Tag: Pandemic

Let Me Not Forget

If we ever get through all of this…

“What do you want to continue doing, to remember, from all you’ve learned during the pandemic?”  An acquaintance of mine posed that question to several of us.  “What’s the most important thing?  And what have you done to take care of yourself through all of this?”

For me, the answers rose steadily and quickly:  The most important lesson I have learned from months of plague and lockdown, the one thing that I want to remember always and to continue, is appreciation. And the one vital thing I’ve learned to do to take care of myself is to intentionally express gratitude.

Never again do I want to look at a calendar and say to myself, “Great.  Five family and friend birthdays this month!  I’m not going to have any money or any weekends!”  Rather, I want to think joyously, “Time to be with the ones I love, gathered together, without masks, without fear; hugging, grabbing up the little ones to lift them high into the air, jubilant to be in one another’s company.”  I no longer want my sense of astonished wonder and absolute delight to be invoked only by astounding sunsets or exquisite rainbows or rare astrological phenomena (although I certainly don’t want to relinquish those experiences, either).  But I want to retain the lesson that we, all of us, have learned and sometimes still are learning from isolation: to value the most unpretentious enjoyments of daily life; all those things we had always taken for granted and then were suddenly denied.

I want to go to that restaurant a friend prefers, the one that I’m really not crazy about, and appreciate being out, having a meal together.  I want to be humbled by the opportunity to hug my family members.  And I want to know, in humility and gratitude, what it is to sit at the bedside of a sick friend, or to bring them meals or help with their housework, or to have the privilege of holding the hand of someone who is dying.

Put most simply, I never want to forget what it has been, still is, to not have these things.

And that is the crux of the matter, isn’t it?  We humans forget so easily.  Oh, we say we will remember—that history will not repeat itself, because we shall never forget, but we do.  Life moves on; we place one foot ahead of the other and walk away from the sad, the bad, the painful and uncomfortable memories.  We forget.

And it is for that reason that, every day that I am still privileged to go on walking this weary world, to breathe and live, I want to remember what it was to spend days in continual isolation while intentionally expressing gratitude.

I recall the long hours of lockdown, and the anguished, unbearable loneliness, as I recounted in “Surviving the Lockdown” (April 8, 2020).  As I waited vainly for an occasional e-mail, text or phone call from friends and family who did not, as I do, live alone; who did not even comprehend how desperately I needed communication, human contact of any type, I realized I had to find some way to make myself care about whether I survived.  And that way, it turned out to be, was not just to find, each day, something for which I was grateful, but to intentionally mark that gratitude in verbal or written form.

And so I found myself being grateful for all the time I had to catch up on long-neglected chores.  Without the excuse of social interaction to distract me, many of the things I’d been meaning to do forever, such as washing all the crystal in my china cabinet—those things were done at last.  On the rare occasions when I had to drive somewhere for necessary groceries or to care for an elderly family member, I was grateful for the lack of traffic.  A nervous driver always, tooling along roads that were almost empty was heaven to me!  I was grateful for my pets, as talking to and petting them sometimes kept me sane—and I told them so, sometimes weeping my loneliness into their furry coats.  These and so many other aspects of my life during lockdown I learned not to merely think about with gratitude, but to speak that gratitude aloud, or write it down; note it, with intention.  “I am grateful; I am grateful…”  Gratitude, I discovered, was a bridge from depression and angst to acceptance and peace.

And now, almost daily, I remind myself: Let me not forget.  Let me not forget appreciation and intentional gratitude.  Let these be the lessons that I take from the long and fearful months of isolation and anxiety.  Let me remember, always, what it has been and sometimes still it to not  have the simplest pleasures of daily life; to not have contact and communication with other human beings.  And let me now, having those things once more, be fully sensible of them, completely appreciative, and forever intentionally grateful.

If something in this post appealed to you, you might also enjoy “Three Things”, which you can locate by scrolling down to the Archives below.  You find it listed May 20, 2020.

 

No Pleasure In Being Right

Saying, or at least thinking, “I told you so!” is usually one of life’s evil but genuine little pleasures.

I’ve seen the words written, heard them said, time and time again. “Believe me,” they always begin. “Believe me, I take no pleasure at all in being right.”

Bull puckey, I’ve always thought. Saying, or at least thinking, “I told you so!” is usually one of life’s evil but genuine little pleasures. It is vindication, justification, and smug certainty all wrapped up in one self-satisfied and self-righteous package, and it feels great. Absolutely great. I rarely actually say those words, but I have been known to think them loudly. Very, very loudly. And never so much as with the Covid-19 pandemic.

From the first whispers of news about the virus, I felt concern. This could be, I told myself, every bit as bad as Ebola, and quite possibly worse. I mentioned this to a few acquaintances, who accused me of fearmongering.

