Our house is very old, a double-walled brick monstrosity built in the 19th century. It’s wonderful, with its wavy windows and hardwood floors with visible nail heads.
The house is painted and there’s only one place to see the color of the bricks, a single exposed kitchen wall. The bricks there are deeply red and pink and reddish brown. They are different sizes too and you can see where the bricklayers used mortar to even things out. Sometimes, when I walk through the rooms, I think about how many feet have trod those floors, how many voices have been absorbed into the walls, how many people have lived and died here, how many teenagers have forgotten that the third step from the bottom squeaks at about 120 dB.
There are many, many inconveniences that come with an older house. It was originally heated only with fireplaces, which means that it’s cold year-around, except in my attic bedroom which is freezing all winter and hotter than a glass kiln from May until November. The electricity was added in the early 1900s and outlets must have been quite a luxury because there are only like 10 in the whole house. As the house shifts and groans through the seasons, the doors stop fitting properly into their door frames. Several of the door knobs only work occasionally which might keep you in or out of a room without warning. On top of all that, the basement walls are limestone and they weep like a grandmother who has buried all her children.
Our house also comes with an extraordinary abundance of bricks. When we first moved in, I was going to plant a vegetable garden in the back. It was terribly overgrown but I like to dig in the dirt so I was ready for the challenge. Two weeks after we moved in, I pushed my way through the weeds, armed with gloves and tools, and discovered, after significant clearing, a brick patio under all that overgrowth. I felt as though I had unearthed ancient treasure.
It’s still there, years later, but it hasn’t been the treasure I was expecting. It quickly becomes overgrown every year by the encroaching ivy that some evil, evil gardener planted. The ivy grows under the bricks and then pushes up between them, destabilizing the patio and destroying my confidence. Each spring, I roll up my sleeves and give myself a pep talk: “This is the year, dearest; this is YOUR year. You are going to conquer that ivy. You are smarter than that ivy; you are better than that ivy. You have opposable thumbs. GO. GO. GO.”
Unfortunately, this isn’t going to be my year for conquering the ivy but we have decided, at least, to embrace that extraordinary brick abundance, currently tucked in every conceivable hiding place. They line some of the garden beds; the Hostas push their way through every year (so do all the weeds, I assure you). They are stacked against the fence and the outside walls of the house. They’re piled in the weedy back and under the deck. They’re everywhere you want to be, just like Visa but without the purchase options. So you think you want to add tulip bulbs to that garden bed? How much do you want to move the 30 bricks stacked there?
What are we planning to do with all those bricks, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you! We’re building a dry-laid container garden. And, oh, what a task it has turned out to be. The weeds! The tree roots! Leveling the ground! The weight of the bricks! We have blisters on our blisters but we’re finally, as of yesterday evening, at the point where we can see the future image of our completed container, which is something of a reward in itself.
I’ve been working on some new poetry. The poems are kind of a spoof of pop culture poems. When I get stuck, as all writers do, I’ll take a break from one project and move to another. Recently, I’ve been focused on food-based poetry, an unexplored poetic theme, in my opinion. Here is a poem I wrote on Saturday:
It’s That Simple
Life is an avocado
Don’t bake it
Slice it and
Smear it on some toast
I have no idea what that means but I laugh every single time I read it (so embarrassing to laugh at one’s own writing).
Every morning, generally between 7 and 8, I take the dogs outside, into our tiny, fenced backyard, for their early morning constitutional. They wander aimlessly while I call muted encouragement to them. Occasionally, one of them will look up at me and wag a cheery “hello,” before returning to their completely off-task sniffing.
We have chipmunks, squirrels, and bunnies residing in our yard. The chipmunks are cocky. The squirrels are defiant. The bunnies are timid. My dachshunds, bred to the task of running down and killing animals, are fantastically effective at finding the chipmunk and bunny burrows. They are, thankfully, completely ineffective at tracking or capturing. On several occasions, they have surprised critters in their burrows. The dogs stand, noses next to small tunnels, tails wagging happily.
Mina, the digger, will attempt to enlarge the tunnel, to what purpose I have not yet discovered. I’m pretty sure she hasn’t either. I usually stand on the brick patio during these early morning raids and watch chipmunks leaving by another exit. Not once, not once, have these fierce warrior dogs noticed that … er, Alvin has left the building. (I’m so sorry.)
As my dad would say, we lowered our ears this weekend. Saturday was warm and sunny, a perfect day for setting up the outdoor barber shop. I trimmed Ian’s hair, teasing him with “oops” and “don’t worry I can fix that.” I definitely took too long though. We had to leave his bangs very long so he could join his discord Pathfinder game. It’s supposed to be sunny here on Saturday so Imma sharpen those scissors for Trimming Round Two.
I try to walk two or three miles every day, usually late in the afternoon. Since I’m a meanderer by nature, I walk wherever my feet take me. Do I start or end my walk going uphill? Will I visit a park or walk through a neighborhood? Heavy traffic or side streets? It was on one of these little journeys that I had an epiphany for a physically distant, socially connected birthday party for my son. Because we all have good, gaming headsets with microphones, we were able to talk and laugh and tease and play ridiculous party games for about 3 hours with 10 wonderful friends. It was joyful and celebratory and turned a somewhat glum birthday into a wonderful memory. We even made stupid, hilarious tshirts.
