COVID-19 journal, March 26, 2020

March 26th


It's sunny, and three small crocus were blooming in the backyard.  I brought them inside so I can stare at their purple veined petals up close.

I got a bread maker in today's mail. I googled Anadama bread, and it's whirring away on the counter. Of course I didn't read the directions first, so I didn't make a small hole for the yeast like I guess I'm supposed to, and I don't know why it beeped several minutes in, and I don't know what size loaf I'm making or how long it should bake, but it's a bread machine, so I'm sure it knows what it's doing.

This morning I woke up hopeless, worried, and Tom woke up  more positive. We balanced each other out. There have been 200 deaths in the US so far, and it looks like one out of every 60 . . . oh, I'm not going to finish that sentence.

This afternoon I'll go into Portland and take a walk with Marlena and Sophie.

• Tom and I like to watch the birds while we eat dinner.
• My mother ordered new nightgowns on line and and a new toaster
• At 8PM we can hear a shout from the neighbors - something that began in Italy when people were in their homes day after day. Here on our quiet road, it sounds like a small tantrum.
• We're getting take-out tonight. I'm excited and also fearful.

COVID-19 journal, March 25, 2020

Today I invited my mother outside for a walk. It was just over 40 degrees out, but she'd been inside for 15 days and we both needed a visit.  I brought her some cabbage salad I'd made, and she came outside where I waited like a neighbor kid waiting for a playmate.  She was just out of the shower with her hair dryer in hand, and plugged it in outside and we laughed together while she dried her hair in her breezeway. Then we made a slow walk all the way down the street and talked about the birds and the neighbors and paint colors. I told her about a recipe I'd found of grandma's, a cherry jello mold with a dressing made from sour cream, blackberry jam and a pinch of dry mustard.  She bent over in the street laughing.  We mostly stayed six feet away from each other, but it's unnatural to not be closer.

• There are close to 150 COVID cases in Maine.
• Tom works downstairs, mostly telling people to calm down. I can hear his soothing tone through the floorboards.
• .Sweet potatoes with black beans and cheddar for dinner
• Second jigsaw puzzle almost done
• Put on eyeliner today because - just because - even though no one sees me, but I look so faded.
• Cleaned the top of the kitchen cabinets for maybe the first time since they were installed in 1997, and even though I have nothing but time, I still only took maybe 10 minutes and didn't do a good job.
• Ordered fresh produce delivered today, and have never been so excited to see a vegetable.
• Summer Olympics postponed one year
• Will not watch or listen to any news or discussion of news after 4PM to keep my sanity.

COVID-19 journal, March 22 and 23, 2020

March 22nd

70 cases in Maine now, 6 of the at Oceanview in Falmouth.

It's so quiet.  No planes overhead, no cars down our road or leaf blowers or trucks. The only noises are the furnace and the refrigerator.

Today I'm not interested in reaching out to everyone, or crying, or sighing or creating or puzzling.  I like the nothing, the reading, the staring out the window to watch spring come.  I like looking deep into the leaves of my African violets to see if new flowers are thinking to bloom.  I like the simplicity of the day, of our Scrabble game, of sitting in the sun-warmed chair.

I haven't been inside anywhere but my own home for a week.  I've waved at my mother as I drop off food, and every so oftee worldn I've driven to Maine Audubon for walks, but life is all just here now.

***

March 23rd

Yesterday I lived in a bubble, of looking at the goodness of being quiet. We'd played a funny game online with the girls, Tom and I watched the birds on the feeder as we played Scrabble and ate dinner. We did the puzzle and read and chatted with nieces and watched spring out the window.

But today is harder. I feel hopeless when I hear the president speak, when he shares his crass thoughts and brittle reports. And in the middle of last night, the anxiety rolled in like the tide.  I thought of things we should be sure to do. Have enough food on hand for illness.  Have medicine. Tell the girls to get flu meds and popsicles and chicken soup, to be sure to have three months of prescription medications on hand.  To not go to stores, to not leave their homes, to not touch anything or breathe.

