As I stood at the window a little after noon today, a tufted titmouse landed on the sill. We looked at each other for a moment before he warbled a sweet note and flew off, leaving behind only two small bird footprints in the snow that has been falling steadily for several hours.
I’ve been thinking about friends and family. Certain lyrics — “…we all will be together, if the fates allow” — resonate. I miss my distant family deeply. More than once this year, I have had to argue myself out of going to events that I wanted to attend with a longing that nineteenth century writers expressed so well because they knew what we’ve forgotten, that sometimes you cannot be where you want more than anything to be.
Although we are not religious, we decorate a tree every Christmas. Many of the ornaments are pictures of family or are handmade, like the pictured snowflake from my mother-in-law. We bought this year’s tree from Gene, a veteran who sells fresh cut trees in a small parking lot behind a gas station in the East Liberty neighborhood.
It’s as seedy as it sounds and Gene may be the nicest man you’ll ever meet. In his 70s, he’s tall with the ramrod spine of a man who spent some serious time in uniform and he barks orders like he’s still wearing the insignia of a leader. My kids aren’t used to authority figures and they were delighted by his “you do this” and “you carry that” teasing demands. Perhaps we would not have made particularly good soldiers but we jumped to obey his commands as though we were. We talked about him the entire ride home and agreed that, if the fates allow, we’ll buy from him again next year.
If the fates allow …
Tristan’s 2020 Wreath
A week before the zoo was shuttered by the new closure rules, we were blessed to make our annual wreaths at their fundraiser. They changed the structure this year, reducing attendance to 3 masked families at a time and using their auditorium to ensure that we had a lot of social distancing. The four of us shared a big round table, laughing and teasing each other while we decorated our wreaths.
Haley’s 2020 Wreath
I took lots of pictures of my three blessings as they leaned into each other and discussed their creations. Then, we squealed (okay, Haley and I squealed) over the prehensile-tailed porcupine named Rianna who was happy to eat her dried mango and pose for pictures (per the handler, don’t touch her tail unless you want to spend the rest of your day pulling quills from your torso).
Ian’s 2020 Wreath
Ian’s wreath is a treatise on the failures of capitalism in a pandemic. It’s not outdoor-friendly so we’re using it as a table wreath to maintain its quality. Also, it can’t hang because it’s very heavy!
Might have a poem to share before year-end. It depends a lot on my brain which is a dangerous thing to rely on these days.
Wear a mask. Stay safe. Don’t let your guard down; we still have months to go before the vaccine is widely distributed.
I woke up at 5:30 in the morning recently with two phrases swirling around in my brain. One of them, “mourning for one’s self,” is from the poem “Melancholia” by C. Dale Young. The other, “slip this skin,” is from the Bruce Springsteen song, “Streets of Philadelphia.” Did you make the same connection I made — growth, change, fear? I wrote most of the poem right then, in my phone’s notes app. It still needs some polishing but I like the idea it represents.
The last month has been busy. I’ve been submitting poems to a variety of poetry festivals and literary journals. In addition, I’m STILL editing the novel I finished. Plus, I just finished the first draft of a picture book. I’m absolutely in love with the main character so I’m going to put the story away for a couple weeks. I can’t edit my little guy until he’s no longer in my head.
Like poetry, picture books rely on a small number of words to convey their message. Having grown up as a writer in the minimalist writing movement, I really appreciate the goal of requiring every word to matter, every word to carry a significant amount of the weight of the idea. Have you ever listened to an audiobook and been suddenly yanked out of the story by a word that is just wrong? When you’re writing 100,000 words, an untidy word here or there is pretty easy to miss and less impactful than in a story or poem that’s 100 words long.
I’ve been working on sestinas lately. The form is really challenging: six stanzas of six lines each and a final tercet, which is a three-line stanza.
That isn’t what makes it challenging. The six final words of the first stanza are the final words (in a changing order) of each stanza of the poem. For example:
Apples red (A)
Sunshine yellow (B)
Leaves green (C)
Sky blue (D)
Clouds grey (E)
Puppy brown (F)
Earth brown (F)
Blood red (A)
Eyes grey (E)
Sunshine yellow (B)
Ocean blue (D)
Grass green (C)
Motion-sick green (C)
Chocolate brown (F)
Depression blue (D)
Flame red (A)
Butter yellow (B)
Stone grey (E)
Do you see the pattern for the next three stanzas? The ending tercet is usually AB, CD, EF, though it’s a little more flexible than the overall form. The challenge of a sestina is conveying the idea without becoming repetitious or overly rhythmic. My first try at this form was almost a chant and very frustrating.
All poetry forms take a lot of practice honestly. I’ve said before that Jericho Brown’s Duplex form, which involves a word re-use somewhat similar to the sestina, is wrenching to work in. The Duplex form is two-line stanzas which, according to my son, is so fast-paced and immersive the reader can’t catch their breath. Jericho Brown deserved the Hell out of that Pulitzer.
One of the forms I find immensely frustrating is haiku, which I may have mentioned before. My husband was particularly good at it and, worse, he made it look easy. Some people describe the form as “single breath poetry.” For example, here is a haiku I wrote recently:
Autumn leaves falling
To a migrating wing beat
Wintersong calling
I’m annoyed by the rhyme of the first and third stanzas but I like the staccato sound, which matches the rhythmic imagery of leaves falling and wings beating as birds fly south.
Speaking of migration, we have a problem in our house: migrating critters. I’ve found four mice and a chipmunk on the first floor in the past month. I’m sorry to report that I was not alone in the finding. There were two pups (the third disdains hunting rodents) and three cats involved. No critters survived the event, unfortunately.