Predictably, those same acquaintances never referred back to that conversation once the pandemic was underway, but I had the grim satisfaction of knowing my worries had been justified.

Next came the photos smuggled out of Wuhan showing hospitals beleaguered: dead bodies lining hallways where the still-living sick awaited treatment. Having learned my lesson, I said nothing to anyone, but told myself, “This is going to be worse than bad.” Again, sadly, I was right.

The newswires hummed with the first officially recorded U.S. case of Covid. I shuddered; I knew what was coming. A few weeks later, Trump announced that the virus would “…go away in April”. I rolled my eyes so hard they almost lodged in my hairline.

Deaths attributable to the virus began to soar, and I held one hand to my aching head—sadly, again correct.

I compared my own experience with a mystery respiratory illness, and those of family and friends, to the officially-recorded arrival of Covid-19 in the U.S., and disbelieved the official timeline. Months later, my supposition was proven right as postmortems and testing of blood bank contributions confirmed that the virus had been circulating much earlier than originally thought.

As each new stage of the pandemic was encountered, I questioned the endorsed stance. I should have been placing bets; I would have raked in the cash! We don’t need to wear masks. (“Yes, we do.”) Ah, we DO need to wear masks, but it won’t be necessary to lock down the city, the state, the country… (“Yes, it will, and it’s going to happen.”)

Then, blessedly, the vaccine was developed. Though breathing a sigh of relief, I continued to worry. After all, I was admittedly not a fan of the way children’s vaccinations are administered, considering some of them to be poorly-tested, and a few even outright dangerous. Would everyone accept the necessity of being vaccinated for Covid? I doubted so. Again, sadly, I was correct.

The CDC made the startling announcement that those who were fully vaccinated need no longer wear masks in public situations. “That’s insane!” I remarked to myself. “An honor system? Are they crazy?” Well, yes. It quickly became clear that this strategy had failed just as badly as their initial, “no need to wear masks” policy.

Meanwhile, in those states where both vaccination and mask mandates lagged, case counts began to mount, overwhelming local ICUs with the sick and dying. Once again, unhappily, I had been right.

As each of these missteps and errors and failures to take the virus seriously mounted up, my satisfaction in being right became ever more bitter. Each step of the way, I had accurately predicted a terrible outcome; each time, I had been proven correct.

It was awful.

Finally came the recent August afternoon when I, watching an Indy auto race with my Dad, was horrified as the camera swept over a packed infield: wall-to-wall people, and no masks at all. No social distancing, no masks. It was the second of three races being held in Indy that day, my Dad commented casually, and I felt my heart skip a beat.

Superspreader.

The vaccination rate in our county was less than 50%.

Assured that I was, as I had been all along, on track to a correct conclusion, I dared send an e-mail to several contacts considering the possibility that these auto races would prove to be a superspreader event. I was quickly and roundly lectured by one relative, who deviated from my actual question to soapbox about individual freedoms, pronouncing didacticly, “We can’t lock down the country again!” Another derided my concerns, noting that the Indy 500 in May (which had been held with both a mask mandate and social distancing requirement) had not proven to be a superspreader.

Less than two weeks later, by August 23, the New York Times reported that Marion County, Indiana’s Covid case rate had soared by a terrifying 79%.

I did not bother remarking on this predictable outcome to those who had disputed my remarks.

But I finally–genuinely, sorrowfully–understood the truth of that old saying which I had always disparaged. I took no pleasure whatever, none at all, in once more being right.

If you can stand yet one more article or essay about the restrictions of Covid-19, you might also like reading “When Life Was Simple (Sigh)”, which you can locate in the Archives from February 24, 2021.

December 26, 2019

I am horrified now to realize that I might have spent a full day carrying and spreading a potentially fatal illness

On December 26, 2019, at two o’clock in the morning, I woke with a dry cough. Sitting up on the edge of my bed, coughing steadily, I blamed the roughness in my lungs on the unhealthy combination of my asthma and all the ghastly cigarette smoke I’d been forced to inhale at a relative’s house on Christmas Eve.

Since I was due at a medical lab at an ungodly early hour that morning for blood tests (note to self: Never ever, never again schedule an annual checkup following a month of overindulgence between Thanksgiving and Christmas!), I piled my pillows high to breathe more comfortably in an upright position, and slept a little longer before rising for my appointment.

Later, minus six vials of blood, I hurried to break my fasting status (more junk food, before I had to face the awful results!) and then dropped by my favorite discount store to load up on post-holiday sale merchandise. But my cough worsened as I piloted my cart through the store, so I checked out with very few purchases and drove home, planning to use my nebulizer to clear the ongoing asthma attack.

