Are we there yet?

This morning, I heard an interview on NPR's Morning Edition with our very own North Carolina Sec. of Health, Mandy Cohen, MD. She's been diligently working with others in state government, especially the governor, trying to ride this bucking bronco of a pandemic since the beginning. 

The stay-at-home order was issued, businesses shuttered, or were severely restricted. The traffic dropped in Raleigh below the level it was when I first moved here in 1987. Not that I would know, mind you, since I wasn't going out. But we do back up to a well-used street.

At first, it was kind of a breathless adventure, like waiting for a hurricane. We received our bidet even before the shutdown. Prescient, no? We stocked up on canned goods and pet food, pasta, tuna, rice, popcicles and ice cream, too. 

I'm old-ish. Turning 70 this summer, with a few predisposing but controlled health conditions. Jill is on medication that negatively affects her immune system. My very part-time job has no prospect of starting up again soon. She works in a surgery center, assisting surgeons with mainly elective procedures. We both had loads of unexpected time on our hands. 

As the days turned to weeks some of us, (Ahem) settled into the slow pace and isolation while and others, (not naming names), had a bit more trouble with it. The yard received careful attention. I bought a new sewing machine and started making masks to give away. The three bird identification books that sit on the kitchen windowsill got a workout. All in all, it was a novelty. Not bad, we congratulated ourselves. But then...

In the OUT THERE, protests began. Unmasked throngs descended on downtown hollering and carrying on. Even though we live right here in the state capital, we witnessed it on screen like everybody else. "Crazy" we agreed. "Do they want to die?"

What happened? Was it the protests against the shutdown? The people carrying guns in the streets of downtown? Was it boredom or short attention spans? Too many people out of work and scared for the future? Maybe it was just the call of summer. Suddenly, people were over it. 

LET THE OPENING BEGIN!

Are we there yet? No, assuredly not. All those carefully tracked numbers are rising inexorably. Cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are going up here in NC, across the US, around the world. This ain't over yet, not by a long shot. 

So I'm hunkered down. It's hard to make myself answer the phone. I'm getting a lot of writing done and will likely publish two new books this fall. My house isn't much cleaner, I'm having trouble distancing from the fridge, sometimes I stare blankly at the wall wondering what to do next. But I've learned the difference between house sparrows, song sparrows, and chipping sparrows. I've held a lost Carolina Chickadee baby in my hand. I've taken naps and learned new pieces on the piano, put together some puzzles, read lots of books, and listened to sooooo many podcasts.

We're not there yet. Maybe we never will be. But one way or another, life is still good.

Grandma, what did you do in the plague?

My paternal grandmother, Ida, spent two years in a tuberculosis sanitarium in the early 1930s. It was in Ottumwa, Iowa, and it no longer exists. My father was six when she got sick. Ida's sister, Anna, took care of the family. That's what families do.

Years later, in 1967, I lived in Spain and was diagnosed with TB and treated for a year with medication and monitoring. Since then, I've gone for periodic rechecks and there's been no recurrence. Unlike my grandmother, I didn't have to be held in a sanitarium away from my family and normal activities. Advances in medicine, I guess. 

This time of plague has brought up reminders. TB patients, according to what I've read, were plied with lots of fresh air, even sleeping on open porches in all weather. I've spent much of each day on the deck during this time. It has been a balm to my mind and spirit and, perhaps, I'm channeling Ida.

I am acutely aware of the privilege I have during this pandemic. A house, first of all, with electricity, hot and cold running water, food, and the internet --- don't forget the internet! My wife and I find we enjoy each other's company and not a single spat has arisen. After 18 years together, we've been through enough counseling and hard times that we've learned to be gentle with one another. Also, we leave each other alone for our personal pursuits in the same house.

One of the underlying complaints I glean from what I read online is a feeling that this "shouldn't" be happening. As if life in modern America should not be subject to such an indignity as infectious disease. "It's not FAIR!"

No, but it's real life and how we respond is what matters most. Do we abandon our values of compassion in favor of some sort of "every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost" philosophy? That seems to be rearing itself in some quarters.

Or do we take this for the challenge it is, put hearts, minds, and strength to bear in acknowledging the stark reality and solving it the best we can? 

Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and even God will not bail us out. This is our collective moment and everyone has a part to play, even if it is just staying home or wearing a mask to the grocery store. 

My son is an ER doc. His job is well-defined and he is in my thoughts every single day. My wife is a Surgical Tech; she's got 35 years of familiarity with PPE. Thousands and thousands of regular people, sons, daughters, wives, husbands, go to work each day and face unknown risks. The best way you and I can support them is to stop the spread of disease.

Me, I may be getting old and retired, but I'm still kicking it right here at home, writing stories, sewing masks, checking in on friends and family by phone and computer. I may not be on the front lines, but I'm doing my part. So can you.

Sew the masks!

