bflynn

Do not tax yourself with forethought of grief

The world has been different now for about 7 weeks. I remember clearly that last pizza and beer I had, after climbing off a mountain with a friend, as the last day of the world as it was. The next day, with school cancelled, was he first day of the world as it currently is. I read online a statement that Coronavirus completely destroys some folks, while leaving others almost completely unscathed. I am so aware that I am in that latter category. My job remains secure (if requiring plenty of time from me). My home is full of food. My children are well (if at risk of becoming inert elements in front of their computers). My family is all still healthy. So far, I’ve escaped even serious inconvenience.

But even so, the days have been hard. I find that every Monday is worse than the last, attempting to marshall my resources to teach my children, do my job, keep the house, cook the dinner, maintain my relationships. I almost didn’t make it through last Monday, and I am staring at dread with tomorrow morning. (I have a plan. It includes wearing a dress and makeup, in a desperate attempt to channel my inner professional.) A walk in the forest involves people edging to the side of the path, as though you might be carrying some awful, transmissible disease. The main street is full of signs either optimistically promising better days to come, or saying “Temporaly closed” (sic) – a sign becoming faded in the strengthening sunlight. Life is feeling harder every day, as supplies of TP and flour dwindle, and the walls of my home crush me.

Still, there is the great blessing of New England. This has been a long, cold, rainy spring. It seems like those are particularly common after mild winters. We’ve had our fair share of spring snow and rain and sleet and misery. We’ve had weeks where it didn’t break 50. It’s been a great boon to our amphibian population, as every creek and rill and vernal pool is full to the brim of cold water.

But this weekend, oh!! This weekend was the glorious weekend of spring that doesn’t come just once a year in New England, it comes perhaps once a decade. The skies were blue, the sun was strong. The colors were all new-formed, as though God himself had just dreampt them up. Every color imaginable is suddenly bursting forth into joyous profusion, looking new washed and newly painted on the world. We are at just the tipping point between daffodil and forsythia, into tulip and, well, everything. Even the houses look jollier in the bright sun, which portends warmth and freedom and backyards in a way that is utterly and inescapably charming to all those of us who have been practically housebound since October. There seem to be few consolations in this newly-isolate world, but oh. Spring in New England is still one of them.

Confession: this man has brought me breakfast in bed nearly every day for those 6 weeks

Not being a fool, I early resolved that my plan for this weekend was to spend as much of it as was humanly possible outdoors. Given that it’s nearly 11 and I’m still by a backyard fire, I declare said plan fulsomely accomplished. Usually weekends like this would be subject to the whim of the calendar: had I already committed myself? Was it to something outdoorsy? But yesterday I woke to a clean slate of a plan, and (after the delicious breakfast prepared for my by my incredibly loving husband) I started with a five mile run along the bike way that I played a small part in ensuring was here for us, now, when we need it most. The Aberjona and Sweetwater were both running high along their banks, and the trail was crowded with folks enjoying the finest weather we’ve seen in six months. Most of them, including me, were wearing masks.

In glorious fashion, the day unfolded with sleepy hammock naps, letters to friends, and meals shared with my beloved family. I have always said that I cannot relax at home, because there is too much to do. But honestly, most of it has now been done so for the first time in ever so long, I find myself able to just … be. Here. In this 10th of an acre that is my homestead. I spent the whole day happy. I definitely interrogated myself several times over this. The world is in tumult. So many have died. So many have suffered. There is more to come. How dare, HOW DARE I be happy? It isn’t fair that I be happy when so many are caught in sorrow, grief, fear and distress. That is all, unarguably, true. But the thing I’ve wanted to tell you, across many failed blog posts, is that your suffering does not reduce the suffering of others. So if you have a choice between suffering and not suffering, do not suffer.

I have been struck by the poem, “The Peace of Wild Things” since it arrived as the answer to an advent Google search I initiated looking for poems of peace. It is strong enough that many of the lines can speak to you. But the ones that have slayed me – stopped me in my tracks – during this pandemic period are:

I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.