How has your cooking been going? Since my last blog post, we’ve made black bean chili and buttermilk cornbread, chicken with stuffing, garlic chicken breasts, baked chicken wings, and barbecued ham. Someone in the house (my son) has suggested that we may be eating too much chicken but that’s just (stir)crazy talk.
We’ve also made some treats. When I was a little girl, it was a huge treat to make nutmeg muffins. We only rarely made them and I loved them like flowers love the sun, like early birds love the worm, like Hepburn loved Tracy, like Mina loves digging …. ANYWAY, the muffin top was the queen. After the muffins came out of the oven, the tops were dipped in butter and a cinnamon/nutmeg/sugar mix, making the top slightly chewy, buttery, and a little bit sweet. The cake was tender with just a scent of nutmeg — you know what I mean; when you bite into the cake, there’s just a whiff of a scent, gentle, enhancing without overwhelming. Heaven.
They were so fragile that the muffin tops, on occasion, fell off during the dipping. But I’d just plop them right back. Ta da. I always thought that no one knew but it must have been obvious that some of the muffin tops weren’t attached. It is also possible that I ate the majority of those muffins and that no one ever found out because I ate all the muffins with loose tops.
This week, I was looking for a little breakfast-y treat for my son, who isn’t much of an eater, especially not a breakfast eater. Nutmeg muffins, which I haven’t made in 30+ years, popped into my head. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find Mom’s recipe (though I haven’t given up) so I turned to the internet for help. The second recipe I tried was a beautiful success, so close to my memory of the original that I might even be able to fool Mom. The biggest changes are that I now make mini-muffins instead of the large-ish originals and that I freeze some for later.
I also made a dairy- and egg-free chocolate cake. It was so easy to make that I was suspicious but it’s delicious and even better on day 2, if you can stop yourself from eating it all on day 1.
My youngest is completing eighth grade next month. Because the school terminates at eighth grade, they have a sort of graduation ceremony for the students. All that will be online this year, of course, but they’ll still have some of the usual rituals, including a slideshow with pictures of each student. He’s assigned me the job of digging through our archives for pictures of him and I’m in hell. It’s already an emotional roller coaster — we’re leaving a school we’ve been at continuously for 19 years. I feel another door closing and I can’t see what’s next. It brings Bell’s quote to mind: “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”
April is poetry month. I wrote a bunch of really bad, sad poetry. I give you, for example, the following in an AB rhyme scheme:
A Sunday In March
I’m watching you dying
Your cheek I caress
The doctors are trying
No news, they confess.
They now need to cath you
Of course I say yes
A vial of blood too
My fear I suppress
This act was you choosing
To end your distress
Your win means we’re losing
Perhaps no redress
There’s no higher being
To comfort or bless
Can’t bear what I’m seeing
No more happiness
There wasn’t much music in our house when I was growing up. We had a mid-century style stereo record player but we only had a few records from the 40s and 50s, big band stuff mostly, and Christmas albums, which we’d play sometimes in December. I can remember getting a Jackson 5 album (I think it was GIT but I’d have to get it out of storage to confirm!) and a Carpenters album for my 7th birthday but I didn’t play them much.
My dad, who could not have been called an early adopter of technology, bought a stereo with an 8-track player sometime in the mid to late 1970s. The details are a little cloudy to me — I think he unveiled it at Christmas — I can remember sitting in our very uncomfortable living room listening to 8-track tapes of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings but Dad’s favorite song was “Take This Job And Shove It.” And that’s really all I have to say about Johnny Paycheck.
After we got the stereo, I would sometimes sit in the living room on a Saturday and listen to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 broadcast. When I got a radio for my birthday, it was a REVELATION. I could sit in my bedroom and listen to whatever music I wanted … sort of, as long as it was on a radio station that I could get and IF they played that song … but, of course, that was the world we lived in.
I didn’t have a tape player for a long time but as soon as I did, I, like everyone from that era probably remembers doing, breathlessly waited for the DJ to play my favorite songs and hurriedly pressed “record” to tape the song so that I could replay it over and over. Nothing was worse … nothing … than having your tape player jam and damage your precious cassette of music recorded from the radio, often with the DJ talking over the beginning and ending of your songs.
Mostly, though, when I was growing up, I can remember my mom turning off the “noise” and sighing. “Silence,” she’d say. “I just want silence.” I don’t have any memories of her listening to music or singing along to a song on the radio. None. That can’t be right. I know she must have liked some music but I have no recollection of it. On the other hand, my dad’s mom, nicknamed Grandma Myrtle the Turtle Traffic Light (MtTTL) by her two adoring granddaughters, loved music. She would sing along to the radio in her car. She’d sing while she was cooking. She’d sing with us while we were taking walks around the neighborhood. I don’t recall her having a good voice but, honestly, in my memory, her gravely singing just makes everything better.
Her favorite television show was Lawrence Welk. Whenever she was with us on a Saturday, we’d watch him conduct and my sister and I would dance around the room like goofs. Now that I’m going through Grandma MtTTL’s old correspondence, I have been reading about all sorts of dances and parties she went to in her teens and early twenties. No wonder she loved all that big band music. That woman was a PLAYER. It wouldn’t surprise me AT ALL to find out that she made bathtub gin.