Breathe.

Today I overwhelmed one daughter with all my it-might-make-sense-to ideas.  I'm doing the best I can! She text/yelled. I'm sorry.  So sorry.

The only one handling it all well, with no panic in her voice or actions, is my mother  We talk each day and she calms me. She sees the world as it is from her own home, out her own windows, with her greatest complaint being her need for a haircut.

My eye is twitching.
The ducks are on parade all over the lawn.
Rudolf Serkin is playing Mendelsohn.


 

Time

Time
to fill the pottery bowls on the deck
with water.
Blue jays push to the front
and drink.
Purple finches sip
as if champagne,
then flitter around the yard
like Disney birds in Cinderella
among the trees and empty branches,
chasing each other
be mine, be mine.

CO-Vivid Dream March 19

Last night I dreamed I'd bought a cottage.  I couldn't see the water.  In fact  was so busy in the new place that was just the size of my real life kitchen that I didn't go explore.  There was a plumber there who wouldn't leave until he had someone else view his work. Then there were two plumbers there  They showed me the doors that led outside, on top of which teetered buckets of water, like for a prank.  But while the water sloshed about, the buckets balanced and didn't spill.  The two water guys seemed to think this was a good setup.

Then back in my new cottage I was considering maybe putting in a new small kitchen countertop at some point, and maybe some under-cabinet work, since the storage area was crumbling and frightening. 

Then my sister appeared by my side to tell me she had prostatitis.

Then I notice the far side of the room where my brother sat, with maybe my friend Mary, maybe my high school friend Lee Ann.  In any case, every seat was full. 

In the kitchen I noticed there was a can of Cheese-wiz that had been put away empty, and there was sprayed cheese lining the inside of the trash bin and the inside of a box of crackers and I immediately accused my brother who was guilty as charged.

Then Mary appeared by my side  and said she was going upstairs and I wondered how long she was supposed to be there and remembered only a day, that she was leaving on Monday.

Then I went outside and across the way from my house was an A-frame cottage, all glass, didn't look like anyone was home, but the walls were lined with books and souvenirs from walks in woods and games and articles about the art in plastic frames like you'd find in a museum house.  I remembered I'd seen this house in an article I'd read about a writer but couldn't who it was and was momentarily excited by the idea that it was someone whom I knew of and admired, until a man rounded the corner and saw me.  I told hi I was his new neighbor and he introduced himself.  I said, "Say it again?" He said something like three letters, sounded like Um-a-Pie.  I repeated it back.

Then I continued my walk noticing I had a backyard area and a gate that led down a narrow path like in an old village.  I headed down the hill and saw water - the ocean.  All high water.  No shore. No beach. Just waves.  Two people came surfing toward me, a young woman lying on a board and a young guy with her, trying to help find her bathing suit that had come off and left her naked...

Recently I told someone that this strange period of time with the puzzles, daydreaming, cooking and reading feels like a vacation at the lake, except with a deadly virus thrown in.  I think my dreams know that.

COVID-19 journal, March 18, 2020

March 18th

Everything on our calendar has been cancelled. A surprise birthday party, a concert, trips, appointments.  I keep it posted on the fridge though, in case the universe changes its mind.

Every day, emails are sent from organizations and businesses, entitled "how we are coping with COVID-19." Shoe order sites, oil delivery, nonprofits, concert venues, cable companies, credit card offers Everyone tells how they're wiping, limiting, responding to, even if we never have come into contact with anyone there before, even if their businesses require no wiping or human interaction of any kind.

Monday: 17 cases in Maine
Tuesday: 32
Wednesday: 42

6,000 people have died worldwide.
7,000 cases now in the US.

Today I went or a walk at Maine Audubon with Luci, made soup for dinner, raked the fall leaves off the burgeoning tulips, and called friends.