On this most beautiful day of spring, I find myself challenged by the question: will I tax this day to neutrality by forethought of grief (or by focus on the unfairness of my joy?)? Or will I let go. Will I come into the peace of the wild things and take this moment as it is, built on a complex scaffold but for a moment, full of joy? I think of the baby bunny who has taken residence under my porch, and who nibbles on dandylions in my back yard. Do I see that creature as a pestilence-spreading eater of bulbs, destined to destroy gardens before falling prey to the hawks and foxes that prowl my suburban neighborhood? Or do I just enjoy the meek cuteness of its ears, now, when it is a baby and before its destiny is fulfilled for food or procreation? Do I look towards all the consequences of rabbit-incarnate, or do I just smile across baby-bunny.

For the bunny, my decision does not matter (assuming I am unwilling to poison his bulb-eating self). This Coney will live to be a great big jackrabbit, or it will fall food to yet wilder animals. It is not in my power to control. But what I can control is my joy of it, in this moment. I can choose to sit in companionable silence with my little Lagomorpha. Or I can choose to tax my life with the forethought of grief.

So I decided, in this one shining weekend, to enjoy it. To nap in a hammock tied to my dying plum tree, and not look at the blight. To build a fire of the wood I have and not consider the shortage at the hardware store. To serve communion to my husband from the glasses my father brought from Ethiopia more than fifty years ago, and not wonder when I would sit in a pew again to receive communion in a sanctuary. To look at bleeding heart with a full and joyful heart, and not wonder how soon it will be before my heart bleeds. To meet with my friends through the miracle of technology, and not wait until we can be together again in truth.

What would you do differently, if you chose not to tax your heart in forethought of grief? What joy is there for you in the time, in this moment? In an era of grief, doubt, uncertainty and loss, where is it possible for you to find peace?

Programmer, Baker & Cabinet Maker

Back in the old days, two months ago, I used to joke about our 19th century skills. Both Adam and I have them, and have cultivated them. In this current crisis, the 19th & 20th century skills are much in demand. I don’t know a sewer who has not turned their sewing machine to pumping out as many masks as materials permit. All of us are finding ourselves more responsible for feeding ourselves and planning meals around what’s available, what needs to be used & what our children will actually eat. Suddenly we all find ourselves responsible for a much less specialized lifestyle: we must care for and teach our own children, clean our houses, prepare our meals, plan our exercise, tend our gardens and mend our small breakages without turning to the experts we have so often employed for those purposes. The fortunate folks must do that while ALSO maintaining their own specialized expertise. I think a lot about the people who are suddenly and scarily unemployed – and hope that is a very temporary condition.

I found myself thinking of this as Adam and I pursue some of our 19th century interests in support of the life we are now living. As you all likely know by now, I’ve been baking like a fiend, as has Adam. We (ok, Adam) started a wild-caught sourdough, and we’ve made doughnuts, loaves and loaves of bread (Adam), garlic knots (twice), dinner rolls, lemon poppyseed pound cake, hot cross buns, sourdough cinnamon rolls (twice), vegan chocolate banana bread muffins, and truly awful sponge cake. I’ve learned things in the process, like how not to make sponge cake, what autolyzing is (and when to use it) and the differences and uses of active dry and instant yeast. I still have much to learn, especially about how not to be spherical if I eat all this stuff.

Adam has also been toying with new skills. He’s been studying the craft of cocktail making (not helping with the ol’ waistline) and learning about muddling, mixing, shaking and stirring, as well as the balance of tastes.

But into this mix of working full time (or more), trying to raise and teach our children, tending to all the household needs, and pursuing fattening hobbies, we’ve added one more. Last year, we refinished the floor in our hallway, ridding ourselves of the five bookcases that lived there (which were hand me downs twenty years ago) and moving many boxes of books to the basement. The plan was to build bookcases to reclaim our library-hallway. And the time to do that work has finally arrived.

One of the many things I love about my husband is the seriousness with which he tackles learning new things. Right now, next to his desk, you can find a sheet which shows his experiments making boules (round bread loaves) and seeing which combination of techniques and ingredients leads to what outcomes in terms of crumb, density, flavor etc. He also has planned out the attack for the book cases (which are also intended to hold the cat litter boxes in an inobtrusive way) carefully; with lists, measurements, drawings and calculations. It’s really a joy to watch him tackle it, and dig in with all the seriousness and skill he brings to everything.