Ken loved music too, as I’ve mentioned before, and gin, actually. I think he and Grandma MtTTL probably had a lot in common. He was a huge classical music lover and spent nearly 20 years compiling a digital compendium based on a pamphlet someone had written about the 100 best classical performances that every music lover should hear. One time, he and I had great seats at a PSO performance. We were sitting in a nearly empty row by an elderly man who was discreetly conducting the concert from his seat. The man even had a binder with the sheet music. We never found out who he was — music critic, PSO staffer, fan? It was delightful. That man was enthralled and his joy became our joy.
What are you listening to during your quarantine? Music, birdsong, the TV, your own internal monologue (stop that!), your neighbors yelling? In addition to my Spotify playlists, I’ve been “watching” (really just listening as I work) NPR Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts: Lang Lang, Kevin Morby & Waxahatchee, Black Thought (he’s an actual example of that overused word, genius), Michael McDonald, Tarriona Ball (Tank from Tank and the Bangas). I’ve really enjoyed them all.
Speaking of listening and noisy neighbors … I had a huge fight with mine — not the 90 year olds (!), the other one — on Sunday because she installed security lights, with the wattage of the noon sun, facing into my backyard. They’re motion-activated so, of course, they came on at 10:30 Saturday night when I went outside with my dogs. I turned when the light came on and stared into the eclipse sun. And then blink, blink, blink. My eyes!
Sunday, when I asked her to turn her lights into her own yard, she said, “I’ll try to accommodate you if you keep your dogs away from the fence.” Guys, she was referring to MY fence. She wanted me to keep my dogs on the other side of my postage stamp lawn because my dogs’ presence made her dogs bark. Oh, lordy, it got super real. Later that afternoon, she came outside, apologized, asked if we could start over, and moved the light. Yay and all that; but imagine how much better that entire situation would have been if she’d just listened to my objection and responded with kindness. Sigh. Neighbors, amirite?
Anyway, that night, late, I was working on a puzzle in my room, windows open to let in the warm breeze. It was quiet, no car sounds, no one walking around outside. Suddenly, there was the most god-awful noise, a shriek to make your heart stop, to raise the little hairs on the back of your neck.
I looked out the window and saw a huge cat (it might have been just all puffy fur, honestly) chasing my neighbor’s black and white prowler down the street toward my house. The shrieking continued as they fought. I’m leaning, arms on the window sill, kind of laughing as I watch the cat drama play out and I hear a man say, really loudly, “What the f**k is that sound?”
Immediately, a woman answers, “Yes, what IS that?” (Apparently other people have their windows open.) I’m laughing out loud now. I say, “It’s a cat,” as I look down at the two critters now fighting on my sidewalk. “No s**t! That’s a cat?” responds the man. “Yep,” I say. And then he adds, “Thanks, and uh, sorry for my language.”
I listen to music while I’m writing. Since I write for six or so hours a day, that’s a lot of music. This morning, my Spotify playlist selected “September,” a song you can’t listen to without getting a mood boost, even if you’re already in a good mood as I usually am. There’s nothing better than sitting down at the computer and fighting with my characters while listening to Earth, Wind, and Fire.
As I’ve said before, I no longer experience that late Sunday dread that used to ruin half the weekend. Monday is, as it should be, just another day marking the Earth’s rotation around the sun. This particular Monday is cloudy and springtime-warm. My windows are open and birdsong intermingles with the music.
While out to do the shopping last week, I took some baked treats to my son’s apartment and put them on the porch, wrapped in Clorox wipes. He came to the door and for just a moment, he stood there, while I stood in the street, and we talked — not close enough but almost too close for safety.
In the early days of quarantine, there was a frantic feel to shopping. Many people were over-buying, their voices shrill with fear. Last week, it was different. The shelves are mostly still empty and there are only a few people in the store. Costco limits the number of customers now so I waited by a cone they used to mark proper distancing until I was offered a sanitized cart.
In the refrigerated section, a very confused man was trying to select a container of milk from the cooler while his unmasked partner berated him from behind the cart. “The one with the BLUE label, Bill.” She coughed into shared air space several times while I watched from a safe distance, waiting for my turn to get milk with the blue label. She saw me watching her and coughed into her elbow.
“OH MY GOD, Bill, what’s the problem?” She looked at me. I think she wanted to bond over her shopping partner’s stupidity but I was — and still am — totally team-confused-guy. Not getting the response she wanted from me, she walked around the cart, coughed onto the glass cooler door and picked out a bottle of milk, while making tsk noises at her poor partner.
“Oh,” he said. “I couldn’t tell which one was the blue label.” I’m still wondering if he’s colorblind or if he didn’t realize that he was in the cooler section where there are ONLY blue-labeled bottles. Did she confuse him by insisting that he get a bottle with the BLUE label when there was no other choice available to him?
Although her cough was decidedly smoker-ish, with an abundance of caution, once they had passed, I selected my blue-labeled milk from a different cooler.
