Tag: covid diaries

pandemic & the loss of ritual

Tomorrow is the official last day of classes, and obviously we will not be holding the Pops on the Lawn concert.

One year my entire staff, which was a sum total of five, three stage managers and two tech helpers—they all played in the orchestra. The second the pops concert was over, they hopped on a bus and left town. My children were small, five and ten or thereabouts, and they helped me rack infinity chairs and stands.

It got better after that, workload-wise, but even with a full crew, lots of help, there was always an unreal feeling about the cleanup, a combination of sheer exhaustion and relief that it was all nearly over.

Since 2001, we’ve only held two of the concerts inside because of rain. Again, today, the weather is glorious.

This spring my mood trajectory has been the opposite of every year for the previous nineteen. This is the week that has traditionally signaled the end of near misses and averted disasters and all the pressures that come with having to pull off an event with inadequate infrastructure. This is the week we’ve always had our celebratory ice cream party at my house, some years with frisbee, sometimes roasting marshmallows. General relief.

I always began my summer reading at the pops concert, lying in the grass listening, enjoying the mood, anticipating the beginning of summer.

Yes, I have been so very lucky this spring. Yes, I’ve enjoyed puttering in the garden. But I’m about to run out of income, and I’m not eligible for unemployment. I knew this moment was coming, and I have not been in denial, but it’s strangely unsatisfying to finish gardening projects I have imagined and toiled over for, not kidding, literal decades.

The release from so many pressures this spring semester meant that I was not able to grieve with the students and faculty, who have been voicing their distress for weeks. I get it now.

Perhaps I am also finally sensitized to the loss because a year ago I was in Billings at my own son’s college graduation.

The Stone Table, Billings, Montana

After the ceremony we passed some graduates and their parents keeping it classy with Coronas and a tailgate party in the desolate parking lot.

While we were milling about waiting for Seth to extract himself from his regalia and making a plan for the rest of the afternoon, Seth’s oldest friend, Anna, glanced down the hill, pictured above, and observed, “I see this is where you perform the sacrifices.”

My older son, Eli, added that it would make an excellent guillotine with a few changes, which reminded me of the olden days, when Anna and her family would come over to watch Hornblower and play whist.

And then there were various comments about Narnia and the stone table.

At the time, I thought, I’d pick these loons over Corona out of a cooler any day.

Our students will have a very different set of “graduation” memories—they will not be able to participate in the same rite of passage with all the attendant random silliness that we enjoyed a year ago. Students are on their own to create a meaningful way to mark the day, unsupported by the structure and weight of tradition.

Of course, I get it that many graduates aren’t keen on these things, and their family or culture does not support the rigmarole. There are many rituals, in my humble opinion, that we could all do without. Good riddance to bad rubbish, as my grandmother used to say.

But for us, for my family, those two days, the two days our sons graduated from college—they were significant, bittersweet, dear.

I miss my children and our times together.

And, yes, I’d pick my loons over any variety of Corona, any day.

brought to our senses

I first noticed that my sniffer seemed to be off three years ago, in England. We arrived in the far North, Newcastle, on the last day of June, and it felt like November at home. My friend Carita and I were about to set off across the entire island along Hadrian’s Wall.

The River Tyne had a distinct odor, odd and difficult to describe. I thought it might be due to the history of pollution, or the time of year, flooding and whatnot.

July 1, 2017

Carita didn’t tell me outright that she thought I was bonkers, but I could see in her face that, well—she did not experience the stink.

This scent was everywhere, overwhelming, and I noticed it near all the water, not just the Tyne.

Several days in, we saw less water, more sky, and infinity sheep.

The animals—I wasn’t making that up. That odor was real.

Only a few months after that remarkable trip, I was hospitalized with an unprovoked pulmonary embolism, and the trip itself became an unreal memory, difficult to grasp, impossible to integrate into my timeline.