We all are learning lots about the folks we are confined with during this Corona-era. This joy and thoroughness in learning isn’t a new thing I’ve learned about my husband, but it is one I am reminded how much I love.

Sane in a mad time

“To be sane in a mad time
is bad for the brain, worse
for the heart. The world
is a holy vision, had we clarity
to see it – a clarity that men
depend on men to make.”
– The Mad Farmer Manifesto: The First Amendment
Wendell Berry

Right now, I should be in Terminal A in Logan. Perhaps I would be traversing that long tunnel, lit by colored lights and sped by moving walkways, with man’s triumph over gravity taking off and landing overhead – the sky a checkerboard of contrails. Maybe I’d be stopping at the Starbucks at the end of the long staircase up to the gates. I’d be with Adam. Grey and Thane would be in flight already, headed to Atlanta. It was to be the first time that Grey counted as “accompaniment” and I wouldn’t have to pay extra to fling them into the loving arms of a grandparent. Adam and I would be looking towards an ancient land. Tomorrow morning, bleary eyed, we would land in Rome to celebrate the twenty years we have been married.

But. I will not stand in the Forum Sunday, drinking in espresso and diesel fumes in equal measure. We will not explore the catacombs or marvel at the rococo splendor of the Vatican. We will not see works by Michelangelo and eat pasta made by strong-armed old women, decanting wine and prayers with equal familiarity. Instead, we mark a time increasingly trackless, as we enter our fifth week spent in our homes, morally isolated, masked, in a world we would not have recognized even two months ago. We’re growing weary of gazing at the world through the windows – of our homes, our computers, our televisions. Every vista is framed in by the constraints of the virus.

This all has started to feel almost…. normal. There are mornings I wake up, and don’t think I’m late for the bus. There are days I do not leave the house, and do not mark that I have not left. There are even cheerful days and hours now, where within the inscribed circle of my life I am pleased and even energetic. But every time I find my feet, an aftershock ripples through and reminds me how uncertain and unstable everything really is right now. Layoffs among my friends. Plans for returns two years out. Closings. Deaths. Intubations. Work shifted, changed, urgent or deprioritized. Rumor of pending shortages, as the people who make things and grow food also look through their windows at untended fields and idle factories. My daily ritual is looking at the numbers and ages of those who have died today in Massachusetts from the virus. Yesterday there was an entire page of deaths of people in their 80s, and a second almost as long of people in their 90s.

I’ve tried not to mark what I’ve missed. I delete the calendar entries, trying to forget what has been lost. Del’s funeral, and the beer I planned with my surviving cousins to remember the one who died this fall. Piemas. I have so many pie fillings in the freezer, marked for that date. My children do not like pie. And we were going to remember BJ there. My husband did a “virtual gaming convention” last week, and I kept thinking I heard him over the speaker – where he most assuredly would have been had his heart not given out. I had finagled traveling to Dublin for training. I’d never been to Dublin. Two concerts: Brandy Clark and the Wailin’ Jenny’s. My son had shown astonishing proactivity in signing up for an MIT educational course, which made me proud and hopeful. His 8th grade graduation and dance are added to the pile of “unknown but unlikely”. And we are the lucky ones – we don’t have a senior, or a wedding, or a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Or worse, a farewell and funeral denied and delayed.

Last week, I was talking to my sister and telling her my idea for one of those online quizzes, of your “lasts”. Last in person concert. Last flight. Last conference. Last meal in a restaurant. Last hike. Last night in a hotel. Last road trip. Last in person church service. I’ve held these lasts in my head. Some of them I knew were lasts – the last hike and last meal. But most were unmarked, and felt like part of the relentless pressure of life, piling on event after event and journey upon journey. I did wish that I could step off that relentless track – just for a little bit. I’m trying to be grateful for what is, at very least, a break.