Leonard Cohen, “Who by Fire,” just started playing. He was once described by Scott Simon on NPR as having “a growl of a singing voice that seems to simmer and grumble up through the chords, almost like an earthquake.” Isn’t that lovely?
The rain has started, quieting the birdsong but creating its own accompaniment to my playlist. The sound also reminds me that there’s a clog in one of the gutters. I can hear the splash of water overflowing onto the patio. Either I need to borrow the neighbor’s 30-foot ladder or call someone to clean out the gutters. I hate to put the neighbors to additional risk, which is the only reason I’m not automatically doing it myself. I’ll have to enter their house to get the ladder because they’ve reached the point where it’s too heavy for them to move. I know this because I borrowed the ladder last spring to clear away the ivy growing up our back wall.
Back to the shopping: They have a table on their porch where I’ll leave food treats (she loves cookies but doesn’t bake much anymore) but when they see me, they insist on opening the door to come out and talk. Inevitably, their older spaniel bolts out the door and drops on his back for a belly scritch. He’s a cutie but I feel like I should stay back to keep them safe.
When I do their shopping, they’re supposed to text me the list (she’s an enthusiastic texter) and sometimes they do. She’ll text me, out of nowhere, something like “white flour no hurry,” which makes me laugh. It reminds me so much of text conversations with Ken. He used to text a single word and allow the recipient to build the meaning.
Anyway, last week she insisted on giving me a handwritten list, wrapped in a clorox wipe. Have you ever shopped for someone else? I used to get a list from my mother-in-law but I’ve fallen out of practice. Last week, I made the mistake of accepting the list without review but of course there were questions:
2 pizzas. You know exactly what to do with that if you’re shopping for your own family but what kind of pizza does your 90-year-old neighbor like? “No pepperoni” was the texted answer. Turns out there wasn’t much selection left, just lots of pepperoni (stuffed crust, extra cheese, etc) or the last two vegetarian pizzas that weren’t on a cauliflower crust.
2 apples. First, apples don’t seem to be a big quarantine staple. The store had an abundance of Fuji, Red Delicious, Macintosh, Granny Smith, Yellow Delicious, Kante, and Gala. “Gala,” she answered after a lengthy delay.
Small dog bisc. I almost bought Milk Bone without asking which would have been a big mistake since she wanted no-dye biscuits which I took to mean no red and green Milk Bones. Even so, I definitely got the wrong brand but she texted that Busby is enjoying his new treat.
She says that she too is enjoying her new food experiences. Her poor, long-suffering husband — who she is definitely going to murder before quarantine ends — was apparently in a food-buying rut. Regarding the flour situation: although there’s no flour at our Giant Eagle (Well, that’s not entirely true. You can still buy Quinoa flour. Hehe.), Costco offers a 25 pound bag for about $6; she took 10 pounds of it off my hands.
That huge bag in my pantry makes me hear my mom’s voice in my head — “Add bay leaves,” she’d say. “They’ll keep the bugs out.” We’ll probably use it all before summer but I’ve already added bay leaves just to be safe. The food shortages have been interesting to watch — I know, I know. Everyone is saying that it’s a distribution problem, not a food shortage problem. You say toMAYto; I say toMAHto. Whatever the reason, the end result for the consumer is lack of product on store shelves.
Anyway, the first week or so of quarantine, there was no ice cream in the store. The next time I shopped, there was no bread, no jelly, no eggs, no packaged luncheon meat/cheese, no frozen dinners, no flour or yeast. Now, there’s no pizza, no fresh lettuce, no meat or chicken, no flour, six packets of yeast(!), very little dairy, but they have ice cream.
Cars lined up to receive fresh produce, frozen food and dry goods from Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank April 6, 2020. Photo Credit: KDKA
If you’re poor, the distribution problem can be life-threatening. Our food pantries and food banks are amazing but it can be hard to connect to people who don’t have access to a vehicle to wait in an hours-long car line for food. I’ve been thinking about the woman I’ve talked about before, the one who showed up as we were cleaning up a food bank distribution years ago. She was late because she had to borrow $2 so she could buy a gallon of gas in order to drive to our distribution site. How is she managing now? Even if her situation has (hopefully) improved, there are many whose situations went from precarious to catastrophic.
Spotify has now served up some Aretha Franklin, “I Say a Little Prayer,” a solid way to end this particular post. If you live in a walking neighborhood, like I do, I encourage you to take a walk around. It’s okay. You’re allowed to go for walks. Look at the empty storefronts of the little businesses in your community — the pizza shop, the movie theater, the diner, the consignment store, the neighborhood bar or coffee shop.
Look at the signs on the doors; as I’ve said before, some will not recover. Believe me; these places are, for some, their family business, their lifelong dream. They’re going to try to be there when this is over.
Those small business owners are losing sleep, just like the furloughed workers. They’re wondering whether they can continue to pay the bills while there’s no money coming in. That cruise line, that airline, that major hotel chain — they’ll be okay. But your neighborhood is going to be forever changed by the loss of the businesses that define it.
Please be patient.
Wear a mask if you’re going to encounter other people.
Send help. We’re baking too much. Our neighbors can only eat so many baked goods. We’re in isolation: I can’t go out and buy larger pants!