When I look back at the time before the Mortal Peril, there are very few signs that anything was amiss. But I did wonder back then, Googled it, even, whether having your sense of smell go wonky was a sign of something… bad.

After the PE, I lost my sense of smell entirely. I started feeling well again only a few months ago, just before the pandemic, and the very first thing I noticed, after seeing a new doctor and beginning a different protocol, was that I could smell my shampoo for the first time in years.

At that point, just before the pandemic, the England trip began settling itself back into my memory. It felt like finding a gift that I didn’t realize I’d been carrying around for ages, waiting for me to see. Any time I was out and about, walking to work, say, whole days in England would reconstruct themselves in my mind, ordered and complete, vivid and sensual.

And then, in the last six weeks on house arrest, those weeks would often come to mind, again, detailed. I took special note of the gardens in England, and I’ve been reconstructing my own that has fallen to rack and ruin, so this made sense. As it were.

Hollyhocks in a tiny garden, village of Corbridge.

A fortuitous time to be at home, these particular six weeks—unusually warm weather, an early spring. We used to feel lucky to have lilacs on Mother’s Day, and often they weren’t in bloom until the end of May. This year, the lilacs busted out a week ago. I brought in a bouquet, of course, and every time I passed the dining room, breathing in my favorite scent, I felt moved, giddy. That evening I sat right down and wrote a thank you note to my doctor. I had missed that fragrance these last several years.

I don’t know whether my experience of various odd stinks in England was a warning sign that something was off. But I do think that my memories of that trip reassembling themselves in my mind must surely be connected to regaining my sense of smell, which has delighted me again and again this spring.

Clearing out the dead wood in the lilac bush yesterday, I was thinking about memory and scent and remembered a remarkable story.

Shortly after her mother’s death, one of my fellow playgroup moms, Syd, shared a poignant scene from her trip home. Her mother had been in and out of consciousness, and was not able to recognize her children. A sibling arrived, Syd’s brother, if I recall, and when he realized their mother did not know him, he leaned over her pillow so that she could smell his neck. Their mother had always remarked that the scent of her children’s necks was lovely to her, distinct.

And that breath brought her to her senses, and she knew him.

repairs

My forty days of unprecedented solitude came to an end last week when my ex-husband came to stay with me for a bit. Turns out, health issues plus plague quarantine are a bad combination for the expert worriers. I’m happy to have him, happy to not have to make every damn meal myself. He’s even taken over cat litter patrol, bless him.

When we were married, we totally rocked that game. There were not only no winners, but also rage. You know, about important things. Like loading the dishwasher.

But divorce and cancer put an end to that nasty carnival ride. Thank heavens.

Small projects are a great way to cope with anxiety. Feelings follow action, as we are reminded in this excellent article about salvaging a disastrous day on house arrest. Ross has cheerfully started tidying up the unfinished business.

For instance, that week my toilet was in the living room a year ago, immediately prior to the sewer disaster, I did an emergency make-over of the bathroom. Or, a partial make-over. I painted and bought a new sink, but I never did get the doors on the cupboard below.

Ross took care of it. I happened by and had to take the picture above.

This tiny house holds so many memories. Like the time the lock broke on the bathroom door and I was trapped. “We’ll save you, Mommy!” When Ross and five-year-old Eli busted me out, I was extra delighted to see they’d dressed for the rescue, both wearing fire helmets.

And then there was that time I caught Ross in this exact kneeling position, pants down, encouraging a naked toddler to use the pot and modeling appropriate peeing procedure.

Ross also fixed the garden bench that was falling apart. And as I type he is repairing the deadbolt on the front door.

The pandemic has brought many surprises. This is the surprise-iest of all, the satisfaction of being able to share the stories of our boys’ childhood—even when we don’t say them aloud. The fact of his kneeling in the bathroom brought it back, made that time real again.