My great-grandmother, Ava Vista Cramer Ewers

It's a time-honored tradition, women supporting the war effort with fabric creations. Civil War -- rolling bandages. WWI -- knitting socks. WWII -- making and selling quilts for the Red Cross, all this and so much more. In times of war and national disasters, even before women were common in the workforce, organized efforts brought the traditional domestic skills of women into production for the greater good.

Now we see people making protective equipment to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. Across Youtube and all platforms of social media, patterns, encouragement, and videos are shared. While we don't have the social aspect of physical sewing circles (with tea and cookies, no doubt) pictures and stories are widely distributed online. And yes, the needle arts are still produced mainly by women. 

At one time, I was a moderately skilled seamstress. I learned to sew on the machine in seventh grade, though my mother had instructed me in hand-sewing and embroidery from about the age of six. I'm very grateful to Miss Miles, my Home Ec teacher at Bremerhaven American High School in Germany. First semester of 7th grade we made aprons. Of course, we did. It was 1962. My mother's best friend, Joan Lindquist Flory, was an extraordinary seamstress. She guided me through shopping for fabric, provided tools and instruction and didn't even scold me when the jumper I made turned out so odd. I had pre-shrunk the dress material but not the lining. Bad move. 

I never developed my skills to a professional level, but I made many of my clothes in high school and college, including my prom dress in 10th grade. 

When I worked as a historic interpreter at a 19th Century farm in Illinois, I sewed all my own period clothing as well as my daughter's. Later, for my business, I spent fourteen years running around the wilds of North Carolina taking history programs to classrooms. My work clothes were the ones I made, the dresses, aprons, hats, cloaks, petticoats, corsets and drawers of a farm woman 150 years earlier. There was always something that needed to be replaced or repaired.

My parents gave me a sturdy, turquoise, metal Singer for graduation from high school in 1968. It stood the test of time right up through December when I made a new Christmas stocking for my brother. When I called it into service in February it had given up the ghost. Maybe it could be revived but I decided it was time for a new one. I don't sew much anymore, a little quilting, incidental costumes, mending and hemming. My fingers don't work as well as they used to; after 5 hand surgeries, they're not what they once were. Kind of like my old sewing machine.

I ordered a low end, light-weight machine online and got it last week. Now I'm starting to make masks. Jill wants me to make head coverings she can wear in the operating room. I'd like to make a busy-apron for my mother-in-law who has dementia. It feels good to sew on a smooth machine that has way more bells and whistles than the old one could have dreamed of.

So I'll take my place in the tradition of women responders, wielding needle and thread in service to others despite the on-going controversy about whether or when face masks are useful. It's what we do and it sure beats housework!

Not my first rodeo

Apprehension. That's the feeling in the morning when I first open my computer to look at the news. What happened while I was asleep? You do it too, don't you?

It's almost palpable, the feeling that something dreadful is going to happen and there is no way to stop it. It's like a hurricane, with pictures on the screen to track its advance. When will it hit and how bad will it be? That's what the news is like today.

And yet, it's not the first time the world has felt topsy-turvy. A half-century ago it felt much the same, for many of the same reasons. Power, greed, autocratic rule. As different as the world is today, those human traits persist and rise up every generation or so. 

In 1968, when I graduated from high school, the US was in turmoil. Assassinations, riots, cities were burning, people marched in the streets. This was the America I returned to after living in Europe for 8 years.

Fifty years ago now, I was a recently married 19-year-old student at the University of Illinois. Tom and I met in Rota, Spain on the Navy base where I lived. He was a sailor, I was in high school. We had all of the aspirations and excitement of young lovers everywhere, despite the world around us. 

Our campus, that spring semester of 1970, was alive with protest against the war, against atrocities foreign and domestic. The National Guard marched down the middle of the street in front of our shabby, store-front student apartment. They marched on the quad and in front of buildings, carrying guns, herding students willy-nilly, protesters or not. The men in uniform were no older than the students, but they had the firepower and it was during that semester, on the campuses of Kent State and Mississippi State that they used them. They killed college students, black and white, because the world was upside down.

We were sure The Revolution was upon us. How could it not be? They were shooting and bludgeoning citizens in the streets. The powers of government were arrayed with deadly force against the people. Our leaders were being killed. Cities burned. Nobody was listening, all was chaos.

Tom and I left for Canada. He had done his four years in the US Navy but this didn't feel like a country he would ever defend. We lived for three months in a tent, in basements of churches for refugees and were sometimes taken into the homes of lovely Canadian grandmas. We weren't the only ones who left. We were probably not the only ones to come back.

The Revolution didn't happen then, but there was still a war to rise against, civil rights to demand, a corrupt government to deal with. 

You may have noticed that everything has not turned to roses and rainbows since 1970. Once again, we are in a state of upheaval. People have taken to the streets and will again. After all these years, my protesting chops are a little rusty but still, I march and chant with the young people. I write letters and emails, pick up the phone, canvass door to door. I just might not drive at night.

When the world is topsy-turvy and the malignant powers-that-be are in ascendence, what else is there to do but join together and assert that love and justice matter? 