Good intentions, road to hell… I arrived home to find a message on my house phone (why, oh why, did he not call my cell?!) from my father, saying he was heading to the ER with breathing difficulties. Of course, he neglected to mention the ER of WHAT HOSPITAL??! Since he never actually turns his own cell phone on, precious time was wasted in tracking him down before I rushed off to the hospital. I remained there most of the day until Dad, made more comfortable, was admitted in the late afternoon and settled into a room. Then I drove to his house to care for his lonely little cat, check his home security system, and haul in his Christmas gifts, still sitting in his car.

Yet even as I’d remained at Dad’s side throughout the afternoon, I’d struggled to suppress my ongoing cough. I couldn’t in good conscience abandon my father, yet I was uneasy. A full day of wheezing? Could this really be no more than a reaction to cigarette smoke? But I had no other symptoms, not then, and years of asthma have made me blasé about the condition. I told myself that I just needed that nebulizer treatment.

But as I drove to Dad’s house, a tidal wave of illness crashed over me. My head began to swim; every muscle began to ache. Arriving at his home, I seriously considered just collapsing there and sleeping on the couch. But I knew my own pets were probably waving protest placards and chanting unpleasant slogans regarding my failure to provide dinner. So, despite a quickly rising temperature, I drove home. Half-hallucinating, I was actually startled when I automatically raised my garage door and drove in, for I remembered nothing of my route home but feverish dreams.

I cared for my pets and collapsed into my favorite armchair. I would remain there for the better part of the next four days, aching, chilling, headachy, feverish and coughing; actually unable to walk up the stairwell of my own home to my bedroom. Although the worst of my illness seemed, at least initially, to be over within a week, I suffered a relapse on New Year’s Day, and continued feeling absolutely dreadful for weeks, coughing continually long after my fever lowered.

My brother, who had taken over with Dad when I dropped, fell ill next; his wife followed, all of us sharing similar symptoms. Meanwhile, a friend living in another state who is usually healthy suddenly fell seriously ill of pneumonia; one of her acquaintances then lost her spouse to pneumonia. And if all this sounds like possible cases of Covid-19, well, then, so it does. But on the day I fell ill, the epidemic in China was still carefully under wraps; their first coronavirus death had not even been acknowledged until December 8.

Long months later, I would read about random blood samples collected during that December which were found to exhibit Covid-19 antibodies, proving the disease had been infecting people throughout the U.S. far earlier than initially known. So I’ve since given much thought to the undefined illness my family and friends experienced that winter, and the horrifying reality that I might easily have spent a full day carrying and spreading a potentially fatal illness, all the while thinking it was nothing more than a totally-undeserved smoker’s cough bequeathed me by others’ cigarettes. That realization overwhelms me with guilt.

I remind myself that none of us living had ever experienced pandemic, and that when I fell ill even the medical community was unaware that Covid-19 had already begun to spread. But whether we suffered Covid-19 or not, and as the victims and fatalities from the Delta variant mount up, I hope that none of us who’ve survived these turbulent and painful months will, in the future, ever again take lightly even the hint of communicable illness.

At this spot, I usually refer readers to an earlier blog post–but there is nothing in the Archives of my past blogs that in any way relates to this essay. Of course, with the possible exception of those who endured Ebola, none of us living in the late 20th and early 21st centuries had ever experienced a plague! Pray heaven we never do so again.

When Life Was Simple (Sigh.)

I long for the days when running an errand merely meant picking up my car keys and putting on my shoes.

I am ironing coffee filters for my masks.

Early on in the pandemic, when masks were not easily available, I read recommendations for creating them from doubled tee shirt cloth with a filter pocket filled by a flattened coffee filter.  Testing had shown such three-layer homemade masks to be efficient at stopping virus particles.  And so I made masks, a dozen or more, hand-sewing them for my friends and family, and ironed coffee filters to insert in the pocket.

Later, cloth masks having become readily available, I purchased a half-dozen expensive but comfortable coverings of thick, double-layered soft cloth.  But then (of course), recommendations changed. Double-layers weren’t enough in the face of virus variants; no, a triple-layer mask was necessary.  Buy new ones, the Pandemic Gurus recommended.

New masks not being planned in my budget,  I began double-masking and returned to inserting a coffee filter between the two masks.

And so now I stand at the ironing board, ironing coffee filters for my masks, while watching my DVDs of “Downton Abbey”.  I’m watching the episode in which Matthew’s fiancé dies of Spanish Flu.  The irony (bad pun intended) of this is not lost on me.

I long for the days when running an errand merely meant picking up my car keys and putting on my shoes, perhaps a coat or jacket or even a hat or gloves.  Now my errands, those such as I absolutely must run, are an Olympic marathon in preparation and clean-up.