And that’s a much better game to play.

put your clothes on

The other day or year or whenever that was, I waxed poetic about trying “something different.” Since then I have continued to scurry all over hell’s half acre.

Today I ran to a park in an old neighborhood where the houses are grand and the streets shaded by the branches of long established trees. I ran to the park, then turned right around, quickety-snip. Did not go in.

So many people. Breathing.

Irksome.

Also irksome to realize that living in the same city for one’s entire adult life means that one acquires a catalogue of memories, each associated with a place. And I passed them all today, all the uncomfortable memories.

That church? Sweaty, handsy contra dance guy.

My first apartment? The upstairs neighbor lady, slightly touched, who left long handwritten messages in perfect cursive for the mail carrier about her poetry magazine—must not be bent! Please!—and who once thought I was distressed during, well, a noisy intimate exchange, and knocked on the door to offer an ear, if I ever wanted to talk.

The laundromat? Well, that was less awkward, the making out with the college boyfriend part. The kissing is a pleasant memory, sure, but I was unkind to that young man.

Another house where I babysat? Okay. Now that is a fond memory.

My older son was a baby at the time, and I brought him with me to watch the children of my former Hebrew professor. They were two and almost five at the time, lively. The older child, a boy, was extraordinarily gifted—one of the two actually gifted children I’ve known.

When his mother introduced us, he only heard the second syllable of my name.

“Coal?! Let’s throw ‘er in the fire and keep the train goin’!” He was a year old at the time, and spoke with absolute clarity.

We had a grand old time that babysitting evening, playing, reading.

And then I had to change my son’s diaper. That’s when it all went sideways.

“Naked! That sure looks like fun. Hey! Let’s take our clothes off!”

And there went the tiny shirts and pants and unders and socks, flung hither and yon.

By the time I had the babe dressed again, all was lost. The screaming and running and screaming.

I suggested jammies, but they were so loud, they did not hear. Nothing I said or did could get them to pipe down.

Finally, I heard the front door and went downstairs to break the news. I’d only just graduated a few years prior, and I still couldn’t quite get over the fact that my professor even had a first name. So I was generally in a state of embarrassment and confusion with him.

“How did it go? Sounds like they are not in bed,” he said, clearly tired but with a hint of a grin.

They were screaming like banshees.

“No. And I’m so sorry to have to tell you that your children have removed all their clothing.”

“I see.”

He loved babies, this professor, and had already held out his arms for Eli, who went to him immediately. Eventually he paused in his flirting with the baby, sighed, smiled at me, and then pulled little Eli close and covered his ear.

I will never forget this—my dignified professor filled his lungs and bellowed up the stairs, the loudest human voice I have ever heard:

“CHILDREN. GET YOUR CLOTHES ON… RIGHT… NOW…!”

Dead silence.

We listened.

After a moment, thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk as they ran to get their discarded garments.

Eli had sucked in his breath and his baby eyes had widened. But this dad had it under control, comforting with smiles and cooing the moment he was satisfied with sounds of compliance.

I passed their house today. That beloved professor died twelve years ago. His voice is still distinct in my memory.

The queer thing about this pandemic, about being in what Arundhati Roy calls a “portal, a gateway between one world and the next” is that we will leave so much behind when we venture into the new, the after. I think we are aware of this at some level, the loss of not just the luggage that weighs us down, as she suggests, but of the fondness, the connections. Nearly every day someone comes to mind, a friend, that professor, a colleague—the assembly of those who have already left this beautiful world. The ones who will not see our next world.

And yet, this morning as I traveled this same territory, these roads that hold my history, I realized how close those memories remain, how essential to who I am. That will not change.

In this great pause, I am aware, too, of slowly but consciously making changes in my own life that will prepare me for the next reality. I want to be ready—you know, have my clothes on.

plague reading and unprecedented solitude

“Mommy. I hate this.”

“Why?”

“The author is a butt.”

“He really is. Let’s read something else.”

