Skip to main content

Pandemic Journey Day 58

May 18, 2020

So few grains of happiness

measured against all the dark

and still the scales balance.



The world asks of us

only the strength we have, and we give it.

Then it asks more, and we give it.

-          Jane Hirshfield

Today’s observations – I did it, nervously, but I joined the soft re-entry to normal. Wait, it’s the new normal.  I took a step further into the new normal as I kept the appointment I made a month ago with my hairdresser.  It had been two months since I sat in his chair. I made the appointment as an act of good faith. As the date drew closer, I thought, it will be canceled or rescheduled -nothing to stress about. Then it wasn’t. So I juggled that in my head a bit - should I go or not?  The truth is that this little shop needed my show of confidence more than I needed to prove anything to myself. I have been helping to maintain a safe business and home environment at the school.  There must be a way to resume the community of commerce in the new normal. 

Walking through the front door, I scanned the shop. There were three stylists and only two other clients besides me.  My hairdresser was preparing his station and asked me to wash my hands while he finished up.  Everyone wore masked, and the air smelled clean, you could have eaten off the floor, well, maybe not eaten off the floor.  It is a hair salon, but all the surfaces were gleaming.  As he waved me over, I popped down in the black swivel chair to let him do his work.  I had forgotten how long it had been since another adult human had touched me with intention.  I needed that, even if it did feel like a naughty pleasure.

We fell into our regular chat as if I had been in only last week. Crossing the invisible quarantine line gave an edge to the conversation, though, we felt grateful each other had emerged okay. He loves to talk about European travels with his wife.  I like to pepper the chat with the nerd bombs, asking his opinion on the latest COVID medical theories or how other countries have handled their outbreaks. For now, we have little personal experience with the disease, and we favor friendly topics, so we steer away from politics.  He is a Midwest small-town local boy, and he voted for Trump because he has always voted Republican. I suppose as the election nears, I will test him on his allegiance. At that moment, I didn’t want to distract him from his task at hand  (his fingers in my hair).

I did share a story I read in the NY Times this morning.  A family in Brooklyn had to experience the new inflammatory syndrome that shows ups in kids as it ravaged their fourteen-year-old son. Inflammation hits the blood vessels causing the blood pressure to drop so much that the heart beats itself dizzy, trying to revive it. The doctors considered the stress on his heart a kind of heart failure.  The boy told reporters that he felt he had fire running through his veins.  This is a mean and nasty virus!

At school, we are living with a lot of disappointment.  It doesn’t look like the boarding students will be traveling home any time soon.  The US coronavirus news is so bad in the eyes of other nations; they have restricted travel severely.  Vietnam will revisit opening their borders in July and Morocco, maybe in June.  Their parents are rightly concerned about the ability to return in the fall.  Watching how sanguine most of the kids have been about the news inspires me.  They are right in the middle of something for which they and their families never signed up.  Today as a few of us got together to make bread, I listened to their new normal discussions, what summer in Iowa might be like, and what they would be taking next year for independent study classes.

On another note, in Des Moines, some neighborhood folks have begun placing zip lock bags full of masks in the tiny free libraries, as the state health officials began recommendations for everyone wear masks in public.  I’m witnessing about 50% participation now, as Iowa reports three to four hundred new cases a day.  I supposed that is manageable in a state of 3.15 million.  There are still Iowa counties reporting no positive cases.  I find it interesting that the highest age group testing positive is 18-42.  

Across the river in Illinois, government authorities are still trying to balance the scales. Those Chicagoans just won’t get with the program.  Mayor Lightfoot has decided to fine churches for violating her public health’s mandate for reduced capacity numbers in their services. Still, auto insurance premium numbers are going down, that’s progress somewhere.  But I still grin at the fact that in the time of COVID, cannabis and liquor are the sanctioned and essential agents of spirit, while churchgoers must suffer the mayor’s wrath.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2020 Pandemic Journey Day 44

May 4, 2020 Today’s idea – What has the fog of our modern conveniences begat? I read an article last night published in 1950 by Berton Roueche’ titled The Fog . In October 1948, a toxic smog settled on the borough of Donora, PA. This town is tucked away on a meander of the Monongahela River in the Allegheny Mountains.   During that time, it was home to three huge mills, a steel plant, and a zinc and sulfuric acid plant. The towering factory stacks of these industries pushed out thick plumes of coal smoke all day and all week. Also, given the town’s proximity to the river, boats and trains added their emission to the cocktail. To seal the deal, Donora sits in the topography of secluded bluffs and hills that allow for little or no wind to carry the smoke and fumes out of town.   So the place was known to be a smutty, smokey mess, tolerated by residents who referred to the sulfurous stench as the smell of money. On this weekend in October, a thermal inversion put a tighter li...
Post a Comment
Read more

Covid19 Journey Day 20

April 10, 2020 Today’s idea – Maybe we’ve needed this for a long time.   To be stopped so we could take a long moment and assess what is alive in us and what is mere rote living, what is unnecessary and what really matters; what we carry by empty habit. To know that busier doesn’t make us more worthy- a good work ethic is not to be confused with constant motion.   We’ve needed this to   learn how to be together as family again, to sit together in conversation, to listen to one another, to play and read together, help solve problems even do homework together, cook together, sit around a table again. And to say to each other, here are boundaries, this is okay and that is not okay because we do that for the ones we love. We needed this to understand that isolation can be hard on some people sheltering in place, the abuser with the abused,   those that must shelter alone, those who need consistent home care for a chronic illness or condition, the family receiving h...
Post a Comment
Read more

Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend

  Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend And life a faithful pillow - a pillow to go flat, a spirit to drift off,  glaciers to melt and raise the sea. The blueprint is clear - Expect a tiny storm of mercy–  full of crows and bottle flies to debride the corpse,  to tithe the land.      And respect the putrid demise - things that fall apart make space for miracles.   Yet there persists the memory of breath rinsed in lavender and salt air. Then the dreams for blood and semen to revive, to metabolize  every tired, sad gospel into a hatch of octopus. Death confesses everything as she conjures her necrosis, as she feigns redemption, fools us with false devotion. She believes our defiance will set her free.   We must let grief to be the thread and needle to darn the rend, renew the cloth. then we can grasp the nascent green of winter wheat in spring.
Post a Comment
Read more