Before even leaving my house, I set a bowl of water in the microwave, ready to be heated for scalding my masks when I return.  The countertop where any shopping sacks will be deposited is protected with wax paper.  I place disinfectant soap, a nail brush, and a spray bottle of strong isopropyl alcohol next to the sink.  I rub the lenses of my glasses (some small protection for my eyes against airborne viral particles; I have not worn my contacts in months) with shaving cream to keep them from fogging up.

In my car, small paper sacks sit opened and waiting on the seat.  One will contain discarded mask filters and disposable gloves; the other, my used cloth masks.  I prepare a mask for each stop I must make, placing the filters between them, and lay out pairs of disposable vinyl gloves on the passenger seat.  Whether the gas pump or shopping cart or door handles or ATM buttons, I’ve touched nothing for months without wearing gloves.  Questioned by one stranger as to why I wore them — “The virus particles are in the air,” she instructed me officiously — I could only answer logically,  “Well, they’re going to land somewhere, you know!”  I check to be sure that I have both hand sanitizer and another spray bottle of disinfectant in the car.

Masked and gloved, I race through my errands (pumping gas, taking a package to the post office, or picking up groceries, almost the only excursions I’ve allowed myself in 11 months) trying always to avoid the cretins in the aisles wearing their masks as “nose-wipers or chin diapers”; changing my contaminated PPE between each stop.  Returning to my car, I strip off masks and gloves carefully, dropping them into the paper sacks,  before disinfecting everything I have touched and sanitizing my hands.

Returning home, I toss the paper sack containing used disposables into the garbage bin and carry the sack with masks into the house. I scrub my hands thoroughly, and once more disinfect everything I’ve touched—door handles, car handles, alarm buttons, purse, wallet.  I carry in my purchases, placing them carefully on the waxed paper.  I scald my masks in boiling water and agitate them with disinfectant soap, then rinse, spray them with alcohol and hang them to dry.  I wash my hands again and put my purchases away, then pull up the wax paper and disinfect the countertop.  I wash my hands a third time.

This, this is now my new reality, and that of millions of other people, as we try to avoid the virus; waiting ever hopefully that our number will come up and we will be scheduled for the vaccine; frightened always that all our efforts to be safe will fail, and we, in the most vulnerable of groups due to age and chronic illness, will contract and die of Covid-19.

I remember when life was simple.  I remember complaining about the restaurant a friend preferred; about believing that, living alone, I knew what loneliness was. Now I would gladly go to any restaurant, just to be out once again.  Now I know more of loneliness than I have ever endured in a very solitary life.

The world will turn, I know; this will end.  Someday, Covid-19 will be merely a sad footnote in the history books, to be wondered at by generations that have never known pandemic.

It can’t happen soon enough. 

You might enjoy looking at these thoughts through another lens, by reading, “In the Moment”, which can be found archived from April 12, 2018.

The Names of Our Years

Now thoughtfully updated, this essay was originally posted in 2019.  What year will 2021 really be?

This morning, as I traced my fingers over the numbers at the top of the calendar, I realized: I know what year it is. I do. It is 2021.

But I don’t yet know what year it will be.

Many, perhaps most people do this, I’ve noticed. Throughout our lifetimes, the majority of years are remembered as the calendar year.  But that number often pales into insignificance as we give the year a verbal title recalling events pertinent to us: The Year Joe Died. The Year Haley Was Born. The Year of the Flood, the Wildfire, the Hurricane. The Year We Bought the House. The Year I Graduated.

These titles lend such richness and flavor to our memories that we often speak of them in just that way before stopping a beat—closing our eyes and searching our memories for a moment to recall the actual date of the occurrence: “The year the kids were married—oh, yeah, that was 2017.”

I have a flock of years like that in my recollection: arrows of memories winging their way through the skies of reminisce, named for events both traumatic or blessed, as I scroll through the chapters of my life—for that is how I think of them: chapter titles. Beneath each title unroll paragraphs tracing details and events quite unrelated, one would think, to that chapter title. Together, they comprise the book of my life, beginning with Chapter One: The Year I Was Born. (Perhaps the book might be titled: I Was Born: It Could Happen to Anybody!)

In these later years of my life, though, I’ve noticed more of a tendency to think only of verbal titles, rather than those numbers displayed so prominently at the top of the calendar page. And so I currently look back upon The Year I Retired, followed by The Year of the Cookbook. (That second odd title requires a touch of explanation, no doubt: That was the year when I told my cousin, proprietor of our late Grandmother Marie’s huge box of recipe cards, “Look here, Susie, you’re busy! You work, you have a teenage daughter. You’re never going to get around to copying those recipes for all of us. I’m retired; time is on my side. Lend me the cards, and I’ll transcribe them into a cookbook for everyone in the family.” And transcribe I did, through the course of one entire spring and summer, occasionally losing a bit of my mind in the process as I stumbled through difficult handwriting, missing information, and antique nomenclature that required hours of research to resolve.)