Seriously, though, we (when I say “we,” I really mean my daughter; my only job here is taster) … anyway, “we” have made macarons with blackberry compote for the filling , banana bread, and chocolate-dipped shortbread cookies just in the last 5 DAYS. That’s in addition to all of the delicious savory dishes we’ve been making. I made a pot roast with lots of root veggies. She made stuffed pork chops. I grilled a flank steak. She made spicy baked chicken (with lots of garlic). It’s been fun and one of our biggest successes in all of this has been learning to cook smaller so we don’t have a lot of leftovers.
We’ve spent a few evenings playing scribble.io, an online version of Pictionary that allows you to create a private group. Since one of the family lives in an apartment, we can’t be together physically but that hasn’t stopped us! Because we’re also a gaming family, we put on our gaming headsets, create a group call on discord, and set up a private group on scribble.io. For at least an hour, we talk, tease, connect, and draw (some of us — me actually — quite badly).
If you are struggling to connect with family or friends, I recommend trying an online group game/tabletop simulator. Physical distancing may be a hellscape but technology does enable social connection in a variety of healthy ways beyond skype calls. Let’s all acknowledge here that Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok are not included on any list of healthy ways to connect.
This is the first time we’re going to mark a birthday without being together physically. I KNOW that many people are struggling with loss and distance. Missing a birthday together is part of my personal grief. It doesn’t dismiss the devastation felt by the first responders and health workers who encounter the virus and counsel the families and transport the sick and dying. It doesn’t devalue the grief and loneliness of the isolated, especially those who are alone and elderly. It doesn’t reduce the struggle, as real and relevant as anyone’s grief, of our extroverted friends who find ALONENESS as difficult as some find togetherness. Most of us are struggling. As some Twitter-stein said, “It’s okay not to be okay right now.”
So, what will we do to celebrate the 14th year since my son’s birth? I think we’ll have a meal he likes and a treat of his choice that we can make at home and for the rest, we’ll see. There will be no stress, though, no virus talk, no discussion of risk models and vaccines.
We’ve been taking more family walks, looking for good rocks, bird feathers, acorns, blossoms, and other hidden treasures. On Friday, we were walking our three dogs down a less frequented path in the neighborhood when we discovered a bird trapped by a fallen snow fence. I would have taken a picture except that I held all three dogs’ leashes while my daughter released the bird and the dogs tried desperately to .. er, help?
After I finish writing this afternoon, we’ll probably take another walk and then I’m going to work on my new backyard project. I’m dry-laying a brick raised bed garden. There are approximately sixteen gazillion (just an estimate) bricks all over our backyard from some long-ago project of a previous owner. (He also left approximately one and a half gazillion golf balls). After some planning (and stalling), yesterday, I broke ground, hauled a small fraction of those bricks (I’m hoping that I hauled the heavy portion yesterday and that all the other bricks are lighter), and then, started the work of removing roots and digging trenches. It’s great fun. I have an extra hoe if you’d like to come over and try it at a safe distance. In fact, just to be sure we’re appropriately distancing, I’ll stand inside the house and watch, while you’re digging.
We have a routine — not perfect — that keeps us mostly on track, appropriately fed, and somewhat active. Every day, my son has his first call at 9 or 9:30. We get together after that to check Google Classroom for upcoming assignments and plan his day around his schoolwork. He has a daily video conference from 12-2 (all of you adults who video conference know how hard THAT is) and then we break again, take the dogs outside, and eat a light lunch (peanut butter jelly time, peanut butter jelly time!).
Monday Fondue
Yesterday, I was feeling a little peckish at like 4 and had a snack epiphany. Several years ago, as a joke, I got the kids fondue mugs (“personal fondue” if you’re looking on Amazon). They’re fun for an occasional small treat (each mug holds maybe a half cup of fondue). Yesterday, I pulled them out of the cupboard, melted a little chocolate and ransacked the pantry for a handful of dippables — Ritz crackers, chocolate chip cookies, marshmallows, pretzel sticks, potato chips, strawberries. It was a fun, silly break. One of these days, we’ll try cheese instead of chocolate.
Dinner explorations continue. A couple nights ago, we had flank steak and home fries. Last night, it was chicken and a lovely salad with field greens and some of those fondue strawberries. Late yesterday, I grabbed a couple small roasts (BOGO!) while I was out picking up a prescription at our local grocery store. We’ll probably make one of those tonight with some po – TAY – toes and carrots.
Meat and potatoes was a standard meal at our dinner table growing up. I have a vague memory of my mom browning the roast before putting it in the oven with potatoes, carrots, and little white onions. Did she season it? I don’t remember, honestly. It was delicious though; and then, a couple days later, since this is all before microwave ovens made leftovers tasty, my sister and I would “get” to put the remainder through the meat grinder and we’d have hash with a runny egg for dinner.
Peach tree is blooming!
Most nights, we play a game together after dinner. We aren’t tired in the same way, now, but we are tired of the monotony already. We stayed outside as long as possible over the weekend. The weather was lovely and we puttered in the backyard, sat in the sun, played with the dogs. I could hear the birds and the neighborhood kids squealing in their yards. Once I heard an airplane and, while I had noted their absence, I was startled by the sound of one, which tells me they are becoming rare.
