i have spent the last two weeks gathering selfies from My Girl’s friends and family with birthday signs and wishes. today is her 30th birthday and, with the pandemic restrictions, i can’t be there, out in those high mountains, to be the “return-to” information written on her bar-hopping balloons like i was on her 21st birthday or make her a special ariel or pocahontas or ballet slipper or happy face cake like i did every year she grew up. like many of you, i feel sad and challenged by the inability to celebrate or be with each other.
so i decided to throw her a surprise party. from all walks of life family and friends showed up and sent me selfies with signs they created or videos or photos they brilliantly photoshopped with greetings. i facebook messaged and texted and talked with people i had never met, all generous and kind and wanting to help; every one of them a valued person in The Girl’s life and now in mine. love at its best, i cried over and over receiving these and, after spending the entire day yesterday formatting all of it into a video, watched it again and again, tears streaming down my face. it is an amazing thing to see how loved your child is.
so, today, i woke up refreshed. my heart was full and i couldn’t wait to share this video and a gift video i made as well with kirsten. i wish i was hiking with her this morning or having gnocchi and wine with her tonight. but…
yes, it’s a virtual birthday – all of it.
but it is virtually impossible to not feel some peace in all this love. and i know that tonight, when i lay my head on my pillow, i will rest easy.
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 stopped there every time we rode our bikes past on the way to the beach or the harbor. north shore outdoor recreation center & school of skindiving was a shop downtown east northport, a couple blocks from the railroad tracks and across the street from the old auto parts store. our high school biology teacher jim owned it and we’d stop in and visit, looking around at gear and flirting with the just-slightly-older-than-us-guys who worked there.
when i was 17 i started working there after school and on weekends. i’d do office work, the newsletter, and sell scuba, archery and other outdoor-related sporting equipment. the fill tank, a pool of water in which oxygen tanks are immersed in order to fill them for use while diving, was just outside the office and i can’t tell you how many times i ended up sitting in it. until i got smart and carried extra clothes to work with me in the car, i had to drive home to change, sopping wet and glorying in it. i was the only girl there and these boys were brutal teasers.
the basement of the shop was formidable, dungeon-like; at the top of the stairs were a sliding chain lock and the light switch. the gestetner machine (a copy machine that invariably spewed purple stuff all over you during use) was in that basement which meant i spent some good time down there wrangling this obstinate office contraption. from way down in the depths of this concrete cavern, i could hear the chain sliding and the click of the light switch, leaving me in the dark to feel my way back up the steps and stand at the door, pounding to be released from yet another prank. yes, brutal stuff.
crunch was in charge which left jimmy and ollie and i under his thumb. much more a rule-follower, crunch was a task-master and was the one who turned down the blasting stereo of ‘heart’ singing ‘barracuda’ in the workroom. he wagged his fingers at us to sweep or organize regulators, but he was right-in-there, shortchanging me with the growing-boy deli orders they sent me on, leaving notes on my little vw about town-noon-whistle-blowing-timeliness, not setting me free from the front sidewalk window when i, during christmas-eve-day last-minute-shopping-hours, dressed as an elf and, coerced to fix something in our christmas display, was locked in, forcing me to grin and bear it and stand with plastic-santa, waving at people walking by and the crowd that gathered at the auto parts store. but we all did good work together, the dives were organized, people had the right gear and the shop was a place customers loved to come and linger in.
an older italian couple lived above the shop and luigi was not as loud as his wife. without the benefit of air conditioning, the windows and lack of thick insulation in the walls made it easy for us to hear her rapid-fire italian admonishments of her husband, always punctuated by a shrill “luigi!” in our first-hand innocence of marriage-challenges we’d voice, “poor luigi.” i don’t think i ever knew his wife’s name. i wonder about their lives. where did they go? their rows weren’t nearly as loud as ‘barracuda’ or the sounds of boisterous laughter coming from the back storage/workroom of the shop. they were simply a part of the story, a part of the history of that place, a sound-artifact i can still hear.