And there are some consolations. I think few of us would prefer this life to our prior one. But I have spent more time with my husband and children than I ever would have, in any other circumstance. There has been more space for thoughts, despite work which swells to eat my extra hours. I’ve had breakfast in bed every morning for a month. I have cleaned things that I always meant to get to “someday soon”. I have watched every single slight move of spring with the hungry eyes of a hawk looking for their prey to clear cover. Have the forsythia and daffodils and hyacinths ever had so appreciative an audience? Have they ever lingered so long? And I am taking great comfort in art – old and new. My gaze has lingered over the watercolors on my walls, painting detail and adventures into their broad strokes. My mind has lingered on poetry, with the extra space resonating words and phrases with unusual meaning. My ears have sought new songs and new singers. And although I am not with my friends, we talk. Via group chats, 1:1s, video calls, yelling from windows – even as we are distanced we still reach out to each other.

There is no chance that we will emerge from this time unchanged. It is not an option. We cannot go back to being who we were, or living the way we did. Even if the world were miraculously the same, we are inexorably changed. What will we be, when we have been transfigured? How will we grow, with the snow on our blossoms? Will we be destroyed, or made stronger? Will we ever be so busy again we cannot see the spring around us? Will we be able to take thing so for granted? We are in a crucible, and our civilization is being melted. We can only hope – and work – to make sure that when we are recast, we are recast to be the best version of humanity we can possibly be.

Guest Post: Dustbowl Dance, COVID19 version

My 14 year old son Grey was given an assignment to write a song about a disaster. He picked the Mumford and Sons Dustbowl Dance for music, and the current pandemic. For those not up on the latest meme culture, here’s some background on his use of “Karen,” as a generic type of person and not an individual. – Brenda

A young lad sits inside of his room
He lies on his floor, attends a class in a Zoom
There’s no one outside and no one to play
He eats food and he sleeps, that’s all of his day

I have been stuck in my house since Winter’s last breath
And my sleep schedule makes me feel like death
I have read and ran and writhed in fatigue
Played so many games, I’m the best in my league
So hurry and quicken o’ science worldwide
Corona’s the thing you need to confront, not hide

Steal my parties and steal my time!
I’m going insane from staying inside
Please I ask all y’all far and wide
Quarantine, then we can shift the tide

Karens, you idiots, look at this place!
America now reeks of fear and disgrace
So everyone quarantines and anti-vaxxers do not!
How can you claim y’all are safe when you got
A disease and then said essential oils could heal?
Are you sure that the reality you live in is real?
You’ll live in your stupor and die with a flu
Corona has more letters than your IQ!

Steal my parties and steal my time!
I’m going insane from staying inside
Please I ask all y’all far and wide
Quarantine, then we can shift the tide

Yes Doctor, yes, Karen died of COVID 19
There were many more things in life she coulda’ seen
But she brushed off reports of the deathly disease
And now her body rots with fleas.

The darkest day

Holy Week is usually one of my favorite, most distinctive weeks of the year. I did not grow up going to Maundy Thursday or Good Friday services – I’m not sure why that wasn’t part of our faith tradition, but it wasn’t. For a generally cheerful person, I’ve always had a soft spot for candelight and minor keys. And Holy Week is full of contemplative music, hard realities and truths that you don’t really want to hear but desperately need to. In a usual Holy Week, I would have been at church Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday & Good Friday (and probably practiced trumpet for Easter at all of them!)

This year is, of course, different. This year, there was no sitting in a darkening sanctuary listening to the 7 Last Words of Christ and watching the light in the parking lot flicker, as I have every single year for two decades. There were no Taize pleadings to Jesus to “remember me when you come into your kingdom”. The days and weeks have begun to blur together in a sameness only relieved by the gradual, gorgeous unfolding of spring.

But even in a normal Holy Week, there is always this Saturday. Today was actually bright and fair, with brisk winds and waxing sunlight, budding trees, vibrant forsythia and the burgeoning promise of a world soon to bloom. There was little dark about it, other than the day’s statistics on the number of dead mowed down by this novel virus. But today, in the liturgical calendar, is the worst day. Worse, maybe even than Good Friday. In the Easter story, today is the day after Jesus died, while his body lay unprepared in a tomb that wasn’t his. It was the day when the disciples and the women woke up – if they slept at all that night – to a world where hopes had turned to ashes. This day abounded in the bitterness of betrayal: Judas’s betrayal (another unburied body). The betrayal of all the plans. They MUST have thought on this day that Jesus could not possibly be who they hoped he was. He was dead, and the Messiah had not yet brought liberation to the people of Israel. They must have felt sick – how much of what he had taught was true and reliable? How much of their sacrifice had been worthwhile? Had they thrown their lives away on just another pretender? And … what exactly was going to happen next? Were they going to follow him to a criminal’s execution? Would anyone be left to be the son to Mary?