Scrabble

We are playing a nightly game of Scrabble
to cope.
We're on our third night,
fighting.
Contentious words include tootsie
(me, he said it's a proper name because he only looked up
Tootsie the movie and
Tootsie Roll),
ad
(he won't accept two-letter
Scrabble Dictionary words
unless he makes them),
and
Zion
and I said
no,
you can't,
it's a proper noun
no matter how you Google it.
I had tiles to make corona
and didn't.

COVID-19 journal, March 17, 2020 continued

(March 17th still)

The move forward has been so fast I can't possibly track it.  Maybe in bits only.

My mother.
That was my last time sitting in her house, that day last week.  She breathed a great sigh when I told her I'd changed my mind about Virginia.  Then I offered to take her for a drive just to get some air. But then I never did because I could be a carrier and certainly didn't want to put her at greater risk, and I didn't see how I could wipe down my whole car with my last few wipes, or how she and I could sit in my small car six feet apart.  So only calls, and food to her door. A bag of bagels, pasta dinners, chili, soups.  All the Tupperware wiped down before I hand it to her.  Because I never want to see anyone die from pneumonia again in my lifetime. Because she has let me know she doesn't want to die that way.  Her life is not much different from how she's been living it these past several months with no car. Now I am learning to live more like she does.

Marlena.
Last Tuesday, she and her co-teachers produced a play written entirely by their students.  All those children from all those many places, all standing on their school stage together, performing a play about the American Revolution.  Even the students who are new to the US, from Congo and Angola, who speak Portuguese and  Lingala, all stood with their classmates and sang songs they'd written together. And three days later they were told their school was closing.  School by school by town by town by city by city.  Colleges and universities all closing with no plan in place as to how to move forward, how to learn, how to teach. With some kids in her class who speak little to no English, who have food insecurity, who are asylum seekers and new Americans, who have no internet or computers, who are children - just children.  And for her, no more of her normal life with children and singing and teaching, no more going out with friends. No more trips home just for a visit, to sit on the sofa and chat, or to cook dinner together.

Luci.
Went from classes and work to no more school just virtual classes, and avoiding work.  Went from coping by exercising and doing puzzles, to a late night call of overwhelming fear, to now coping with action, not distraction. She is stronger than she knows.

Me.
I can't leave out my own arc of panic.  Went from "You'll be fine!" to here, in my on house, rationing groceries.  Once we got back from Florida, once they were back from Boston, I was among the unnamed many, on the lookout for Purell and toilet paper. (I've never before heard so many conversations about toilet paper, as if it were a strange, valuable currency.  How many rolls do you have? I have seven. I have twelve.  Get more. Steal some from work if you can.) My quick journey from daily store runs to now here in my house lighting candles to calm me began with volunteering and grocery shopping a trip to a bookstore and to the library, then to a store for jigsaw puzzles.Then I was a fanatic about grocery cart handles, wiping them down with wipes from the store, even reporting to a Hannaford produce guy - the first employee I saw - that there were none.  Like reporting a crime  Then thinking about my hands and that unwiped cart handle all the way through vegetables, bread, sausages and tuna before finding they had refilled the wipes again so I could concentrate.  On Sunday I'd I told Tom he was fine to play pickleball. By Tuesday,  I told him I thought he should stop seeing patients. I told my family I would provide dinner every night, that anyone could stop by to eat, and they did.  Six days later, I'd stopped. It's just Tom and me.

As of today, there are 32 cases in Maine.  Last week there were none.  Close to 4,000 people have died worldwide.  Museums are closed, concerts are cancelled, Broadway is dark.  There is a curfew set to begin tonight in Portland. Grocery shelves are mostly empty.  Flights are cancelled, travel plans are cancelled, no flights are coming or going to Europe or the UK.  Restaurants are relying on take-out orders, medical supplies are unavailable, libraries and bars and gyms are closed  People are all out for walks.

I can't even get into the politics of it all.  It will make me angry.

We have a text thread in our family to send seekers into stores, to limit exposure to germs.  We're stockpiling on soup and meds and beans and pasta.