during one of his college classes, crunch, who ended up one of my very best friends, for a psych class project, decided to glue a a few coins onto the sidewalk out front and hide in the tent displayed in the front window, capturing passersby reactions to money-for-free. they always went for the quarter and it was predictable how earnestly they would try to pry this off this sidewalk, invariably stopping to rub at their fingertips, digging in backpacks or purses for pens or keys to pry with. nevertheless, the superglue held and the coins remained on the sidewalk for a long time to come. i don’t know when they finally disappeared.
for those of us who actually think coins count as money, it’s natural to stop and pick up coins when you see them, the whole find-a-penny-pick-it-up-thing. the little jar at home fills up and is, surprisingly, a good sum of money when it’s up to the tippy-top. so when we passed the two pennies in the UPS parking lot, david bent down to pick them up. one heads-up, one tails-up. i immediately yelled, “no! don’t touch them!” it was the very beginning of the pandemic and touching ANYthing without sanitizer nearby was a formidable act. it was too late; david had picked them up. so he brought them over to the sidewalk by the UPS store and laid them on the window ledge. i wonder if they are still there.
the quarter was on the trail when we were hiking last week. it made me stop; it’s a quarter, after all! i looked at david, pondered, then shrugged, and, against every reflex, left it there and hiked on. the not-picking-up-free-money-guilt set in but not enough to break the don’t-touch-it-pandemic-rule. i wonder if it is still there.
in this time of so-much-change and the use of so-much-technology, i find myself thinking of those times, over four decades ago now, when things seemed simpler. coins counted, ink-laden-copy-machines slowed us down. i think about the relics that were left behind.
and i wonder, forty years from now, when i am 101, what will those relics from this time, this time of pandemic sweeping our world, look like? what will they be?
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.
in the wee hours of the dark night, long island sound is quiet. crunch and i would sit in his boat, inky skies punctuated by a million stars and the lights of the shore, our fishing together comfortable, a thermos of coffee to share, some conversation. treasured memories now, i was adrift with one of my best friends and completely at ease.
we were probably 12 or 13 when the sunfish sailboat we were in became becalmed. sue and i sat out in the middle of the big pennsylvania lake and, with no wind from any direction, started laughing. we were in no danger; we had already capsized a couple times and had survived that. but we were a distance from the shore and i don’t remember there being any paddles in that little sailboat. at some point my uncle must have realized our predicament and came out in his speedboat with a towrope. the sunburn decades-faded, i was adrift in that lake with one of my best friends and completely at ease.
as we sit in the middle of this pandemic, this time of change and this time of no-change, we feel motionless, even stranded. we are learning patience, we are learning to slow down; we are learning. we are changing our expectations and our measurements of success. we are marooned in a vast water, drifting, unsure, way out in the deep. but all around us are others who are generously sitting with us, sharing, nurturing us, also drifting. our sails are buoyed with winds of kindness, our anchors a steadfast dedication to the well-being of all. we are grateful for the goodness of brilliant minds, the commitment and sacrifice of front-liners, the respect and honoring of that which keeps us all safer and healthier.
and one day, as we look back at this time, for surely it will someday be a memory, we will see that we were adrift with our best friends and, though trusting and in the care of each other, it truly was a time of unease, the shoreline was not visible and the fathomless water in which we were stranded was way bigger than us.
delayed gratification. it’s something we are growing used to in these days of days. anticipatory glee. it’s all an exponential wait-for-it. as relatively impatient people, these are mostly new learnings. there is no date on which we can hang our all-will-be-normal hats. we must vamp until we know.
a long, long time ago, in the end of march, there was an opinion written by a woman with two teenage daughters who had a new appreciation for the way her grandparents lived. she expressed that these grandparents owned a tiny home and had simple furnishings. they took pleasure in the most basic of things: dancing in the living room, watching a bare minimum on tv, sitting on the porch, crossword puzzles, having conversation, walking the familiar sidewalks of their tiny town over and over again, handwashing the dishes. in the midst of this pandemic she could see their shining appreciation of the smallness, the stillness. she could see the brilliance.
it occurs to me that we are living elements of her grandparents’ lives; i hope the same wisdoms will be bestowed upon us. in the time after we have finished our work, we dance on the patio, watch little on tv, converse together, in texts, on the phone, on videoconferences, across driveways. we sit on the deck or in the sunroom and watch spring chuggingly arrive. we walk the same sidewalks we have walked together for years, noticing small changes: the heaved concrete or the bloomed daffodils, new mulch in gardens or new sturdy fencing. we cook dinner; we do the dishes. we are both quiet as we wait for what will come and we are just a little noisy in the moment.