The laughable lunacy of The Year of the Cookbook was followed by further insanity during The Year of the Wedding, as I leapt into the preparations for the wedding of my  daughter.  It was a frustrating, amazing, exhausting, magnificent year, in which everything that could go wrong, did.  Despite all that, I somehow managed to help produce a marvelous, glorious wedding celebration for my beloved child.

Then came 2018: My Dickens Year. It was, genuinely, the best of times, the worst of times. I might have titled it “The Year of Cancer and of Morrigan’s Birth”, but it’s simpler just to recall it as My Dickens Year. Diagnosed with cancer in January, cured by surgery and prayer and natural treatments in March, and finally overwhelmed by breathtaking joy at the birth of my first grandchild in August, it was, beyond any measure, a year of the worst of times, a year of the best of times.

Yet 2019 continued to trace a similar path of instability, as I floundered in a haze of repeated shocks when friends and the children of friends passed away, one after another, without warning, while other loved ones experienced frightening declines.  Despite all of the sadness, though, I found each week punctuated by immeasurable delight as I thrilled to the pleasure of watching my granddaughter’s first year of life. I felt as if I was on a rollercoaster, flung from dizzying heights to indescribable depths.  2019, then, became My Rollercoaster Year, and I prayed for calm and peace to follow.

I was doomed to be disappointed, as were we all.  For 2020 happened, not just to me, but to each of us, all of us, everywhere, worldwide. To anyone who endured (and survived) it, the exquisite torture that was 2020 needs no explanation: The Year of the Pandemic.

So it was this morning, as I traced my fingers over the digits at the top of the paper calendar that I persist in using and enjoying despite a digital world, that I realized: I know what year it is. I do. I really do. It is 2021.

But, for the moment, I don’t yet know what year it will be.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like “Paper Calendars”, which can be found in the archives from December 11, 2019.

The Person at the Other Fax Machine

§  The most terrifying moments of that awful video are to be found in the behavior of the person in the far right corner at the end of the clip.  §

I rarely speak of current events in this blog, since doing so would counter the purpose of my motto: May Something Said Here Touch Your Heart, Make You Laugh, or Give You Hope.  Few situations in our current world could achieve even one of those goals!

Yet there are some incidents so dreadful and obvious that it would be almost immoral to evade them. They cry out to be acknowledged, no matter how dissonant and disheartening the subject.  One of these situations is surely the horrific behavior of those who, in the guise of standing up for their rights, threaten or attack others who reproach them for not wearing face masks while in the middle of a worldwide plague, and contrary to the orders of local governments or the requests of private property owners.

I won’t take up the questions of whether masks are protective or not; whether they are a violation of one’s constitutional rights; or even whether they shield the wearer or those with whom one comes into contact.  Those matters can be endlessly debated.  The real question that I’ve uncovered (while watching countless videos of people being attacked or beaten or threatened) is why society has degenerated to such a point that these behaviors are accepted with little more than a shrug or a sigh.

I run through just a few of the incidents, all captured on camera, watching them play horrifically across the movie screen in my mind:

The hapless individual threatened by a livid man in a local Costco:  https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/07/08/i-feel-threatened-who-protects-shoppers-angry-anti-maskers/5389199002/
The elderly disabled veteran brutally punched over and over:  https://www.newsbreak.com/washington/spokane/news/1615195034250/see-it-suspect-caught-on-video-punching-elderly-disabled-veteran-during-mask-dispute-cops-say-perp-knocked-victim-unconscious-broke-his-jaw
And, perhaps worst of all, the middle-aged organ transplant recipient heaved into a bone-shattering crash by a hefty young woman:
https://www.nj.com/bergen/2020/07/woman-with-cane-violently-assaulted-at-nj-staples-after-asking-customer-to-wear-mask-video.html

Of all of them, I think this last incident shocked me the most—not because of the violence, since other videos and reports have displayed far more brutality; even fatalities.  But what I found most disturbing in the attack by Terri Thomas on Margot Kagan wasn’t the fact that a beefy young woman would brutally assault a slip a lady who was not only old enough to be her mother, but who probably weighed in at 95 pounds soaking wet. No, that sort of unconscionable behavior is all too common these days. Nor was I flabbergasted by the inaction of the employees and customers captured in the video (despite later claims that they rushed to the victim’s aid after the close of the surveillance clip).  Their immobility as the victim lay injured on the floor was shocking, but not surprising; compassion and courage–gallantry–are all too lacking in today’s society.

No, to me the most terrifying moments of that awful video are to be found in the behavior of the person (man? woman? I think it is a woman) in the far right corner at the end of the clip.  Watch carefully, and you will see that, as Ms. Thomas storms out of the store, this customer cautiously toes aside the fallen cubicle divider that was overturned in the fracas—pushes it away with a foot, and then calmly returns to her copying or faxing or whatever transaction she had been making before the violent altercation began.