Last fall I went through a whole rigmarole to get signed up to be an emergency substitute teacher at a local K-8 Catholic school. But, due to lost paperwork and more rigmarole, I never did get to give it a whirl.

I am beginning, slowly, to imagine life after. After the pandemic. And I got to thinking—since I have so much time, why not review the required reading list at that dear little school? Because, presumably, the lost paperwork will be found and the children will gather again and we will wake from the pandemic nightmare. Someday.

And, I’ve been out of the education game for ten years, so I was curious to see what was what. I emailed all the appropriate persons and they must have been at their computers. I heard right back.

Perusing the list, my initial feeling was relief. I was familiar with all but a few titles.

But then I immediately channeled Mary Bailey.

George, why must you torture the children?

Everything, depressing. The Giver. The Pearl. Of Mice and Men. The Scarlet Letter.

Ugh.

The Giver traumatized me when I read the first time as an adult! Not keen on rereading that one. I’d read The Pearl in school and remembered only that it was grim and that the constant exposure of Juana’s breasts, nursing her baby, embarrassed me. It is short and was available from the library, so I listened for a few hours in the garden while clearing an overgrown pathway, digging up bindweed and lemon balm from under and between the stepping stones.

And I listened in a state of great agitation.

I had an overwhelming sense of relief that I did not make my feminist sons read this during the homeschool years. They would have hated it. So much.

“I am a man! I am a man!”

“And Juana knew that he was a man. And that meant something. And she needed a man.”

(The Juana bit might not be exactly correct, but close.)

Also, racism. Seething with racism.

On the other hand, I so desperately wish I had read this with the boys. Their commentary would have been on point.

Objectively, I think it’s fair to say that by official educational standards, I was a shite teacher when we were homeschooling. I really did not care about literary analysis or writing a five-paragraph essay. I still don’t.

But were the boys engaged? Yes. Okay, then. Perfectly adequate.

When my younger son was ten-ish, I listened to Alan Rickman reading Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native. One day he came into the kitchen—my son the obstreperous atheist, not Alan Rickman—and said, “Lazarus?! He said Lazarus. That’s the dead guy who came back to life.”

He had been so assiduously pretending not to listen, I was taken aback. And delighted.

Later, getting into the van after our third stop on our weekly grocery shopping expedition, he plaintively asked if we were done yet—he wanted to get back to the book to hear Eustacia die… die… DIE…!

Bloodlust is a fairly good indicator of engagement, I’d say.

And that was all I was after, engagement. And the ability to make connections, even when the were not flattering.

“Mommy,” my younger son once growled. “You’re just like Eleanor of Aquitaine.”

“What?”

And his brother piped up to explain, “Abuse of power.”

Which is all to say that the Catholic school’s reading list, the books themselves, group education—utterly perplexing to me. I could spend a lot of time in the garden wondering, Why those books? What are we trying to teach these children? To hate reading?

I don’t know how it would look, but intellectually, of course I know that with skilled and careful instruction, the racism and sexism could be brought to light for these 6th graders—and brought to light in a more sophisticated way than it would have happened at my house. It would have looked something like this:

“Mommy. I hate this.”

“Why?”

“The author is a butt.”

“He really is. Let’s read something else.”

Today I’ll work on the front walkway, which I dug up last week listening to The Secret Garden—not on the reading list. Last night I checked out Lord of the Flies from the library, read by the author—on the reading list. Another I read in school and hardly remember, and which I suspect is not actually written for children. And based on that suspicion alone, and a vague sense of trauma, I did not have the boys read that one, either.

But I’ve read all of William Golding’s other work, so I am more sympathetic about the idea of rereading Flies than I was about Steinbeck.

Also, the brilliant Penelope Lively’s Slightly Foxed essay made me love him even more.