Of all the many dark days whose story is painted in the Bible, this Sabbath might be the very darkest. Hope was irrevocably lost. The worst had well and truly happened. The body was cold. More was likely on the way.

It feels a bit like that now, in this pandemic time. All through January and February, watching the headlines, I thought that this virus would burn itself out or be contained, just like SARs or MERs were – or stay distantly awful like Ebola. Like the apostles – or even Jesus himself in Gethsemane – I hoped that this would once again pass us by. But here we are, locked in our homes, in fear and in shock that our world can be so abruptly transfigured. Fear crawls on the back of astonishment, worrying us about how much worse this will become. Will it be my parents who die? Or me? Will I still have a job? Will this be the next great depression? Of all the people I know and love, who will die and be counted in the daily statistics tallied at 3 pm by the governor? When will I venture onto Facebook and learn that I will never again see someone? Or worse, when will that phone call come through that isn’t just a “How are you doing?”

We are in the deep darkness of the Saturday after Good Friday, friends.

But. There would be no Christianity and no Christians if the story really ended as badly as it appears to – if there were no chapters after “So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard.” There was real loss on that Saturday. Judas. Jesus as a living man. Mary never again held her son. The world was never the same again. But in this dark hour, let us remember the Easter story, that out of this darkest of days arose a new hope, so powerful as to reshape the entire world for the next 2000 years. Even death was not the end to this story, as it will not be the end to ours.

Tomorrow, when we rise to pancakes and baskets, we may feel like our cries of “He is Risen” are hollow. Like Easter itself is diminished under our collective grief and fear. But that’s just the thing about Easter, my friends. Without Good Friday and Holy Saturday, it’s just a confection – full of sugar and without sustaining substance. The power comes when we have despaired, and sat with our grief. Then we can truly become part of a world made new, in ways that we could not even imagine possible on Palm Sunday.

Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?

Antepandemian Days

There’s an old word, much beloved of the sort of 19th century poets and authors who took great delight in antiquated, obscure vocabulary, that has been much on my mind lately. The word is “antediluvian“. It refers to a time “before the flood” – it speaks to an ancient period both innocent and evil, of near mythical antiquity. HP Lovecraft was a huge fan of the word, and tossed it in like raisins to his descriptions:

All at once I came upon a place where the bed-rock rose stark through the sand and formed a low cliff; and here I saw with joy what seemed to promise further traces of the antediluvian people. – “>The Nameless City by HP Lovecraft

It is hard to know, right now and right here, just how much of an apocalypse this virus truly is. We have certainly, as humans, seen worse. When smallpox ran like a wildfire ahead of European explorers, it wiped out as much as 90% of those who had lived in the place I now call home. The Black Death killed millions. There is no doubt in my mind that we – humans – will be as triumphant long term over this stark moment as we have been over every other difficult and challenging time in our history. And there have been so many – more than even I know.

Still, it’s strange to be in that moment. It’s strange to have been a full adult in both the ante and the post of our pandemiun moment. I already felt like a part of a liminal generation. Born in 1978, I was one of the last to be trained on the prior generation of skills: typing on a typewriter, repairing a lawn mower engine, formatting a memo, writing a letter. I lived and loved in an era before the internet. But I also got my first computer at four, my first internet connection at sixteen, and one of my first jobs was digital. I have driven cross country before GPS, and can navigate with a map. I also love APIs and have written HTML for nearly as long as “markup languages” have existed.

