What a start to the week we’ve had here. A massive storm stalled over Pittsburgh Sunday and dropped upwards of 3 inches of rain in about 15 minutes. For the first time in my life, I got to see big chunks of golf-ball-sized hail fall. You’ve probably all experienced the sound of hail falling. It never occurred to me — though I acknowledge that it makes perfect sense — the bigger the hail, the higher your heart rate gets as the hail hits your 125-year-old windows.
Our street became the Colorado River rushing between canyon walls. I have no idea how fast it was going but I wouldn’t want to get knocked off my feet in that deluge as it raced down the hill toward the big open sewers at the bottom of our street.
Everyone in my little community lost power at about 6:30 Sunday evening, right in the middle of the storm. Losing power is a rare event in the city. We have a great — deeply underappreciated IMO — electrical grid that is almost never out. Unfortunately, the storm was actually enormous, with high windows and torrential rains that got the best of the grid — bringing down trees, blowing transformers and ultimately knocking out power for tens of thousands. We were literally powerless for a little over 21 hours.
As soon as we realized that the power was not going to blink right back on, I began to think ruefully of that box of no-longer-charged external batteries that my husband used to keep charged in case of emergencies. I was also reminded of them by my loving children several times throughout those long dark hours that “Dad always kept those batteries charged.” Yeah, I know. I miss him, too. I also know that, when next I see Ken, I’m going to get an earful about those damn batteries.
Sadly, warm weather and equipment age/inefficiency combined at our house to cause The Great Defrosting, an event that will be retold and elaborated for future generations. We opened the fridge and freezers after the power returned, you know, to evaluate the situation: Melona bars (a treat for the ages) liquid. An entire half gallon of vanilla ice cream (good-bye dreamed of sundaes and banana splits) poured down the drain. I could go on but tears are obscuring my view of the screen.
In truth, we lost a lot of food and hours of work time, but we’re very lucky. We were safe and dry. We don’t rely on electricity to power oxygen pumps or dialysis equipment or a baby monitor. We can afford to replace the food we lost. We work for ourselves so we didn’t have wages docked or lose our jobs because the power was out. Not everyone was so fortunate.
On the humorous side of the whole experience, I was the guinea pig for food spoilage. “Mom, can you taste this for me?” was the common refrain once the power was back on. You’ve really never experienced the extraordinary power of your taste buds until you have been given a generously sized block of spoiled feta cheese, which you put — in its entirety — in your mouth because you are so confident that “it’s fine.” Wow. It’s … well, it’s hard to describe the taste, kind of bitter and vinegary and just really awful. It was decidedly not “fine.”
But we are.
Today is, thankfully, garbage day. We’ll be cleaning out the spoilage and taking the opportunity to assess and reconsider before we stock up again. It’s sad work to throw away food that could, in a different story, have been a community banquet. Maybe, in fact, we don’t need a chest freezer stocked with food. Maybe it’s time to develop some new habits.
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.
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.
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?”
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.