I'm grateful it's almost spring, that days are lighter, that birds sing all around.  I'm thankful for food and my home and my family and friends.  I'm grateful for all of the connections I've made and that have been made with me in return, the checking-in, the warm words.

I can't imagine what this will al look like when it ends, how many people will die, how many businesses will close, how we will be able to save money again as the market has crashed.  But I try not to think there.

COVID -19 journal, March 17, 2020

March 17, 2020

Starting my COVID-19 journal.  Just one week ago life was normal. Watching presidential debates, finishing work projects, volunteering, running errands for gifts and new socks and suitcases for trips since cancelled.  Just in one 24-hour period life changed.

Last Monday, I think, or Sunday is when it began.  I was head of the wishy-washy department, changing my mind over and over about going to Virginia.  Yes, I'm going, no, I can't.  Yes, it will be fine

Oh, even before Sunday. Two weeks before when Luci and I flew to Florida on February 26th.  The news was full of Coronavirus reports. Deaths had already been reported in China. But it was noise then, and I tend to stay away from sensational news, especially when it involves reports from our president. I didn't react.  If anything, I probably under-reacted. But Luci and I wiped down our arm rests and chairs and buckles as we always do - or at least as I'd come to do when I travel with her. There was little out of the ordinary.

But when we got to the condo, the first sign of change met us at the door. Matt wouldn't hug us. And there over his shoulder as I took what I could from his armless embrace, I saw on his computer screen that he was researching masks. Already.

Florida life was a bubble  Nothing can touch me there in a beach chair, listening to the pool chatter and the mockingbirds, eating mangoes from the fruit stand, rubbing sunscreen on my freckled arms and legs. In Florida, I don't care about home or jobs or people or snowstorms or news, and certainly not coronavirus news, despite the fact that the news was getting closer.

We flew home on March 2nd.

On March 4th, Tom was starting to go a little nuts.  He and Marlena were planning their trip to Boston, and he was unsure whether or not they should go.  I went to the dollar stores and drug stores and grocery stores in search of hand sanitizer and wipes, and already there were shortages.  I saw the same people in different stores, all stalking the aisles in search of the same items, all of us pretending we were there for other things like greeting cards and hair dryers and hummingbird food packets.

On March 6th they went.
On March 8th Marlena came home not feeling well.
Tom found out two days later that two of the players they'd seen at the Celtics game had been tested and were positive for coronavirus.
He lost his mind, sure that because his daughter and he were in the first row, their proximity to the players was too close.
He couldn't be calmed, he couldn't quiet his fear.

I left the house.
And sat in my mother's house to talk, six feet away.
Six feet. Away, not under.
Interesting though that the recommendation for distance is the same number as the depth of a grave.

We're renting
Just next door to where my children once learned to dive,
were swaddled in warm towels by their grandmother,
ate salt and vinegar chips, lips chattering, turning blue.

Now three boys leap off the raft,
their parents watch from chairs on the lawn.
We spy on them through the fence slats,
glimpses of people we don't know now living a life
that was once always.
They've cut down the tree where our children carved initials
that last summer we were here,
that last night when we built a fire
and sang
and canoed under the stars.

Their boys flip backard off the raft
holding each other under water
when my father-in-law would have shouted careful,
careful,
and never moved.

The loons still cry in the morning,
my mother-in-law could still be inside,
talking on the phone with the long curly cord while she
covered salads with damp paper towels to keep them crisp.
The house where we met.

Shopping with a gold medal winner

I needed glass cleaner and vegetable stock so I went to Trader Joe's where they don't have glass cleaner but do have free mini cups of coffee and flowers that don't grow in my yard.  I picked out the orange ranunculus and five bananas, wheeled over to the kale and mint in bags, and there next to me was a woman I know to be a gold medal winner. Gold Medal like in The Olympics gold medal.  There in her running leggings and shoes as if she'd just come off the podium, even though that happened over 30 years ago.  We were reaching for fruit together, she for blueberries, I for out-of-season, overpriced pomegranate seeds that I would never buy ever in May but decided this recipe looked good and I'd already picked out the mint to go with it (and would later leave without the lamb because it was too expensive and so now I have overpriced pomegranate seeds and mint in my fridge). I thought, oh, here I am, next to a gold medal winner, and we are both picking up fruit together. So healthy, she and I! We have so much in common. 