And now I am at the full flower of my prime right at the moment where the world looks to reshape itself. There is a clear before, and there is a developing hereafter. The day of demarcation is bright in my mind. To me, the world pivoted as fast as it has ever done on March 12. I took a day that was intended to be Del’s funeral and spending it instead hiking in the White Mountains (a choice I think he would have fully approved of). When I left that morning, the stock market was strong, nothing was closed, and even our decision to cancel the funeral was just because it was being held in a “hot spot”. When we emerged off that mountain, self-consciously mindful of keeping our distance from other hikers, the stock market had the first of a historically awful series of days. My son had stayed home sick (with a bug he would share with me – still not sure if that was Coronavirus or not). And there would be no more days of school this winter. All employees in both my and my husband’s company were to work from home – indefinitely as it turns out. That drive home, we had pizza in a trattoria buried in the mountains and I noted it as an excellent find for later. Now I wonder if it will still be there when later comes.

As one of Generation X, I got to set my expectations for what the world was during the most boring decade in history: the 90s. (If you’re wondering, it definitely FELT like the most boring decade in history.) It was an era after war between nation-states had become irrelevant (or fast and bloodless, if required). Vice Presidentials scuppered promising careers with an inability to correctly spell root vegetables. We were all rudely corrected about how safe, how boring, how predictable the world was on September 11th, 2001 (the day the 90s truly ended).

Since that pizza coming off that hike, I’ve had this passage from Matthew (which I just read this winter) rolling through my mind, about that antediluvian era (although I know of no Biblical translation so obscure as to use the word itself):

As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark. And they were oblivious, until the flood came and swept them all away. – Matthew 24:38-39

We have been swept away. Where we will land, on what shore and in what condition, I do not know. I do know that we will continue, and find new ways of being. We will create a postpandemiun society. And it depends on the choices we all make in these days and hours as to whether that society is a joyful one, or one built on fear. Hold on to hope, my friends. There will be a day – sooner than you can believe – where this is all a tale to tell children.

Abundance & Want

This strange time in the life of the world is giving all of us room, space and perspective to see the world through unfamiliar lenses. It’s remarkable what doesn’t change (not enough hours in the day!) and what is fundamentally shifted and may never come back the way it was (tbd). We are all spending way more time with some people, and way less time with others. Our habits are changed – die-hard grocery delivery shoppers like me can’t get a slot while others try it for the first time. Few of us are commuting, and the commute is changed for everyone. We are cooking more and eating more takeout, but it seems like a long time since we sat with friends in a bar, or a movie theater or… anywhere.

This time has also created different senses of lack or insufficiency. Many, many, many people are now encountering true want. Millions have been laid off. Many are in quarantine and struggling to make sure they have enough of the basics. But almost no one can find toilet paper in the stores. With just a small number of hoarders and a small increase in the amount we all picked up for our homes, our incredibly finely tuned system, designed to produce precisely the right amount of TP and not a roll more, is struggling to keep up.

When I was growing up, grocery shopping was a once a month thing. We’d get fill-in milk, eggs and bread, but my mom did one big shopping trip to the base (my father was military retired) about once a month or two. When we lived in Northern Idaho, it was like a 3 hour drive – each way. And that’s how we shopped: buy absolutely everything you might need as though you live in a logging town in the woods 20 miles from the nearest podunk grocery store with five aisles – and absolutely no restaurants. This never seemed particularly hard. By my parents standards, this was the height of accessible food!

This is my parent’s supply drop when they were in Africa. According to my sister this represents 6 months of food. The massive amount of soda here cracks me up – my parents made many sacrifices, but not the sodapop! Of course, this was supplemented with bananas from the garden, eggs, chicken and local foods – which were neither plentiful nor varied. (For the record, I’m the waif in the lower right.) The picture on the wall still hangs in my parents house.

Anyway, this is how I learned to shop, and this attitude remains true, even though we live a quarter of a mile from a (usually) well stocked grocery store. So we were well prepared for a 2 week “eat what you have” plan. But into our idyllic backlog of Costco whole wheat pasta, there came the voice of want. Here I was, watching the Great British Bakeshow with dreams of dinner rolls, pies, cakes and donuts dancing through my head. And Adam makes bread for our family every week – and usually a few loaves to share. But then we did a grocery store run – and there was no flour to be had. We checked the pantry – and the flour supplies were paltry. We looked online, and they’re scalping flour. Peapod was out. Amazon was delivery 25 pound bags only …. in mid April. Costco was out. Target was out.