I’ve seen some jokes about what dogs will do when we get back to life after quarantine. But I worry more about what WE will do after quarantine. Do we have enough mental health professionals to treat the healthcare workers suffering from PTSD, the family members whose loved ones died in isolation, the service workers whose jobs don’t return, the small business owners who lost their dreams to quarantine (I hear a poem, do you?)….
We act like we’ll just return to life pre-quarantine as though it’s the day after vacation but that’s not reality. Think about the places you visit in your communities. Which of those won’t survive or will be drastically changed? The breakfast places, the independent booksellers, that hole-in-the-wall bar or pizza place, or the little DnD store. Those owners, right now, are trying to figure out if they can re-open, if they can re-hire their staff. Our communities are going to be forever changed by this pandemic and by the way our state and federal reps, governors, mayors, and … yes, president … manage through it.
Who knew pancake mix and syrup are quarantine staples?
I’m not being political here. This is just truth — look at New Orleans (or Puerto Rico) and my comment in an earlier blog. Some places will never recover. Oh, sure, Target and Walmart and Starbucks will probably be fine but will Ritter’s re-open? How about D’s Dogs n Suds? Or Cafe on Main? Our communities are bound up in these places. If we lose them, we’ll lose a part of ourselves. I can’t help but wish that our economic focus was on saving our communities rather than the cruise industry.
All day long I’ve tried to write a gentle, loving note to honor this horrible third anniversary of Ken’s passing but the only thing in my head is an anguished cry of grief for my best friend. “Why are you gone?” are the words bouncing around in my otherwise empty head.
Why are you gone?
I can’t laugh about how irritated Ken would have been by our isolation. He — the man who never went out without first strategizing all the reasons why we could stay in — would have chafed at the restrictions, not because they aren’t necessary but because anything, once denied, is that one thing that we long for most. If he had lived, he would be one of the most at risk and we would have been far too protective of his health, which would have irritated him even more.
Why are you gone?
Tarriona “Tank” Ball, of Tank And The Bangas, once said, “There’s some areas of New Orleans where the storm has never passed.” I think about that a lot, and not just in reference to New Orleans. Recovery, resilience, isn’t a solo activity. It requires support; for me, it requires support from the one person who can no longer give it. Ken would have loved the eclectic poetry of Tank And The Bangas’ music. He would have been the person to say, “I have a new artist for you to hear.” He would have known about them before they were famous and would have celebrated their success as though he himself had discovered them. He would have been impatient with my grief, would have hated that I’m crying as I type this.
Why are you gone?
Today, a red-headed woodpecker sat on a tree branch outside my window. He climbed the trunk like a squirrel and pecked for a bit. Sometimes it was so loud, cartoonish, like the Woody that many of my generation grew up watching. Sometimes, it was a quiet tap, as soft but insistent as the tree branch against the glass when the wind blows: tap, tap. I feel his presence in everything and nothing. Sometimes, like that woodpecker, he seems to shout in my head but when I most need him, the only shouting is my own. “Why are you gone?”
If you came here for an uplifting “we’ll get through this together” post, I recommend that you leave now. We can all pretend that leaving a blog unread is like opening the conference room door, realizing that you’ve accidentally joined the wrong meeting and scuttling out, embarrassed but, at the same time, grateful that you didn’t sit down. If, on the other hand, you aren’t sure why you’re here, welcome; I’m not sure why I’m here either but we’ll be here together. Some days, that’s all we can ask for.
Over the course of my life, I’ve spent a lot more time in hospitals than the average healthy non-healthcare-employed person does. There’s a quiet rhythm to the experience. You figure out how long you’re allowed to be with the patient. You pick up on the hospital routines. You learn how things like food, testing, room temperature, and parking work. After a while, if you are there long enough, you get to know the hospital workers and sometimes they get to know you.
One time, in the midst of Ken’s illness, the lady working the register in the cafeteria looked at me and said, “You’ve been here a lot. Lunch is on us.” Since lunch was usually 2 or 3 hard-boiled eggs and an iced tea, it didn’t cost the hospital anything, really; but I remember the experience and the way it made me feel — a small “I see you” kindness. I made a similar connection this past week. In the hospital cafeteria, very late in the day, I asked the grill cook if I could have a bun to make a chicken tender sandwich. He looked at me and said, “Shh. I am making you a ‘burger’.” And then he proceeded to make me a chicken tender sammie with melted cheese, fresh lettuce, and tomato slices. Honest to dog, I nearly cried. I was so tired and so sad and there he was being gently kind. I told him how much it meant to me and he just smiled and said, “good.”
I readily admit that I am flailing blindly through my life, no self-burn intended. If life is a series of plans fulfilled, my life has been a series of, sometimes intricate but more often simple, plans made and then discarded because of … everything else.
More than half of March has been just that. First, I was knocked askew by some sort of non-COVID-19 respiratory illness. As I’ve mentioned before, I have moderate-to-severe asthma. I can go weeks without needing my emergency inhaler but a respiratory illness usually means a daily puff or two for me. With this recent illness, I used more than 50 doses in four days. It was as bad, if not worse, than epiglottitis. At least with that, my throat just closed entirely and I didn’t have to ask myself if I needed hospital care. (Okay, so, actually, even that time, I didn’t go to the hospital; I went to the urgent care facility. They panicked and called an ambulance … but that’s a whole ‘nother story of me being stupid.) The point is that, if I get COVID-19, I’ll be one of those people who takes up a hospital bed.