We were together again in the cheese section. I thought to get a photo of her so I could show someone on Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat a photo of her, of us, shopping together at Trader Joe's with our similar lifestyles.  I thought maybe she sees me, so healthy, in new pants that I bought that are too big and maybe she is noticing how in shape I am but really it's just that I bought the pants in a size too large and they don't fit right. (And who am I kidding? I'm not in shape like I'm training for any event at all!) I didn't get a photo, because I was trying to be sneaky so I snapped my shopping cart, the floor, the mozzarella hunk I'd grabbed even though it wasn't on my list and she left the cheese without getting anything and I left with a 5,000 calorie hunk of cheese that was neither vegetable broth nor glass cleaner.

One last meeting in the frozen foods, by the berries. I took a bag of frozen raspberries, she took frozen strawberries. I considered putting my bag back and getting one like hers, as if that would bring me closer to winning any sort of medal, but I don't like frozen strawberries.

Then she drifted off. I'd like to think she was in the potato chip aisle, buying bags of those pretend healthy chips like kale or seaweed or fresh hay.  But she was gone, and I looked over the chocolates, the little cups of peanut butter, the salted mounds of sesame caramel goo, the Scandinavian Swimmers in a bag, and  I yanked up my pants by the belt loops and paid, thinking maybe I'll see her later today on my walk, that she's too old now to run at Medal speed, and she'll recognize me from the store and we'll share tips for how to train for local 5Ks or how to make fruit salad out of season.

A Poem Where Nothing Happens

Holding color slides up to the window

one at a time,

a morning looking over images my father shot

throughout his life

now saved in dusty carousels.

My mother, slim,

cigarette between her fingers

on a chaise longue in Miami,

my grandfather,

gin and tonic in hand,

gray black hair,

the shamed face of a man

who had lost his job,

dentists at conventions

wearing name tags

and wide ties,

The Vallieres in the Bahamas

beside an aqua blue pool,

The duckling we had one summer,

my sister young and toothless in a handsewn dress.

Behind the slide, a plane flies

miles above,

a speck of metal holding hundreds of people

drinking 7-Up from plastic cups,

staring down from their windows,

a trail of white smoke passing

through my Kodachrome past.

Ray

The loon has four cries, he told me,

I wouldn’t touch the soup

playing a record so I could hear

that smelled of pee and unwashed hair.

the tremolo, the yodel,

He couldn’t hold his spoon,

the mournful wail across the still water.

the violent shaking of his hand

This was us talking. Us on the porch.

splattering the broth onto the vinyl tablecloth.

Him smoking his pipe,

No thank you, my young daughter whispered

me listening to his record.

when offered a roll,

Our chairs faced the lake,

all food untouched, a game show blaring.

a storm moving toward us,

I steadied his hand with my own.

wind and whitecaps.

Dr. Brown

I remember the first time walking up those porch steps

being twenty and loving a boy

who held my hand

when we went to meet his parents.

I remember my nerves and fear

dissipate with hello.

I remember them both on the porch.

I remember he was formal but called her lover,

she was large with eyes that never left mine.

I remember drinking spritzers together

while they asked me about all that made my life

as I sat by the boy I loved.

I remember the dinners around their table,

helping to clear the dishes so I could enjoy

time in private with her.

I remember the desolate leaving of them

when I left the boy I’d loved.

I remember the day she called me

to tell me the boy I’d loved

had died in a ski accident in Canada.

I remember she said he’d taken one too many runs

after a long day and slammed into a pole.

I remember her telling me he was her golden boy.

I remember visits from here to there

climbing the steps to the porch,

never having to call ahead,

always welcome.