Finding five leads me to a passionate interest in knowing how many small creatures have successfully moved in. We’ve not previously had unauthorized tenants. I have thus informed the pets that they are failing to cover the cost of their residency and that I expect better work from them. They have all responded with wags but I am not optimistic since they immediately went to sleep after our discussion.
It’s time to get back to work. I’m writing a middle grade horror short. It’s a commissioned project that doesn’t pay particularly well but I am enjoying the exercise of writing horror.
Have a delightfully spooky day and, please, wear your mask….
Sometimes, I’ll read or hear something that takes root in my head. Maybe a week ago, Sam Neill — yes, that Sam Neill — posted a video on Twitter about his Gran. Several times during the 2 minute video, he called her “a lovely old thing” as he talked about how blessed he was to have lived with her briefly when he was about 7 years old. This poem is about my “lovely old thing,” my paternal grandmother, Myrtle, who died when I was 17.
She Was a Lovely Old Thing
She never walked when she could
Stomp or glide or march, mowing down
Every obstacle, physical or mental
No doubt or hesitation, ever
Stayed her hand or her feet
Or her voice
If there was music she was dancing
And when there was silence she was still dancing
Though you probably wouldn’t know why and
She wouldn’t tell you because
Your opinion didn’t matter and
She would even say that if you asked
When she walked in the room
People sat up straighter and
Waved, even if she wasn’t looking
And if she stopped beside you and
Put her hand on your shoulder
You knew what a blessing was
So far as I know
She was never afraid of anything
Though of course she was
But she would never, ever let it
Change her or alter how
We were allowed to see her
She lived fiercely and when she got sick
I didn’t know what that meant and
Then, when she died
The sun fell out of the sky
And I finally understood
What she’d been saying all along
Today would have been our final Kennywood picnic at the school we’ve been a part of for more than 19 years. Of course our sorrow is as a paper cut to the gaping wound that is 2020 for many people. It is unfair, though, not to recognize the reality and truth of our own grieving. We join with many graduates who lost the opportunity to say good-bye to their younger, fully outgrown selves as they look toward whatever comes next.
It was a complete shock when a group of teachers showed up at the house this afternoon with an air horn, balloons, a gift, and a graduation sign, personalized, which they stuck in the lawn. Secretly, I think my son was pleased, though his demeanor was … er, understated.
I was thinking, last night, about our years at that school and I wrote the below short poem. There’s another thought about this bereavement floating around in my head like Emmet’s double-decker couch but when I try to grab hold, it slips away. “Pazienza, Bella,” my mother-in-law would say. She would nod as she said it and, maybe, pat the back of my hand.
Time has stepped
Into its wing-ed shoes
And flown
Leaving behind
Only the deepening bereavement
Of memories
The helicopters aren’t circling outside my window today, the first time since the protests started. There were two, one higher in the sky and one low enough that sometimes I could just spot the pilot. I’ve gotten so used to their chop-chop-chop that the absence of their sound feels like a warning. I hope the rain, and not something more sorrowful, is what keeps the protesters away. Things became violent here on Monday. We could smell the smoke on the breeze as the police used gas and smoke canisters and rubber bullets on members of our community.
As I sat on my little deck in my tiny backyard Friday morning, the early sun shone in a stripe on the bright pink-red flowers of our weigela bush. I looked up as I finished reading aloud a poem I had written about a hummingbird. There, hovering above the flower cups of the weigela in that brief strip of sun, was a little gray hummingbird. I watched as she lingered for a moment, sipping from various flowers, before darting off to parts unknown.
I can’t share the poem. It’s part of a book that is currently with an agent; fingers crossed, my friends. Most of the work I’m producing right now is for specific projects and I can’t share it … this after setting myself up on Instagram to highlight some of my work, though I did post the hummingbird spoken word below that is not included in the book.
My name is hummingbird
And I’m here to say
I don’t flap my wings
In the usual way
I make a figure eight
Which is kinda cool
It helps me fly and hover
Yo tiny birds rule
Most of my children’s poetry is written in quatrain, some of my more adult stuff too. If you are looking for a brain exercise, I recommend giving it a try. (It’s not hard!) Don’t try to be prophetic or deep. Just pick a subject and give it a go. I like to write poetry that makes me laugh, though, unfortunately, a lot of the stuff I end up writing is pretty sad. I think it’s just the nature of the path my feet tread.
We had a dog guest for a few days last week. She did not enjoy her stay. My dogs didn’t enjoy her stay either, to be honest, though they accepted our guest much better than our guest accepted us. She went for walks, growled at my dogs, napped on the sofa, and tried to jump onto the kitchen counters/ dinner table. Her efforts to steal food caught me a bit by surprise. My expectation that she would eat the dog food I gave her caught her by surprise so, overall, I think we can call the experience a draw.
Although my plans went awry, I did, initially, expect to make one of my mom’s signature dishes, German potato salad, over the weekend. My kids have never had it but it was a staple growing up. For almost every picnic we ever attended, Mom made German potato salad and lemonade cake.
In my memory of cutting up the onions for the potato salad (my least favorite childhood job, perhaps tied with grating cabbage for coleslaw), my mom is still younger than I am now, teaching me the difference between onions for meatloaf and onions for potato salad. “Don’t chop,” memory Mom says. “Slice them thin so the warm sauce coats the onions and makes them soft.”
Saturday, late afternoon, I discovered a tiny bunny who had somehow gotten herself trapped in the window well. The kids took charge and, after putting on gloves, they rescued the baby, who screamed like she was being targeted by a hawk. She has a paw injury so we’re currently keeping her safe in a pet-free area while we await the re-opening of our local wildlife rehab center. I must say: she has absolutely the best ears I’ve ever seen.
One last thing: For many of us, today is a day like any other. That, my friends, is privilege.
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.