Shortly after I was back on my feet, someone very dear to me was hospitalized for a completely unrelated reason. I spent the next 11 days living by the hospital rhythm, dozing through the night on ridiculously uncomfortable chairs or curled, knees tucked, on “sofas” clearly designed for very short people. While all this was happening, the world was shutting down. New protocols were being implemented every day at the hospital. They limited visitors to one person at a time and I started to worry about being banned altogether.
Because I was spending so much time at the hospital, I didn’t do the usual shopping and had a bit of a list when I finally had the opportunity to visit my local Costco. The things we needed were readily available (please don’t tell my dogs that there were only 4 bags of dog food left at the store!) but I’ll confess to being surprised to see people pushing two carts, one with six or eight cases of water and the other with stacks of other shelf-stable things like bleach, vinegar, 25 pound bags of flour and rice, sugar, pasta. I knew about the pandemic but I did not expect the hoarding.
Over the years, we’ve had students from Nepal, Sri Lanka, The Maldives, and Bolivia stay with us and all of them have asked to see the glorious abundance of our grocery stores, something they’ve heard about but never experienced in their own countries. Yet, here we are: hoarding toilet paper and bottled water. I don’t understand hoarding generally but I’m especially puzzled by the bottled water. Are people expecting a complete breakdown of our infrastructure? Or are they panicking because they lack basic information about what to expect? I fear that it is the latter.
Since we’re distancing, we’ve started cooking more elaborate meals, with my daughter usually taking the chef role. Over the last several days, we’ve made meatballs and sauce, chicken pot pie, pork stew (heavy on the veggies), cottage pie, and pizza, homemade crust included. In addition, we were treated to a delicious roast, a gift from a friend.
We’re liking the family meals in the midst of all the crazy. We’ve always been close but as we hear people “joking” about how much they dislike their families, we feel so unable to relate. Tonight, during dinner, we played (and cheated) at cards with alacrity and a great deal of laughter. Earlier today, we gardened and played outside. I am so grateful for the opportunity to be home with them.
My son starts distance learning tomorrow. I think it will be a challenge to keep him engaged while I continue to work at my own job but I am reminded of my husband’s advice when our kids were little. He said that our role, as parents, is to create a love of learning. If we engage with our kids about the things that interest them, and we encourage them to explore those things, we create a world in which exploration is their reward. So, we’ll follow the distance learning requirements as best we can and then when we need a break, we’ll go outside and break geodes, dig in the dirt, watch bugs, and maybe take a walk or two.
And if you start to despair, jump on Twitter (who would have guessed I’d ever say that!) and visit Sam Neill (yes, the actor) for poetry, BroadwayWorld for living room concerts, Earyn McGee for “Find the Lizard,” the Urban Birder for bird trivia and pictures, Steve Martin (yes that Steve Martin) for Banjo balm, and so many more. The more you physically isolate, the more opportunity there is for social connections, even for introverts like me.
An agent — we’ll call him Agent A — wants significant revisions to one of my manuscripts. He actually probably wants a different story than the one I offered him. Now I’m terribly conflicted: do I change Jooney’s story (she’s my main character) or do I write him the story that he’s looking for? I love Jooney and I’ve invested a lot of emotional energy into her character arc BUT if I don’t make the changes, perhaps her story will never make it to print.
Regardless of my decision, I feel the need to offer some applause for his choice insults. Many years ago, as I think I’ve written about here, I was part of a project team that received some glorious feedback. If you’re going to insult my efforts, I want you to go all in. Don’t tell me that I suck. That’s uninspired. Say, instead, “Your website sucks sea water through a rusty scupper.” Now, that is an insult! I’d like to meet that person and tell them how much I still admire that phrasing 20 years after it was offered.
Agent A does not think Jooney’s story sucks and his comments did not reach these glorious heights. He did, however, provide some input using a charming amount of alliteration. And for that, he definitely gets points.
The writing process is so painfully personal that it can be hard to separate oneself from criticism. This is not the career path for the sensitive. I, however, am delightfully insensitive, and I’m having a great time! One agent even called me a meanderer. Since I AM actually a meanderer, I felt very SEEN. That’s an agent who gets me.
I missed a writing day this week to attend a funeral. It was in another city so I spent 4 hours in the car for a 30 minute service. However, in exchange for that, I did get to spend about 5 hours with a dear, quite elderly, family friend. The family asked me to be her chauffeur. Because of their own grief journey, they didn’t want the task (she walks very slowly and is starting to have memory problems) but I found it lovely.
We didn’t attend the graveside service because it was a torrential downpour (with no shelter!). Instead, while we waited for the wake to start, we chatted and drove around the city, visiting places she hasn’t seen recently. The day was an unexpected gift in the midst of their loss and sorrow. I’ll have to make up the time (I do have deadlines, people!), but I’d do it again in a heartbeat. None of us know how much time we have left.