I remember dinner with them,

with my husband,

sitting in their living room surrounded by

large plants and framed photos,

the grandfather clock

tock tocking,

drinking glasses of wine.

I remember the rides in his antique cars,

I remember the rolls of music he played

on the player piano

delighting my children I’d brought to visit.

I remember him pushing them on the swing

he’d hung in the yard for his own children.

I remember calling for no special reason

to say hello

on the day that happened to be the day

she died.

I remember writing him a letter

full of tears

and another soon after

when another of his sons

died in a plane crash.

I remember and will always remember

yesterday

happening to be in town,

spotting him alone on the porch,

in a chair,

parking my car in overgrown yard,

climbing the steps,

so wanting to be with him,

wanting to hug him for all he’d lost,

for all I remembered of him,

until the moment I realized

his smile was not full,

his stare was vacant,

he no longer remembered me.

Long Division

The table in this always crowded school basement

needed a matchbook

to prop up the leg.

The folding chairs were cold and metal

and we heaped our coats and bags on a chair

while we sat in our regular seats

together at the corner

as if on a date

so we could hear each other

in the room that was filled with

more tables that wobbled

and people

speaking languages I didn’t know.

She brought her workbook out of her bag

along with a pencil, the kind given out

to elementary students for good behavior

or as favors at birthday parties

all silver and pink.

Long Division.

I thought we were going to work on English,

I told her and she said yes, we could, but she

didn’t know how to do her homework and just wrote in

the answers her teacher wrote on the board

but didn’t know how

to divide.

She was quiet and grateful,

not realizing my comprehension of math

was maybe a lesson ahead of hers.

She showed me the way she worked through the problem,

drawing boxes and filling in with numbers and

I watched her,

her head tilted,

her quiet counting,

her dark fingers holding her pencil,

writing her twos with fancy curls.

I thought of her new home here

in cold and snow,

her in her long flowing colorful skirt

and her black headscarf

and the smile I could see up close

where she would share it.

She’d told me she’d come here

a year ago to visit her brother

and had been chased down the street

by a man yelling at her.

He had a gun.

She hid.

She had no phone.

She didn’t remember where her brother lived.

She spoke no English.

I held her eyes.

I grasped her arm.

I apologized.

We are all people, she said.

How to protect this strong solemn smart woman

who has learned my language

and become a citizen of the country I call home

all within a year

and now spends time with me

learning math

and the superlative

in this school basement,

sharing stories of her father

she left behind

in Djibouti

who has lost his memory

and doesn’t know who she is when she calls him every day?

Here

with her

I am not a week ahead of understanding.

Dinner Party

When called, they’d leave their hors d’oeuvres,
puddles of martinis in their glasses,
remains of smoked oysters, small franks
in bourbon sauce simmering
in a silver chafing dish,
red skinned peanuts
in lead crystal bowls,
linen napkins left crumpled,
filled with olive pits and tasseled toothpicks,
and head into the dining room
to eat dinner served on the china
around the mahogany table with candlelight
and flowers from my mother’s garden,
leaving me in the quiet living room
with the dregs of the smoked cigarettes
which I’d pocket
like Templeton
and bring with matches to the bathroom
I shared with my brother,
placing my lips over
lipstick covered filters,
the smoke escaping
out the crack of open window.

Pool hours

Turning my lounge chair around

placing my back to the lowering sun

the shadow

long and dark

stretches out on the warm tiles in front of me

as I look over the quiet simmer of water in the pool

the line of lounge chairs

at attention.

In this late afternoon hour

the old sunbathers

have wrapped towels

like capes

over their curved freckled shoulders,

slipped on their sandals

and left for early bird dinners

and I am alone

with the salamanders

that wait for now

to come up from the cracks

and face the last warmth of the sun.

These tiny dinosaurs

holding themselves up with

frog-like feet

ponder ancient ancestors

who lived

long before old people

retreated to Florida.

So much in common,

those who sit on these chairs

and those that lurk underneath,

both from a time

and a place

where they were mightier,

now trailing lengthy shadows

behind them.