One Hundred Days

I stopped short of titling this post “The First One Hundred Days.” Like the rest of the country -- and indeed the world -- I am hoping that there is not another 100 days like the last hundred; an unprecedented (do you hate that word yet?) period marked by the rampant spread of the novel coronavirus, conflicting  “expert” advice and the knowledge that numbers are not static but can be manipulated in startling ways.

I have been self-isolating for 100 days.  It is a milestone.  But, unlike birthdays and anniversaries, Hallmark does not (yet) have a card to pluck from the rack at the local store to commemorate the occasion. There are no pictures of ringing bells, mortarboard hats tossed into the air, explosions of confetti or flaming candles, the traditional congratulatory markers of achievement or longevity. 

The early days of the isolation were characterized by napping, reading and the sorting out of all those weird little drawers, closets and under-bed spots that had been long neglected. It was naively satisfying.  Just as the reality of isolating really started to set in, the seasons cooperated and the sorting gave way to the gardening and the taking in of great, grand gulps of fresh outdoor Vermont air.

Through each day I watched the news (channel-surfing endlessly), read countless Facebook posts (some so long they might qualify as novellas) from friends with wildly disparate views.  And I paid attention to my own emotions -- my joy, my anger, my sadness, my frustration and yes, my gratitude. 

These might not quite be what Hallmark would put on a quarantine-themed card, but what follows below are some brief, random thoughts and observations from the past 100 days -- to commemorate and celebrate the milestone!

• Please do not confuse “fear” with “caution.”  I do not fear death but I am not going to put myself at unnecessary risk. I would not risk walking to the edge of a precipice where signs clearly indicated DANGER unless I was suicidal.

• I miss social contact but have Zoomed into a new social world.  I Zoom church services, Zoom with far-flung relatives and Zoom with family. It helps. (The downside is that I look a lot older in the Zoom grid than I do in my bathroom mirror!)

• Be careful with your words either written or spoken. Regret is a heavy burden and kneejerk remarks can -- and do -- hurt.  Express yourself but be careful and thoughtful when you do so.

• I have never paid much attention to age.  But I cannot deny that I am in the high-risk group based on my age alone.  I have to admit that I am hurt and shocked that we elderly seem to be viewed as no longer useful, that we’re some kind of expendable collateral damage. It makes me angry.

• I am not a one-trick-pony. I do not think you are either. If we have a relationship, it is based on more than whether you wear a mask or not. 

• Like most folks, I love a sunny day. But, I have never been a sun-worshipping, beach-going person. I far prefer fishing or canoeing on a Minnesota lake or tubing down the Batten Kill. Now, for the first time, I find myself basking in the sun on my patio, drinking in the healing medicine of vitamin D, utterly quiet.  I now understand sun-worshippers.

• I am going out a bit more.  Each opportunity is met with “risk assessment.”  I remember that from my youth (when the calculus was: “Will the fun of that party be worth the trouble I might get into?”).  It makes me chuckle to realize that I have been a risk-assessor my entire life.  Nothing new here.

• I had thought of cataloging all the divides but there are now so many things that divide us. You know them already for you post and tweet and film them. We are a culture founded on individual freedoms and that now seems to hamper instead of help the solidification of a common goal based on equality and fairness. We need uniters in politics and I don’t see many.  This is frustrating.  This is heart-breaking.

• My day starts early.  Almost every morning I cry. Not for long but, when I wake up, I mourn for what we have lost, or for the daily complications for which we have had no preparation and over which we have scant control. Then I pray. My mind goes first to Matthew 11:28: “Come unto me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” The burden is in my mind, an effort to understand the chaos of 2020. The tears and prayer have comforted me. I am ready for my cup of coffee. I am ready to face the day with gratitude for my blessing are many and my burdens are relatively few.   

Previous posts:

Stayin' Home / Stayin' Alive 

The Woodpile 

It's Complicated: A Sentimental Journey

Stayin’ Home / Stayin’ Alive

I only know how long I have been self -isolating at home because I remember that my last day of being physically present at the Wayside Country Store was St. Patrick’s Day. Since then, I’ve been lovingly side-tracked by my family due to my age and underlying immune issues.

A few days in, I started making slash marks on my calendar but that felt curiously like being a prisoner scratching out days of a sentence served on the cell wall.  I did not yet feel like a prisoner and there was no end in sight -- then or now.