To say that this display of utter indifference chilled me to the center of my soul would be to describe Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell as a cool spring breeze. I watched that entire disturbing video over and over, each time thinking perhaps I had missed something—that there was some mitigating factor, some reasonable excuse, that this person blithely turned aside and continued processing paper.

But there was none.  No mitigating factor, no reason, and certainly no excuse.

The very idea that someone—anyone—would turn their back upon the victim of a horrific assault and coolly continue running off copies, casually ignoring the entire situation, speaks terrifying volumes about the moral state of our populace.

Somewhere, someone has seen that video, and recognized the person at the fax machine.  Someone—some friend or family member, perhaps even a pastor or rabbi, has gazed (in horror? unsurprised?) at the behavior of that individual.  Perhaps they said something; tried to rebuke him or her.  Perhaps (more likely) not.

The rest of us will almost certainly never know who it was standing at the other fax machine that day.  And I doubt that individual will ever read this blog post.  But I say now, and will forever say, that their behavior was an affront to human decency as grave as any assault committed by those who threaten, slap, punch or spit upon their masked counterparts.

I’m sure The Faxing Person would shrug, as unconcerned by my opinion as they were for the victim of the assault. But their display of inhumanity was deplorable. And they should be ashamed. Quite thoroughly ashamed.

If you liked this essay, you might also enjoy “Political Civility”, in the Archives from July 3, 2019.  (On the other hand, you might absolutely hate it!) 

To Wash or Not to Wash: No Question!

§   With all the incessant and frequent handwashing everyone has undergone since the beginning of the pandemic, this post (originally published on July 13, 2018) seemed remarkably timely!  §

The other day I was at my daughter’s home, and she commented that “Puppy” (a full-grown, 40-pound Husky) was in need of  “a spa day pretty soon; she smells like a dog”.

Now, I lost much of my sense of smell–no, not due to coronavirus, but to a sinus disorder many years ago.  Consequently, I could not comment on the problem, despite the fact that my granddog was dancing in front of me, performing her “I have not seen you in at least two days and you’re my favorite person on the planet” act. She might not have smelled like roses, but Puppy’s doggy-odor hadn’t reached offensive levels, I thought.  However, the comment on smell jogged my memory regarding an article I’d read a few months earlier.

The author of the article was a proponent of infrequent bathing. His essay discussed the natural biome of the skin which was, he claimed, destroyed by too-frequent bathing (which, his article seemed to indicate, was basically any form of bathing at all).  The author explained that he no longer showered or bathed, contenting himself with occasionally rinsing off excess sweat, something made easy in the summer months by merely standing beneath the garden hose—especially to rinse off his genital area.

Eeewww.

After I finished retching (and wondering just how active this joker’s sex life wasn’t!), I continued reading to his conclusion that, instead of soap, he “smelled like people”.

As I clicked off the article, I wondered to myself if smelling like people might be somewhat equivalent to smelling like a dog, especially after the garden hose trick. Despite my weak sense of smell, wet dog is not one of my favorite scents.  I’m pretty certain that wet, unwashed people smell pretty similar to that.  And I was absolutely certain that the male author of the “don’t wash” essay had never been (and I speak from personal experience) a menstruating woman on a hot summer day.

I’ve always equated not bathing with, oh, say, body lice and bubonic plague. I’ll take the sheer, unmatched pleasure of soaking in a hot bath with lavender salts, or a steamy shower with scented soap on a “scrubbie” body puff—yeah, I’ll take that any day over any amount of “natural biome”.  And don’t even get me started on the “no-poo” non-hair-washing crusaders.  No-poo-schmoo-poo!  I generally use styling products to arrange my long hair, so unless I’ve not needed to do much more with my locks than brush them (i.e., been nowhere or seen no one for days–which usually happens only when I’m sick in bed),  my hair gets thoroughly shampooed and conditioned every second or third day.  On the rare occasions that I must wait longer than that to wash it, it feels absolutely icky and looks dull and anyone trying to restrain me from the hot water and shampoo had best be armed!  I use a nail brush to scrub beneath my fingernails every morning, too, all the while wondering to myself just what frightening “natural biome” lurks beneath those lovely gel-manicured fake nails I see on every second pair of female hands.

I still wonder how the author of the “don’t bathe” article felt about the CDCs recommendations for handwashing during the flu season. And that causes me to recall another article that I read, this one long before the marvels of instantly available knowledge on the Web.  That article discussed the age-old scourge of the disease trachoma, a bacterial eye inflammation that causes granulations to form beneath the eyelids. The disease is progressive, eventually causing the eyeball itself to harden and blinding the sufferers. Trachoma is a common cause of blindness in third-world countries.  But the researchers had discovered a simple way to reduce the spread of trachoma and prevent re-infection of those receiving treatment.