William Golding’s is not a large oeuvre: fifteen books, a play, an unfinished novel. Rereading everything, I am struck by the modesty of the pile through which I have worked, and the brevity of the books. He pared fiction down to bony essentials: an entire universe in the 223 pages of Lord of the Flies, or the 233 of The Inheritors. I wanted to try to identify what it is that sets him apart – on a pedestal, as far as I am concerned.

Voice, essentially. A couple of books in, and that voice is in your head: urgent, passionate, crafty, innovative, startling – seizing your ear with the unexpected perfect word (‘mutinous’ daisies on a lawn), the crackle of dialogue, the impetuous, precise and lavish accumulation of language that summons up the physical world of a tropical island, a rock in the Atlantic, a nineteenth-century ship, the Dordogne valley in prehistory.

Penelope Lively

Lively’s brilliant writing notwithstanding, I frankly don’t think these depressing novels are quite the right reading material for the apocalypse. Or middle school, for that matter. But the sun is shining, again—who knew the end times would bring such glorious weather? And last year’s potatoes and infinity more bindweed roots are waiting for me to dig them up.

pandemic baking

I just now put banana bread in the oven, my second try. Last week, I was mixing up the ingredients when my phone rang, a family member in trouble, needing medical attention. I was totally ready to leave the house, but I had to make some calls to find someone to take the loaf out in an hour.

I was distracted, so I forgot to add the oat flour I’d just mixed up in the food processor. Dang it.

Turned out the medical issue was a false alarm, but the banana “bread” could not be saved. Butter, sugar, chocolate chips, eggs, and banana—boiled in a pan. You don’t want to know. A waste of precious resources, to be sure. But I saved the ground up oats for a do-over.

I first learned to bake yeasted bread after I took a birthday gift certificate to Waldenbooks in the mall, where, after perusing all my options, I bought Laurel’s Kitchen, a fat brown book with woodcut illustrations that appeal to me still. Back in the olden days, it was difficult to find excellent flour, but I followed the instructions and practiced until I mastered the perfect whole grain loaf.

Eventually, I was ready to move into bigger territory, so I leveled up to the Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book. I’m on my second copy now, the first one having met an unfortunate end. I noticed several years ago that there was a newer edition available, so I checked it out from the library, looked up the changes, and updated my own copy with notes.

Over the years, my collection of bread making supplies grew. I found a hand crank German mill for a song. Turning the crank is meditative work, and satisfying. And, no joke, the flavor is so much better than already-ground whole wheat flour, I began to wonder if all our flour isn’t rancid.

I also collected Henry Watson clay bakers, which I only learned about when I spotted one in a thrift store. This was in the olden days, when the internet was still new, so hunting down more was an exciting challenge.

I would like to think that my bread making was motivated by love, not snobbery. But I cannot deny that it is deeply pleasing to acquire skill and to collect the appropriate accoutrements.

Since the lockdown, I find that baking still brings pleasure even while eating alone is merely a chore. Some activities are meant to be shared and feel hollow without companions.

This is partly why, I think, I balked back in the early days of the plague, before all our events were cancelled. There was talk that the show would go on, the concerts would not be cancelled, but played to an empty house and livestreamed. Which seems about as satisfying to me as eating alone.

Last week Nicholas Berger gave the theatre people in my social media circle a lot to think about when he wrote passionately about The Forgotten Art of Assembly. The entire piece is spectacular and spectacularly grumpy, and I loved every bit of it. Especially this, in regard to his social media feed:

“There are of course the self-aggrandizing posts advertising new quarantine workout routines, the dog and cat videos, and the photographs chronicling every home-cooked meal prepared and served on the same characterless Ikea china. Now that everyone has discovered Mark Bittman’s New York Times No-Knead Bread recipe, trying to escape the image of a mediocre country loaf is nigh impossible. But these aren’t the posts that give me pause, I have been lobbying for more yeasted doughs on Instagram for years.”

It’s worth reading in its entirety, but I was attracted to this chunk because of the bread. (And the IKEA dishes.)