Tending to be an optimist, I cast around for productive uses of time.  A mountain of old photos needed to be sorted and I got down to the Jurassic layer (see the photo of a five-year-old me at the top of this post) pretty quickly.  I kept dozens of images and threw away hundreds – most of the latter blurry or duplicates. When I die -- hopefully no time soon and not because of Covid-19 -- I want my children to know that whatever they have to sort out is now a good one tenth of what it would have been before the isolating circumstances of the 2020 pandemic.

I’ve sorted out bits and pieces of metal and all things shiny accumulated through my jewelry-collecting hobby (and even managed to construct a few jewelry Christmas trees along the way). I’ve gardened -- pulling miles of mint roots that zippered out of the thawing soil, I’ve spent too much time on Facebook (checking Getty Images is entertaining – and illustrates the kind of ingenuity that has resulted from this quarantine).  I’ve learned to use new technology (hello Apple TV!) to get more stimulating programming (not to mention distance myself from the ubiquitous and often confusing “information” about the very virus that landed me here) as well as connect with friends and family in ways I hadn’t thought possible (hello Zoom video-conferencing!).  

I’ve texted and emailed and cleaned my cupboards, snacked way too much, played game after game of solitaire and I’ve prayed.  Oddly – given how voracious a reader I am – I have not read very much. I have stacks of books within reach but have not been able to concentrate.  I used to be able to retreat into the fantasy of fiction but right now the welfare of my family (both near and far), the welfare of my business and my concerns about the future of the country seem to lurk just below the surface. 

And, truth be told, I started thinking too much.  Case in point: Not being particularly musical, I was surprised to be visited with an “ear worm” of the Bee Gees singing “Stayin’ Alive” from the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack.  The subtext of the song is about staying alive – and perhaps even thriving -- on the mean streets of New York, which is currently the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic and frighteningly close to my corner of the world (less than 175 miles as the crow flies). 

It is no wonder that we are is obsessed with how to stay alive and to thrive; are we politically and individually doing the right thing, the best thing? Only history will tell.  We can only do what we think is right for us so we can look ourselves in the mirror, realize that our instinct to live and protect those around us is alive and well, however we manifest it.  In many ways, I feel like I’ve been through Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief:  denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

I am beyond grateful that my multi-stage grief processing is not for a departed loved one.  Rather I grieve for the normal that was here and no longer is. What a “new normal” will look like is as uncertain as the path of the novel coronavirus itself.  I accept that. 

So, for now, I am stayin’ home – and stayin’ alive. 

Previous posts:

The Woodpile

It's Complicated: A Sentimental Journey 

A Little Boy and a Hummingbird

The Woodpile

The 16-inch chunks of wood are in a jumbled pile on the grass between my back door and the wood shed.  

It was cut and delivered last summer and was slated to be properly stacked and air-dried before the first snow frosted the mountaintops. But it did not happen. I refused several offers of help, saving the chore as an opportunity for a lad who owed me money to work off his debt. But that too did not happen. And so, the pile aged from a bright, raw yellow to a pale, watery lemonade as it mocked me for my foolish failure to get it under the protection of the wood shed.  

At my age (senior – senior), I thought I could gracefully nod out of the wood-stacking chore. But it was not to be. And I am glad that it was not. Without being too Pollyannaish, it seems that my unstacked wood is now my source of exercise and sunshine -- both badly needed while I am self-isolating to protect myself from the novel coronavirus pandemic.  

On the first day of my isolation, I luxuriated in reading. On the second day, I cleaned out kitchen drawers -- interspersed with reading and TV-watching. By the third day, the isolation began to feel real …watching television, while informative, was also scary as hell. This is not a random couple of days off or a vacation, it is a catastrophic, deadly worldwide event that alters the very fabric of the way we have lived. We, as individuals, families, and businesses are crafting a new normal and we don’t exactly know how to do that (there's no YouTube tutorial -- yet) or what that will look like.

But, what I do know right now is that I need exercise, I need to get out of the house, away from the television and the cocoon of my down comforter, the escapism of my books, and the temptations of the snack drawer and refrigerator.  

As I whittle down the unruly pile, 20 minutes at a time, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, my mind takes things a step further. This is an act of faith in the future, I realize. On the cusp of a terribly troubled spring, while stacking the hunks of birch, I am betting that this time-honored Vermont chore -- and the sense of normalcy that engaging in it imparts -- will hold me in good stead nearly a year from now in a calmer and healthier winter when the snow comes to frost the mountaintops.  

Previous Posts:

It's Complicated: A Sentimental Journey

A Little Boy and a Hummingbird

Fourteen Stories