They simply had the people, either infected or at risk, wash their faces every day.

Natural biomes are not necessarily benign. Queen Elizabeth the First may have bathed monthly “whether she needed it or not”, but I’ll stick to my daily schedule, thank you very much. And enjoy every blessed minute of rearranging the natural biome of my skin.

Puffy Socks Finds a Home (Sort of a Pandemic Story)

§   Pandemic has changed everything… §

Every summer for the past four years, my twin great niece and nephew, Mya and Kai, have arrived in Indiana to spend the season with their grandparents, my brother and his wife.  Every summer we all gather together for family picnics, and afternoons at splash parks and pools.  We visit the Indianapolis Children’s Museum and the zoo together.  We play card games and spend time in the kids’ room at the library, and visit the playgrounds at every single park within a 30-mile radius! The twins ride bikes and ponies, hold squirt gun battles, stay overnight with their Aunt Paula, and climb trees. Together we all eat mounds of mac & cheese and chicken nuggets.  We color and watch videos and go to movies.  Mya and I paint each other’s nails, and I comb her long hair into braids and ponytails.  Kai builds forts out of my furniture.  The big baskets of toys that I keep on hand just for them are always filled with fresh playthings that I’ve picked up through the year at garage sales and flea markets. GrampsCrop4 The whole family troops out together to watch a July 4th fireworks show.  And, finally, after we’ve kissed a tearful goodbye and seen them winging their way home, I send letters—one letter every week—and homemade books; books filled with photos describing their summer adventures and telling them stories about their “Indiana pets”.

Every summer that is, until this year.  Pandemic has changed everything.  The plane that would transport them here would be, we fear, little more than a container for incubating the Covid-19 virus, and there would be almost nothing for them to do, anyway, even if they arrived, for all the city pools and splash parks are closed, as are the museums and movie theaters; the zoo is open by reservation only.  The Independence Day celebrations, those open-air gatherings crowded with people, will be canceled. The park playgrounds are shut down.

The collective hearts of our family are breaking over this sad reality, yet we know that keeping the twins safely in their home state is for the best.  Nevertheless, my thoughts keep zigzagging back to last summer,  remembering a moment when Kai, while petting my big old orange kitty, explained seriously to me that they, the twins, were the reason I have Puffy Socks the cat.  I agreed; Kai was absolutely right.  Three years earlier, Puffy, a homeless feral, spent a whole summer coming to play with the twins each week on my patio.  At the time, Puff was living under a neighbor’s mini barn.   Each week he waited eagerly for the moment the three of us stepped out onto my patio.  A clatter of sound would announce his presence as he darted through the spare lumber stored behind the barn before leaping majestically over the fence to rush to the children: “The twins are here!!”  Their mutual admiration society was touching to watch.  And when Kai and Mya left for home that summer, I (after a failed attempt to rehome him) adopted the big old softy of a cat they loved so much and had named.

So this week, in honor of my beloved great niece and nephew, who I am missing so much that my heart feels shattered–in their honor, I’m printing here the little storybook that I wrote and sent to them the following winter about the sweet, homeless orange kitty who became so dear to all our hearts.

PS Pic     Puffy Socks Finds a Home  

There was once an orange kitty with white feet who lived in a nice house.  But his owner moved away, and she left Orange Kitty behind.

But Orange Kitty was a smart little cat.PS3 pic  He made lots of friends in the neighborhood.  They petted and fed him, but none of them could give him a home.

So Orange Kitty slept under barns to shelter from the rain.  He curled up with his tail over his nose when it snowed.PS4 Pic

Then one pretty summer day Orange Kitty made two new friends.  They were the twins, Mya and Kai! 

PS 6 Pic (2)PS5 pic (2)They were playing on the patio at their Aunt Beckett’s house.  They liked Puffy very much.  And he liked them, too!

Since their Papaw and Nana had an orange kitty named Puff, Kai and Mya thought this Orange Kitty should be named Puffy.  Their Aunt Paula had a kitty with white feet named Socks, and this new Puffy cat also had white feet.  So they decided Puffy should have a middle name: Socks!  Kai thought Dragon would be a good name, too, just like Puff the Magic Dragon. And Aunt Beckett believed they should  add Esquire, because he was a gentleman cat. 

So  Orange Kitty became Puffy Socks Dragon, Esquire!