Now, I haven’t checked out Berger’s Insta feed for his bread lobbying, but I suspect that he has discovered what I have learned, too—that bread is all about transformation, and kneading is good work.

I say, let people have their pandemic carbs! Let us have our boiled banana failures! Perhaps for some chunk of the population, those privileged to be able to stay at home and who have access to flour and yeast, will come around. Who cares if the dishes are characterless? It’s early days yet. There will be plenty of time for improved baking skill. Or Insta pictures, if that’s what you’re after.

The last time I ventured out, there was not a single smidge of flour to be found. I haven’t yet decided whether to learn how to use the dreaded white flour, perhaps make my own sourdough, or if I should just mail order some wheat and mill it myself—although, I’ll be honest here. It’s tiring, the milling.

So. When the banana bread is done, I will read through the recipes in the Sunset Cook Book of Breads, which far predates my Waldenbooks purchase. No idea how this vintage gem even ended up on my shelf.

Yesterday I was blue, remembering Easter feasts gone by, feeling the absence of loved ones. But I reminded myself and the fam that next year, or whenever this damn thing is over, we will get together again. And our family dinners will be excellent. And then my friend Barbara dropped off a slice of her famous cheesecake, which made everything better.

Keep baking, friends.

unprecedented solitude, day 35

My garden was difficult to maintain after I found myself living alone, and then, during the years I was ill, impossible. I am obscenely fortunate during this plaguetime to have hours and hours a day to work outside. And that, it seems, is what is required. Hours and hours a day. Because bringing a garden back is at least as hard if not harder than making one in the first place.

Yesterday I cleared bindweed and shoveled compost into the vegetable beds. Planted some lettuces. The bindweed, though. Hours.

Years ago, my friend Mary’s mother, a botanist, walked through the yard with me, imagining possibilities. She was older, frail, and had a distinctively breathy and musical voice.

“What can I do about this bindweed?” I asked her.

“Well. There’s only one thing you can do,” she giggled.

“Yes?”

“Move.”

But I stayed. And the ubiquitous bindweed is… ubiquitous.

I am a slow worker and my efforts sometimes feel futile. The labor is intense, and I end every day sore and pleasantly spent. But, little-by-slowly, I am making progress.

On the phone with my son yesterday evening, I mentioned that all this time in the garden has made me aware that I was either naïve or willfully ignorant when I planned this space. It is frankly impossible for one person working outside the home to manage this much.

I work steadily for three or four hours a day, and then I spend another hour or two on less demanding labor—cleaning the patio, tidying the tools. So, essentially, this is nearly a full-time job. And, yes, I guess it was naïveté, not so much about the labor but about what is expected of us in this culture, in terms of work that takes us away from home.

Or maybe both, a naiveté and willful rejection of cultural norms.

And a hunger for beauty and life and abundance, too. Let’s not forget that part.

Well. Whatever it was that led me to decide to fill every available space with life, I do not regret it. And, in terms of maintenance, it wasn’t only a matter of time that led to the current state of rack and ruin. I am a nine-month employee, so you would think I could manage. But timing has also been a factor. For the last twenty years I have worked overtime from mid-March to mid-May. Last year I had two days entirely free in April, and they were not consecutive. And while my work days were often short, during my free mornings I was so overwhelmed, I could seldom decide where to even begin.

By the time I limped through the semester to commencement, the weeds had taken over. And, let’s be honest. Waist-high weeds are terrifying.

But there is a secret, too, another reason I have been feckless in my attempts at maintaining this garden, even before the Mortal Peril.

In my twenties and thirties, I used to plan my walks through the neighborhood so I could visit my favorite gardens. All our cracker box houses were built immediately after WWII, and they are not lovely. The cared-for gardens were few and far between—and even those pretty ones from back in the olden days are now gone. Over time, I met and chatted with the women who tended the three or four wildly creative gardens. One day I realized. They were all old. And single.