Speaking of loss and grief, have you taken the time to watch The Farewell? It’s a movie about a Chinese woman who doesn’t know that she is dying of cancer. Her family throws a fake party so they can all see her before she dies. The movie includes a lovely exploration of the Qingming Festival, which I’m coincidentally also reading about in a Grace Lin story called Dumpling Days.
Writers are supposed to read a lot. It can be tough, not because I don’t enjoy it, but because the days are already very long. By the time I pick up a book, I’m often so exhausted that I only get through a chapter or two before I’m dozing over the pages. That doesn’t stop me from juggling books though! In addition to Dumpling Days, I’m currently reading Stay Sweet (by a local writer and I had high hopes but I am sad to say that I’m really not enjoying it), Beloved, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone (almost finished!), and a free online economics textbook called Economy, Society and Public Policy, a book club read about how all of these things actually work together. (It’s a lot more enjoyable than the title makes it sound. If you have an interest, speak up and I’ll share the link.)
Back to work: while I ponder Jooney’s future, I’m working on a time travel novel. It’s full of danger and sand and deprivation, which seems to be a continual theme for me. I’ve been playing with this story for several months and have about 8,000 words down. It’s a middle grade novel so it will be around 30,000-40,000 words. The really dark novel that I’ve also been writing is at about 12,000 words right now but I have a lot more to do on that one. It’s probably going to top out at about 80,000-100,000 words. There was a time when I couldn’t really envision finishing a story but here I am, writing three at a time.
When I was a little girl, my mom made a cake that we called fasnachtkuche (in case you aren’t familiar, it’s pronounced faa – s – naht – kook – a). It was a staple in our house, not just a food to be eaten before Lent. I have no idea where the recipe came from but it is not even a yeast-dough so it’s nowhere near authentic. Perhaps next time I’m in my grandmother’s recipe box I’ll find an earlier version that someone modified for convenience and speed.
Imagine my surprise to see that Merriam-Webster published an article this morning on Lent and the origins of fasnacht, which is a shortened version of our beloved Pennsylvania German (at one time more commonly called Pennsylvania Dutch) fasnachtkuche. One of the rare arguments Ken and I had was over this word. I insisted on calling Mom’s cake fasnachtkuche and he insisted that it wasn’t German and that it wasn’t even a word. Turns out we were both right. It’s not German but it IS a word.
My eldest was planning to come over on Friday to make my mom’s peanut butter cookie recipe for a party he was going to on Saturday. We made these cookies recently (and turned them into chocolate-ganache-filled sandwich cookies) as a gift for a friend. They were such a hit that he was asked to do it again. Unfortunately, a big coding assignment interfered with our culinary plans.
Growing up, I probably made those peanut butter cookies at least once a month. They were large — the size of a saucer — and crisp on the outside, rolled in sugar before they were baked so they’d darken to a rich, golden brown. They were sturdy enough for an ice cream sandwich, great with coffee (so my mom used to tell me), and a hot seller at every marching band and literary club bake sale.
So, anyway, on Saturday morning, I made them. My son stopped by with his friends on their way to the party and picked up the 8 dozen or so cookies (less 6 that I kept for us to nibble). It felt like we were carrying on a tradition and my mom would have been thrilled beyond words to know that she was a part of it.
I don’t mean to sound like a cooking blog (!) but I will confess to feeling a strong connection to my family when I open Mom’s old cookbook and trace her writing on the food-stained pages or pull out her or her mom’s recipe box, looking for a specific handwritten card and maybe, too, a bit of memory.
A few years ago, one of my cousins asked if I had the recipe for lasagne that our Italian Aunt Emilia brought to our very Irish family when she married our uncle. The garlic! The oregano! This may shock you but I didn’t learn to cook with garlic until I married my Italian husband. I have no memory of a garlic clove ever entering our house when I was growing up. For sure, we had garlic salt (sprinkled on the toasted, buttered Italian bread we ate with our Ragu-covered spaghetti) but I KNOW you aren’t going to try to argue that garlic salt is anywhere equivalent to cooking with fresh garlic.
Unfortunately, I did not have Emilia’s recipe. My cousin thought she’d written it down for my grandmother but if Emilia was anything like my lovely Italian mother-in-law, the recipe was more like “a little bit of this, a pinch of that” than an actual recipe. My grandmother may very well have taken one look at Emilia’s recipe and given up. When my MIL lived with us, she explained her sauce recipe as I wrote. It didn’t fit on a recipe card but my husband made it many times, freezing the sauce in bags for later use. He was never quite satisfied with the recipe, though. I know, I know; partly he was trying to recapture a taste memory, which is difficult to do, but I think there’s more to it.
The one thing that can’t be captured on a recipe card is the experience that comes with tasting and refining your recipe over generations. Margaret knew what to add if the sauce was slightly more acidic than usual or the onions weren’t quite as flavorful. It’s not on the recipe card because she probably wasn’t even aware of the little tweaks she made as she cooked.
Even if it’s not quite right, we still use that recipe. I just gave my son the last bag of sauce we had in the freezer. On Saturday, the house will smell again of spicy onions, slightly sweetened tomatoes, oregano … and garlic, lots of garlic.
I don’t participate in Lent; but if you do, I hope you’ve had some fasnachtkuche today — authentic or not — and that your fasting brings you closer, in empathy, to Christ.