We began to feel the scarcity. Ah! To be in a well stocked house with plenty of time for yeast breads… and no flour!!! Adam got particularly obsessed. He starting calling Stop and Shop every morning. He went on grocery runs which were ill-disguised flour runs. He got anxious. And then, finally, we found flour at the local teeny Target. Enough flour. We left with 25 pounds of flour (which was our desired amount). And somehow this anxiety we’d been experiencing, this sense of shortage, eased. We had enough. Adam says it was fascinating to watch his own mind, which had been dwelling on wondering what shortages we’ll experience, how our supply chain will hold up, what the uncertain future holds. But somehow, with enough flour laid by, he is more sanguine that this world will work out ok in the end.

This time we will be confronted with unusual and unexpected wants. We are short of toilet paper, socialization, and time alone. But there are also moments of plenty, if we look for them. Did we lay aside enough Coke to get us through six months, like my folks did? Is there an abundance where there is usually scarcity somewhere for you? Maybe a little more time? Maybe more connection with your family? More phone calls? More patiently watching out your window as spring takes over from winter? More yeast breads? Where are you abundantly filled?

Let’s talk about the apocalypse

No, not this one. A mythical one. A seasonal one. A Buffy one.

Back in another era, December of 2018 to be exact, we were enjoying the last lingering days of the year with our neighbors and got to talking about favorite TV shows. One of our neighbors, an incredibly busy, serious-minded person with a high-pressure, high-skill job, a degree from a top college and notoriously little free time, unabashedly shared that his favorite series – ever – was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He’d watched it all the way through many times. And Angel. And if someone really wanted to understand the inner workings of his soul, they’d be well served to also watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Now Adam and I are Grade A Nerds. (He’s playing RPGs online at this very moment. I’m livetweeting inspirational quotes from “The Return of the King”.) But we were in college and young marrieds without cable when Buffy came out, and we mostly just … missed it. I’d never seen a single episode. (I don’t actually watch a ton of tv most of the time.) But in the brief slack of time that happens so rarely, we told our neighbor that we’d watch Buffy if he’d watch it with us. It was the sort of thing you say a thousand times, but never happens. It sounded like fun! There’s no way we’d actually make time to do it, right?

Then next night, we got together, and watched the first two episodes of Buffy.

And then we did it again.

It took us almost 18 months, but we watched every single one of the 350 episodes of Buffy & Angel, finishing the very last apocalypse only a few days before our real lives took a Sunnydale turn to surreality. It was fantastic. Despised characters became favorites. Favorite characters got complicated. People died – sometimes multiple times. Makeup artists earned their keep. And the writing was mostly superb (I’m looking at you Angel season four and much of Buffy season seven). In the middle years of life, so much can seem to run together and become undifferentiated: work, commuting, the needs of the family, the service to community, the exhaustion at the end of the day. (It seems almost quaint now!) But this antediluvian (antepandemiun?) period in my life will be almost most differentiated by this: the four of us on a couch, watching a master storyteller spin a web.

Our traditional spots: I sit between Adam and Tobin

Seemingly months later…

A week ago today, I was commuting into work. I was irritated by it – it was already clear that this was going to be a problem and we shouldn’t be packing together on public transit to go into our 3 foot cubicles. But my work was still requiring folks to come in person. That seems like an altogether distant era – a time out of remembrance. But when I packed up that afternoon, in an increasingly quiet office, I took a long moment to look around. I work on the 25th floor with spectacular views from the heart of Boston. From one side, I can look up the Charles to the rising monuments of Kendall Square, and into New England’s soul as marked by the Citco sign. On the other side, punctuated by a steady stream of massive airliners, are the Harbor Islands and placid waters of Boston Harbor. The other two sides are mostly traffic, gazing down to the Blue Hills and up to the Fells.

I looked at my desk – my hundreds of colored pens, my pictures of my kids, my hilarious and ironic set of “awards” from my coworkers. And I wondered when I would see any of it again. It felt like goodbye. That night I learned the earliest likely date would be April 11th – almost a full month. We will see.

