed to be done or instructions for safe practices. i would not have ignored the be-absolutely-quiet rule during fire or duck-and-cover drills. i would not have continued talking or wreaking havoc were my teacher – or any other teacher, for that matter – to have asked for silence.
the rules seemed simple at five. we were each individually and as a group asked to follow them. those easy rules were designed to preclude chaos and our freedom to learn and have fun was never sacrificed in the process of following them. the consequences of disregarding them seemed dire – staying in during playtime. one child’s misbehavior often led to the whole class missing playground. to be THAT child was not a sought-after title. instead, we would work together – in our five-year-old beehive fashion – to clean up the classroom and desks and chairs so that we were all ready – together – to go play.
it’s the way i feel about masks. it hasn’t been recommended to us by medical and science professionals to wear masks as a lark. this recommendation comes with passionate imploring. it is a simple rule. if this, then that. conditional. if we wear masks, we will dramatically lower the transmission of this global pandemic raging through our country. it is a proven fact and other countries have shown their adherence to mask-wearing has flattened the curve of the disease. pretty simple, yes. a mask.
instead, there are those people who flagrantly ignore this simple if-this-then-that. we see them everywhere. it’s breathtaking. and their display of arrogant individualism at a time of an intense need to care-for-community means one thing: we will not get to go out to play.
it was but a mere second – nigh unto 4:30 in the morning – when my sweet poppo was on this planet and then wasn’t.
i said a wee-hours-goodnight to him, propped in a hospital bed at home in their house. he whispered back to me. i tried desperately to memorize his face, the love in his eyes.
and before the birds woke up in the morning, that morning eight years ago yesterday, i went from with to without.
three years later, we left my sweet momma sitting on the edge of her assisted-living-bed, grasping onto the blue-notebook-that-documented-their-moments-in-europe, her expression dancing with excitement, waving to us. i tried desperately to memorize her face, the love in her eyes.
it wasn’t but a couple weeks later, on the road back again to florida, around the time the sun is highest in the sky, i went from with to without.
suddenly, i was orphaned. suddenly i was without the two people who gave me life. suddenly i was without the two people who could answer any question i had about my growing up. suddenly – in a split second – nothing was the same.
100,000 families. in the past few months, due to the global pandemic decimating our country, 100,000 families have desperately tried to memorize a loved one’s face. they have held tightly to the memory of love shining in their beloved’s eyes. they have moved from one split second into the next. with to without.
and last night, on the solemn occasion of this number passing from 99,999 to over 100,000 – that one second – one person- one life – one with to without – i expected, foolishly, that something would change. that there would be gut-wrenching acknowledgement. that there would be communal nation-wide mourning led by the person in the highest seat in the land. that there would be kind, generous, thoughtful words spoken, grief-filled heart-soaked empathy for all that the withs-to-withouts have gone through.
and nothing.
we need remember. all of it. these are our split seconds.
we just read/watched the new york times interactive article from may 24 called ‘an incalculable loss’. tiny people on the screen of our laptop, nearly 100,000 lives were represented – deaths from march 8. the visual is mind-boggling, staggering really.
bone-weary.
we paused at every descriptor on the screen for people who had died. a man who loved to wear suspenders. a woman who always smiled. a composer. a mother of six boys. every one of them with lives and circles – concentric circles reaching out and out and out.
bone-weary.
of the excuses, the justifications. the inadequacy. the gross miscalculations. the ignorance. the comparisons to the flu, car accidents, natural attrition. the opening-up push-for-the-purposes-of-an-election despite the fact that whole-cities-numbers of people (PEOPLE) are dying in short order.
bone-weary. of the division, the based-on-nothing arguments, the dangerous political game-playing, the i-don’t-wanna-wear-a-mask-so-i-won’t whining, the inability of those “in charge” to focus, the heinous lack of regard for truth, the gross name-calling, disrespect and distraction from the president’s mouth, the dogged inaction of that same office to quell the spread, to actually even the playing ground for all and address the real issues, the zealousness of those who have his nationalistic vision in their rose-colored glasses of divisiveness, of inequity, of apathy.
bone-weary.
these are lives. people who never expected in march to not be here on memorial day to recognize and honor the fallen, those who actually have protected us. oh, you say from-the-‘other-side’, that’s everyone – no one has any guarantees on life, you argue. ahh. but we can expect that we live in a place that has our best interests at heart. that we live in a country that will do all that it can, with all of its armor of knowledge and research and its vast fortunes, to protect us all – every one of us – from something like this – a mere global pandemic.