to everything there is a season. a time to plan. where we will go, what we will do, who we will visit. gratification, yes, delayed, but sage learnings in the moment.
one of the memorable texts of this waiting-place was one from a friend. after some really serious life conversation, back and forth texting, she wrote, “let’s go out and have a drink.” before i could wonder when we could do that, her next text arrived, “next year,” she added.
in the meanwhile we’ll do the dishes by hand and walk the sidewalks, waiting and planning, yearning, vamping till the song starts.
we took a hike on easter sunday afternoon. it was just warm enough to shed my coat in the woods; spring hiking is better without the shush-shushing sound of a down coat while you walk.
we went to our bristol woods, masks in pockets as we jumped out of big red, eager to get into the trees, onto the paths that have soothed us. there were a few people there; most of them abided by the six-feet-apart rule, although admittedly, there were a few who caused us to roll our eyes in an astonished unspoken question wondering if they lived in a cave somewhere and had no idea that there was a global pandemic.
the familiar paths did their job. we quietly noticed green sprigs springing up between the leaves, a tonal green as you looked off-path from budding underbrush. here and there forest daffodils at the brink of opening to the world; here and there small white flowers nestled between fallen logs.
the soundtrack of the woods was awakening to spring – orioles’ songs, chipmunks scampering, birds we couldn’t see high in the trees singing arias to the sky, the sound of our feet on the trail.
the gunfire in the background was unwelcome in this reverie of renewal, of spring-really-on-its-way, of escape-from-thoughts-of-covid-19. it was an automatic, a gun designed to kill, single shots punctuated by the rapidfire of a clip. it is always unnerving; yesterday it was particularly so. it seemed mindless to me, paying no homage to these very times, these very days.
in the middle of thousands of people who are desperately trying to save over half a million others’ lives in this country alone, thousands of people who are extending helping hands to countless others, thousands of people who are dedicating resources to feed, mask, shelter thousands of others, thousands of people who are reeling from a loss of life, of job, of any security, of any sense of normal, thousands of people who are frightened to their core that they might be the next to succumb to this pervasive illness, the next to struggle to breathe, i couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out any good reason to be shooting an automatic weapon.
waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a yes or no or waiting for their hair to grow. everyone is just waiting. waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their uncle jake or a pot to boil, or a better break or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls, or another chance. everyone is just waiting.
somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying. you’ll find the bright places where boom bands are playing. with banner flip-flapping once more you’ll ride high! ready for anything under the sky. ready because you’re that kind of a guy!
oh, the places you’ll go!”
(dr. seuss)
an eighth rest. these two broken wrists are down from a quarter rest to an eighth rest. and waiting.
we are all waiting. for hours, days, weeks to go by. for healing. we are biding time. on hold. on eighth-rest-repeat.
and in that vast biding of time we are maybe finding that some of the things we have busied ourselves with don’t count as much. and some count more. maybe our time of waiting will reveal to us that which is most important. maybe it will be a time of needed rest. a time of slowing down. a time of subitotacet. a time of honoring those who truly help us. a time of quiet conversation, of learning new things, of disassembled notes gathering together from their places in the stars to form a new song.
we wait. and we don’t know when the waiting will stop. but oh, during this waiting, and after the stand-still-pause is over, oh, the places we will go.
there are moments when both dogga and babycat seem to be on the same page. sweetly tuned in to our every emotion, they put aside their own agenda to curl up, their warm bodies tucked in against one or both of us, just being there.
in this time of necessary and vigilant waiting, as we defer to healthcare workers, scientists, the experts, all in their prodigious work, perhaps this is the most potent aid we can offer. to curl our warmth and any practical and safe help we can muster around each other. to acknowledge each other’s worry, each other’s fear, each other’s process. to be tuned in, to listen, to offer words of comfort. to stand with each other, hold each other’s hands, even from afar. to quietly just be there.
reverse threading 