When the summer ended and the twins left, Aunt Beckett found Puffy Socks a new home. But that lady could not keep him, after all.  Puff was very sad!Puff Visits 2 (3)

So Aunt Beckett decided she would keep Puffy Socks as her very own kitty.  She even bought him his first Christmas stocking!  PS 14

At first, Aunt Beckett’s other kitties, Zoe and Bella and Lilith, were a little upset to have a new cat in their home.  But slowly, they all began to get along and to love each other.  IMG_20181208_144305066_HDR (2)

Happy PuffSo Puffy Socks found a happy home at last!

                                               The End

 

I miss you both very much, my darling great niece and nephew.  And Puffy Socks misses you, too.

Miss Happiness and Miss Flower

§   Unwrapping my prize from the shipping package, I took a step backwards into my 10-year-old self, rereading in delight the nearly-forgotten trials and tribulations of a little girl so like myself.  §

When I was in the fifth grade, my all-time favorite teacher, Miss Shireman, gave me a book to read titled Miss Happiness and Miss Flower.   That book, written by Rumer Godden, became a lifeline for me.

The story describes the adventures of the eight-year-old Nona, who has been sent home from India to live with her British relatives. Lost in a unfamiliar culture, surrounded by strangers, cut off from everything she has ever known, Nona retreats into herself, terrified and abandoned, until she is given the gift of two Japanese dolls (the Miss Happiness and Miss Flower of the title).

I can say without intentional punning that the book spoke volumes to me.

I still recall Miss Shireman asking me if I was enjoying the book, and my enthusiastic reply. She smiled as she remarked that she’d been sure I would like it. Looking back through the mists of time, now, I wonder—how did she know? How did she know that I, enduring my first year in a new school and feeling so frightened and lonely that I could have died, needed that story? But Miss Shireman always seemed to understand what her young students were thinking and feeling, and did whatever she could to mitigate their distress.

A large part of the book concerns the Japanese doll house which the main character’s cousin builds for her dolls. I remember trying unsuccessfully to convince my older brother to build such a dollhouse for me. I also remember him throwing very cold water on the idea! But not long ago, reminiscing about my own daughter’s childhood dollhouse, now stored in the attic of my father’s home, I unexpectedly recalled the Japanese dollhouse of the story, and the book itself, and how much it meant to the child I’d once been.

Misses Happiness and FlowerIntrigued, I searched for the book, locating a copy on a used book site. The price was not exorbitant, and I could not resist; I immediately slapped down my credit card to order it. The precious book appeared in my mailbox during the weeks of Covid-19 lockdown, and I reverently carried it into the house like the treasure it was.

Already, during the weary hours and days of lockdown, I’d learned that I was resistant to reading anything new. Despite the fact that reading is my passion, I faced hourly headlines summarizing chaos, death and panic.  I couldn’t bear to begin a novel. A new book might kill off a character I liked, or direct a series down a route that I hadn’t wanted it to go. It might be badly written, or irritating or upsetting.

Instead, I took comfort in rereading both old and recent favorites: Tracey Quinn’s hilarious Breezy Spoon Diner series and Clara Benson’s marvelous Angela Marchmont mysteries.  The timeless classics of Mary Stewart: Nine Coaches Waiting. The Moonspinners.  I delved into the familiar, fantastic and funny world of Kim Watt’s Beaufort Scales dragon cozies. I travelled once more to Aunt Bessie’s home on the Isle of Mann, and the secretive world of McIntyre’s Gulch in the Canadian north.

And now, unwrapping my prize from the shipping package, I took a step even further back into my comfort zone, communing with my 10-year-old self, rereading in delight the nearly-forgotten trials and tribulations of the little girl I had so resembled. There she was, just as I remembered her: a young girl trying to adapt to a totally unfamiliar setting, friendless and frightened—exactly the situation in which I had lived at that age.

Rereading the book, I was delighted to find it just as enchanting a story as I recalled.  I marveled at the fact that at age 10, I’d been able to work my way without help through unfamiliar British terms and spellings, and to visualize a town so different from those that I, a suburban kid, had always known. How astounding and wonderful to have a bookstore on the same street as one’s home! And my adult-self thanked heaven that the book, written in 1960, predated the British changeover to the metric system, for then I might have been truly lost.

But what I really gained from re-reading this childhood favorite was a surprising realization of my own unquenchable spirit. At age 10, living in a new house that was not yet a home, lost and frightened in an unfamiliar neighborhood, too shy to make friends easily and trapped in a troubled, chaotic family situation, I, like the little girl of the story, somehow still found ways to adapt: to make friends, to be brave.

Half a century later, navigating the unfamiliar waterways of lockdown and pandemic, trapped in a home that’s begun to feel more like a prison than familiar territory, and lonelier than I have ever been throughout a very solitary life, I find it once more necessary to call upon that unquenchable spirit. She is in there still, somewhere, that inner child; that flame of life force reignited by a childhood memory and a beloved story. She is still finding ways to adapt; to be a friend to herself, and, most of all, to be brave.