i write to both My Girl and My Boy every night to say good night. i have since the day they left for college. that’s about 4,380 times for my daughter and 3,285 times for my son. i’m quite certain that they have rolled their eyes multiple times along the way. but the idea that these 100,000 people no longer have the option of loving their child – or anyone they care about – with a nightly goodnight wish stuns and breaks my heart. this could have been different.
bone-weary.
we passed the park down by the beach yesterday. we passed by the marina. we passed the irish pub. we passed by the bar with wide open doors, people spilling out onto sidewalk seating. we counted four masks. in all those people, all those crowds, all that bustling humanity – up-close-and-personal-no-social-distancing – only four masks. this is one of the very towns – kenosha, wisconsin – used as an example of a whole city wiped out to illustrate the number 100,000. it makes me tired.
bone-weary.
“you keep thinking people are going to wake up, but they never do,” said a friend yesterday.
bone-weary.
tired and disheartened. alive, wide-awake and pissed.
i woke in the middle of the night to discover i was spooning the cat. he jumps up on the bed and, pretty much like a sack of concrete, settles in for a long night’s nap, mostly because, well, clearly, the other 23 hours he slept in the day were not ample enough sleep. he snugs in and prevents movement of most sorts: there will be no blanket adjustments, no leg adjustments, little rolling over. my hot flashes necessitate much wrestling to find cooler air as he has permanently planted his sweet large body and is down for the count. and so, you must adjust. granted, his sleep-apnea-style-snoring would be cause for plucking-and-moving (to another room) but we love him and suffer his sleeping-sovereignty; the benefits outweigh the costs.
sally told me that there is a machine that duplicates the frequency of a cat’s purring vibration. i did not know that cat purring is healing and restorative – to broken or fractured bones, tendons, joints, muscles, infections. we would rent out babycat but i am trying to figure out how to make him lay on my broken-and-in-the-ridiculously-slow-process-of-healing wrists. once again, the benefits outweigh the costs.
i hadn’t ever had a cat before b-cat, but now it’s been almost eleven years. he is in some ways more of a dog than a cat, having tolerated a parent who knows dogs and was too busy at the time to read ‘kittens for idiots’ all the way through. so he sits when asked and speaks when asked and does dog-like things. however, he rides the fence and takes advantage of cat-like things at will, like claws. and he is fickle as fickle can be. jen explained that cats will patiently ‘allow’ you to stroke them and pet them and fondle them, all seemingly appreciated, until the doll flips and it suddenly reaches out with both front paws and pulls your hand up to its razor teeth. ahh, but those moments preceding the bite…the benefits outweigh the costs.
in this time of other-worldliness and alternate-reality these creatures of ours – dogdog and babycat – are companions unlike any other. they will not argue politics or policy. they don’t strategize or scheme. they are not semantics-nuts or particularly immersed in propaganda-hunts. they will not roll their eyes at our rants nor will they feed them or egg us on. instead, they comfort when they suspect we need it. they are quiet when there’s been too much noise. they are entertaining when we need funny. they are warm in the cold pandemic plane.
and they curl up with us in solidarity. benefits always outweighing the costs.
“deliriously oblivious,” i thought as we passed the bees buzzing the dandelions on the trail. with no real idea of the state of the pandemic-battered world, these bees were just going about their bee-life. in some silly way, i was jealous.
much of the time right now i feel as if we are living in an alternate reality than others. we shop with masks; many wander about fresh-faced and seemingly unaware. we distance from others; we pass gatherings of people, clearly not related, all not even a smidge apart from each other. we walk in single file on the side of the trail as we approach others; groups of people swarm the trail, passing right by us, unmasked, unconcerned. we yearn to travel a bit, see our children, our families; others post about their gatherings or even trips. we patiently work by videoconference, technology reigns supreme these days waiting for a time when it is safer to venture out; crowds protest and push for heedless immediate re-opening. our hearts break for families losing loved ones to this dangerous virus; deaths are reported as cold numbers sans empathy. the weighing of losing more lives vs ‘opening up’ is posed as an actual question. it feels like we are on another plane of existence watching the world, abiding by different rules. truly.