I was unhappy in my marriage, and while I longed for both freedom and a lovely garden, somehow I made a connection in my mind that was likely unfair and, in retrospect, as damaging to my psyche as it is straight-up humorous. I distinctly remember thinking, “I’ll be damned if I turn into one of these old women who pour all their passion into their garden because they can’t get laid, are incapable of intimate relationship.”

(Side note, and a story for another time, I learned during my six-week dating misadventure, immediately prior to almost croaking, that I could actually get laid any day of the week if I wanted to. So you could you.)

I have told only a few people about this peculiar connection in my mind, and even the telling was not helpful in letting it go, the conflict I felt about having a lovely, well-tended garden.

Who would have thunk it, that it would take a global pandemic for me to hunker down with my solitude, to make room for the idea that a beautiful garden and a fulfilling intimate relationship—these are not mutually exclusive.

In terms of the physical space, my work, as they say, is cut out for me. I will have plenty to occupy my time until I need to rethink my employment plans. And although I have not even begun to address the area in the way-back, the devastation from last year’s side sewer replacement, I do not feel overwhelmed. I simply take one section at a time.

I do not think often about after, about maintaining all this when we return to whatever is left of normal life, post-pandemic. Of course, sure, at a practical level, when my arbor chip dump comes through, I will mulch the areas I’ve reclaimed, and then, yes, perhaps I will be able to maintain the garden after—assuming, of course, I survive and don’t lose the house.

This is a dark possibility I prefer not to think about. But I woke myself with a start the other night, having dreamed I was making my own coffin, so some part of my mind is aware. The gardening engages the mind and body only during daylight hours, when it is critical to participate in the fact that life wants to happen.

In these strange times when our mortality is so close, so present, there is immense pleasure and comfort in a lettuce. Or in the ruby-stemmed chard I brought in from the garden last night for dinner. Or the long tangle of white root mass as I lift the bindweed from the soil. Or the small new buds on my Jude the Obscure rose, planted last week.

Or in the simple fact of springtime.

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Jude the Obscure arrived today.

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day the 32nd of unprecedented solitude

Years ago I read or heard an interview with a famous actor, and I want to say it was Tom Hanks. Possibly it was Christopher Walken. Doesn’t matter. Whoever this guy was, he was asked about working with a famous director, something along the lines of—What was the best advice you ever received?

Surprisingly, it was this: “Try something different.”

Over the years I have turned this over in my mind. We are such creatures of habit, even when our habits do not serve us well.

For me, a gift of the pandemic has been this precise freedom, the time and energy to try something different, to approach my little life inside this rectangle of earth just… differently.

For instance. One day, early in the plague, without giving it any forethought, I simply took a different route on my morning run—although, in the same general vicinity as always. The roads running north and south are relatively flat, and the roads east-west hilly. Something to do with glaciation or volcanic activity or such like, according to my friend Linda, who is a scientist. I cannot quite recall. But I do remember her voice and giggle and delight as she explained the geological history of our area, and my wonder at brains that see and understand the physical world, and have language to describe great forces.

At any rate. Partly because of the terrain, my running has generally been to the north of my home. But I also ran that way to avoid the campus where I work for fear of seeing or being seen by students or colleagues.

But now the college is empty, and the streets are, too, mostly. This morning I ran directly into the sunrise, straight to and then through campus, and then into an older part of town with grand old houses.

And then I swung into a shady hidden street that loops along a gulch toward a precipice where I stopped to take a photo of the glorious view. I used to like to walk that road, which still has cobblestones in some places—and today I suddenly remembered that it had been years. The last time I’d been along that favorite route was when I was training for my big walk across England. Which seems three lifetimes ago.