The world has radically changed in the week since that moment. Our kids are home from school. Public places are shuttered. Stores and restaurants are shifting how and when they serve various customers. Every ticket you have to every event is now a broken promise. Hiking trails are packed with people staying six feet apart. All of us are leaning on the internet as a critical lifeline to friends, family and a world outside the shrinking walls of our homes. And we know that for some, this catastrophe is truly catastrophic early. Not just for those who have fallen ill, or who will be soon. But for the economically precarious – suddenly laid off. For the abused trapped now with abusers who are themselves frightened, angry and lashing out. It can feel irresponsible to look for silver linings, especially when the path in front of us is dark and unknown.

But there are silver linings. I will never again get as much quality time with my family as I am getting now. For a month, I will be spending hours of focused, quality time with my teen and tween and husband every day. This was a gift that could not have been purchased in an era where teenage friends were waiting just there. (We also have a functionally infinite supply of board games, which is nice!) The flowering of creativity as people try to figure out how to do the things that are important to them in this era is a joy. I see online concerts, art activities, educational classes and free curriculums sprouting up all over the place. People are experimenting with hundreds of different ways of being together, apart. All of us are learning new tools and new techniques. How may of you have installed a new app, or tried new software, or interacted with something in a new way this last week? I have.

I’ve also seen people really reaching out and caring for others. Packages of chicken soup have been left on my porch. Offerings of errands from people have poured in. Texts and phone calls to see if I’m ok. Prayers. People are really, generally, pretty decent to each other. It’s just that the exceptions get the news coverage.

As we watch the forsythia bloom this strangest of springs, I have hope that we will become our best selves.

I am happy to report that my health is improving. I’m still not 100% (and I’m trying to take it easy), but I seem to be on the way up instead of the way down. Last night, I rested by binge-watching The Great British Bakeoff. I highly recommend this choice. Nothing like the bright colors, the high standards and low stakes, and the delicious looking baking you actually DO have time to attempt to emulate right now as an anodyne for the soul.

The kids are doing pretty well. Thane is dedicating nearly 100% of his learning time to German on DuoLingo. I’m avoiding pointing out that a binging strategy isn’t as effective in language learning. Grey is doing creative writing, and reading “The Stand”. I got some nice company from him when he read a section about a mom dying and then wanted to hang out with me, so that’s nice. We’re pretty glad we got a treadmill a few years ago for winter exercise, especially today which is rather crummy out. And I’m awfully glad to be working at a company doing something to help, even if I’m not on that particular project.

How are things with you?

The first Monday

It’s a bright sunny day here in New England, on this strangely askew morning. The usual stream of cars cutting through our street is stilled. Last night, we sat down with our boys to talk through how life would be in this new era, at least for now. We all need structure, sunlight, exercise, good food, and some sort of meaningful work in our lives to stay mentally healthy. Here’s what’s happening in our family.

8 am – everyone up (including mom)
10 pm – in bed, screens off (can read)

Before Noon: (minimum)
1/2 hour exercise
2 hours learning

Before 6 pm:
1 hr outside/daylight
1/2 hr exercise (1 hr. total)
1 hr. chores (or parent approval) – we set up lists on Google Keep for this
2 hrs learning (4 hrs total)

Here’s the list of things that count as learning for your inspiration!

Adam and I are working full days, of course. Unfortunately, I woke up this morning with a pretty righteous cough. I keep checking to see if I also have shortness of breath. I have a very, very mildly elevated temperature (eg. 99.7). I called the office where I had a PCP, and she has left the office and they were deeply unhelpful “You need to pick a PCP.” “OK, who are my options?” “You can Google it online.” So I also don’t have a PCP. On the plus side, this is an opportunity for me to find a better practice. (They were also pretty unhelpful in non-pandemic times.) On the minus, there is still no testing.

I’m trying to focus on what people would need to know about my work, in case I worsen or need to stop working and, ya know, rest.

On the plus side, Thane is working on his German and Grey completed an essay this morning! Both are now exercising – bike riding and basketball playing! (Thump thump cough shoot).