and right here, in the middle of it all, the bees buzz from dandelion to dandelion, and soon flower to flower, seeking nectar. migratory birds return to the skies above and animals return to prowl about in warmer temperatures. in other parts of the country and the world, wildlife is enjoying a reprieve from people. in what must be a breath of fresh air for them, animals are freer to roam, freer to linger. their curiosity is taking them off the beaten path, out of their norm. i wonder if there is some kind of intuition that informs them; i wonder if they are somehow conscious of this looming threat to humanity. i wonder what they are thinking as they watch this play out, the impact of a pandemic on health, relationships, mindfulness, neighborliness, working in community together. i wonder how they, in the infinite wisdom of instinct, would decide if someone placed the words ‘health’ and ‘economy’ in front of them and made them choose just one.
there are moments i am convinced that dogdog and babycat know. i’m sure that they can feel the anxiety we hold. dogga, in particular, watches our faces for cues, his gaze is eye-to-eye-contact riveting. they hover about us, close by. perhaps unmindful of the pandemic, but certainly conscious of our emotions.
and as bumblebees begin to buzz in our backyard, the dog chases them. the birds begin to discover there is water in the pond again. the squirrels dance across the wires. the turkey lands on the roof. the sun rises earlier. the lettuce starts to grow.
we don’t go into any store without a mask on. the way we understand this – is that this is essential. in an effort to curb the spread of this pandemic, protect others and do our part to ‘flatten the curve’ we need to follow simple protocol.
at the risk of redundancy, which i have been accused of before, we have been appalled at the lack of people wearing masks. it’s not like you are being asked to undergo a colonoscopy before entering the grocery store (or worse yet, the prep for one); it is a simple request: wear a mask. yet, there we are, in the store and we can feel the now-familiar tightness-in-our-chest-anxiety rising as we attempt to move away from people who seem to care little about distancing or breathing their aerosols our way. what-on-earth-is-so-hard-about-this??
david went to a small grocery the other day. he had his mask and he had brought disinfecting wipes with him. neither of these were burdensome to him. he walked into a somewhat crowded store and found that he was the only one wearing a mask. what?!
wwmrd? (what would mr. rogers do?): be a good neighbor. (i’m betting he’d wear a mask.)
we live in wisconsin so it would seem prudent to look up what the department of health services has to say about this:
When should I wear a cloth face cover?
You should wear a cloth face cover when you are outside the home conducting essential activities such as going to work, to the grocery store, pharmacy, banking and enjoying outdoor activities while maintaining physical distancing.
that seems relatively clear. embracing redundancy once again: “you should wear a cloth face cover when you are outside the home conducting essential activities such as going to work, to the grocery store, pharmacy, banking and enjoying outdoor activities while maintaining physical distancing.”
down the street the state of illinois is requiring face masks. ahhh, you say with a cavalier smirk unhidden by a face mask. that state has a democratic governor, you point out as you enumerate the many ways that the government is taking over your personal life by issuing coronavirus guidelines. i’m not a biologist or an epidemiologist but i suspect that this pandemic is not stopping to discern the difference between democrats and republicans. and a face mask, worn by you or the people you encounter in a day, just might protect you, your family members, your friends, your colleagues, the people-who-you-don’t-know-at-the-grocery-store-but-who-count-anyway.
so why are the vast majority of people not wearing masks? why are so many folks not social distancing? why are people announcing vacations on facebook? vacations? are we even encouraged to do that right now? (because who wouldn’t love to go merrily on a vacation for a while?) one sweet person, who lives in another state, replying to a text of mine that bemoaned missing my children asked me if we were on “house arrest”. everything is confusing.
one of the funniest, albeit a tad off-color, clarifications of the what-would-mr-rogers-do approach i read said: “having some states locked down and some states not locked down is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.” no exponential brainpower needed there. i would think that swimming-pool-water-rule applies to most all the guidelines. seems pretty clear to me.
i guess i’m just saying i don’t understand. this is a global pandemic. despite a plethora of conspiracy theories distorting reality, there is medicine and there is science. i, for one, would rather place my trust in the people immersed in those than in self-aggrandizing politicians or propaganda-pushers, each ignoring medical science in their own creative ways. there is a difference. “america strong” reads the flag we pass on 7th avenue. strength and resilience are found in unity, not division, in working together, not apart, in being neighborly.
as the country begins to prematurely open up and disregard the CDC’s guidelines as “overly restrictive” we will likely download that multi-page guide. we would like to see more specifically how we can do our part . thinking they might actually protect us, we want to see the ‘overly restrictive’ restrictions. we want to participate in a responsible way. we will follow these guidelines as best we can. we will social distance. we will cough into our elbow. we will not gather. we will not pee in the pool.
and we will freaking wear masks, even if we are the only ones.
reverse threading 