I passed the elegant house where I had once babysat the children of my logic professor. Mary, the oldest, had a thin, serious face, and she gravely translated for her talkative and incomprehensible three-year-old brother, William. With crisp, precise enunciation, she reported, “I believe he’s talking about the World of Adaptation at the Point Defiance Zoo.” Mary was eight, and I did not see her again until last year, at a conference. My own streak does not bother me, but I was unsettled to see silver strands in her hair.

The weather is unusually warm this week, the world in bloom. I spotted a creamy peach quince blossom, a color I’ve not seen before. And I was astonished to be able to smell the blossoms, all kinds of blossoms. At some point during or after the Mortal Peril, I had lost my sense of smell, one of the many small woes in the constellation of small woes that afflicted me for years. It’s coming back!

When I turned out of that secret cobblestone loop and onto a main drag, my shadow stretched out long and lean, and I thought, “How beautiful. How beautiful, these human bodies.”

Before the pandemic, I loved my little running route, loved taking note of the changing seasons, children on their way to school. But that time was stolen, squeezed in before scurrying off to the next thing. Now I have the leisure to explore my city, to wander through old neighborhoods and memories.

Yesterday, I made bread, which always reminds me of my boys, especially small Seth’s chubby, dimpled hands, helping. He used to stand on a chair, and I remembered, kneading the dough, when I used to stand behind him, the scent of his coarse curls, so different from his brother’s fine downy toddler hair. Sometimes, now that they are grown, these memories sadden me, and I have to interrupt an internal recitation of a litany of failure as a parent.

A month ago I was apprehensive, concerned about how loneliness and isolation might drive me mad. Who knows when this will end?

But as I pulled perfect loaves from the oven, something I have done hundreds of times, it slowly dawned on me. I felt a queer satisfaction. What is this? And I realized: I am happy.

It feels almost obscene, this freedom to make internal shifts, to try something different, when so many are suffering. I am keenly aware of my extraordinary privilege in this moment. And while I am in no way ready to say I am grateful for the health crisis that resulted in seemingly interminable disorientation and woe, I recognize that those years of recovery—years of emotional and physical constriction—were a singular sort of preparation for this pandemic, for staying sane, alone at home.

It will surely be fleeting—the satisfaction, not the sanity. I hope. Soon I will have to attend to the whole matter of income. But I have weeks and weeks before a crisis point. And today the sun is shining and I have fresh bread to toast for my elevenses.

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This never gets old. #wholewheatbread

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day 28 of unprecedented solitude

I used to dislike running on the sabbath because I found the drivers in their Sunday best were impatient, grim-faced, hurrying. Surely, they were not trying to run me over? Bless their hearts.

And then, after I began to attend church myself last summer, I found that an early run would put me out of breath for singing. Which was the whole point of going in the first place.

But we are in uncharted territory now. Church, along with everything else, is canceled. Or, ostensibly canceled—one of the four churches I passed on my route this morning had its doors flung open, and there were a dozen or so cars in the lot. I did not hear any sound from within, so who knows what they were up to.

It’s different in other ways, too, Sunday running. So many people out and about. I say hello to everyone now, the masked and the unmasked. And the dogs do not startle me as they used to.

Just as I passed a house today a woman holding a large laundry basket opened the door. Out shot her dog, chasing a crow, flying low, as if leading the dog on an adventure.

“No, Remi! No! Come back! Bad girl!”

Later, when I was traveling south, I saw an elderly gentleman walking east, both of us approaching an intersection. I offered a good morning, but he did not reply. He stared at me a long moment, and finally gave a slight nod. Then I saw he was wearing earbuds. His posture erect, he was walking with his elbows bent at perfect right angles, his head subtly wiggling side-to-side in time to the beat of the music piped into his head.

Last week I called the small running shop where my friend Jen works. Or, used to work—she’s laid off now. I talked to her boss, Ralph, and he set me up with a $10 coupon and free shipping. My new shoes will arrive on Wednesday.

That brief conversation with Ralph cheered me and was strangely satisfying.

Four and a half miles in the quiet this morning.

A new kind of sabbath.