You Call this Christmas?

December 1968: Schiller College, Germany

It was cold and I was excited to be going back to my family and my sailor boyfriend on the Navy base in Rota, Spain. Warm weather, Christmas cheer, parties. I'd just been back for Thanksgiving, so I knew the drill -- travel orders, passport, space-available military flight from Rhein Main in Frankfurt. Easy peasy.

The dorms closed and I took the train to Frankfurt. The terminal was packed with GIs trying to get home for Christmas. It was wall-to-wall uniforms. Just the way I liked it! Everything was great until I discovered I didn't have my passport. 

It had to be in my dorm room at school. I got on the phone and found that I could get in to look for it, but I didn't have money for train fare. One of the guys hitchhiked back to school with me and we turned my room upside down before getting word through a frantic trans-atlantic call that one of my housemates had accidentally taken it with her --- to Florida. No passport, no trip home to Spain. I would have to go to the American consulate in Frankfurt and try to get a temporary one.

My new friend sprang for a train ride for both of us. I put my plea in at the Consulate but found that everything was shutting down for the holidays. There would be no hope of getting the new passport until they reopened after Christmas. 

Back at the terminal, I fell in with a group of guys, me in my cute little mini smock-dress and my backpack. I had all the attention and admiration I could soak up. They bought me food and drinks, entertained me with stories and jokes, and at night they surrounded me while I slept on the floor --- to fend off the wolves, they assured me.

One by one my companions said good-bye and boarded planes for the States. By the end of Christmas Eve there was almost nobody left except a skeleton crew in the snack bar and in the office. Christmas Day I spent reading my book and had an ersatz Christmas dinner (sort of turkey or chicken?) in the snack bar with the kitchen workers. At least they let me have it for free.

Things powered up again on the 26th and flights began to leave. Space Available is always chancey, and I got bumped twice. The officer who bumped me the second time felt sorry as I stood there crying, and gave me a $20 bill. That was a lot of money in 1968. It didn't get me home that day, but it did mean I could have whatever I wanted in the snack bar.

Finally, on the 27th, newly minted temporary passport in hand, I was on the way to Rota Naval Station on a C140 transport. Seats? Naw, just the netting along the sides with lots of enormous containers down the center. But I got a box lunch to eat on the way. 

My first Christmas away from home felt like a disaster at the time. I missed my family terribly. I had felt all grown up when I went off to college, but there was no place I wanted to be more than around the Christmas tree with my parents and sisters and brother on that December 25th.

By the following Christmas, I had married that sailor boyfriend and we celebrated our first holidays together at his new base. It was many years before I spent another Christmas with my entire family. 2019 marks my 70th Christmas on the planet, but none has stood out like that first lonely Christmas in the airport.

Daily Production

For most of my life, all I wanted to do was read. As a kid, I was the one curled up in my room with a book. If mom sent us outside to play, I took Nancy Drew with me. And you best believe I still have something to read in the car, an honest-to-goodness paperback volume of short stories, just in case I get stuck in a blizzard with no cell service. Boots, a blanket, and a book. Not that blizzards are common in the piedmont of North Carolina. But you never know.

Now I'm 3/4 retired and I could read as much as I want, but there's a loud and insistent voice in my head that says NO! I should be productive, I should be working on something significant like mopping floors or cleaning out closets or painting the kitchen. I should be writing on the two books that are underway, practicing the piano, or at least doing laundry.  And there's always the office that is knee-deep in files and folders, photos and stacks of papers that need to be organized. 

Sitting and reading; what a waste of time.

I used to dream about retirement, how long and luxurious the days would be. No interruptions. Deciding from one moment to the next what I would do. It's not like that, at least not often enough. 

Aside from Jill's studio, which is filled with art, every room in our house has books, shelves and shelves of books, many of them never read ---- yet. I have books bought at auctions and used book stores. There's a bookcase filled with musty volumes from my parents and grandparents. My office and upstairs house research materials, writing and reference books, classics and mysteries and paperback novels.  Author friends have expanded my collection and Amazon provides innumerable selections not available in the library. 

It's one thing to collect them and another to make time to read. When I do, as absorbing and exciting as a text may be, the niggling guilt often overtakes me and I jump up mid-chapter to put in a load of clothes, start supper, feed the dogs, clean the bathroom. 

Here's the question, if not now, when? I'm 69 years old. No promises anymore; I could come to a halt any old time or hang on for 30 more years. Those books gathering dust on the shelves will outlive me either way. 

To read or not read?

I choose a book.

Between spaces

Where do you go when you sleep?

I've long been fascinated by the betweens. Dreams. Pretend. Reverie. Hallucination. What is the difference between vivid sleeping dreams and hallucination?

When I was in sixth grade, I used to get in trouble for daydreaming in school. My teacher, Mrs. Patrick, was strict but I liked her. We had just moved from the small towns of rural Iowa and fetched up in Germany on an Army base. It was 1961. Everything familiar was gone; I didn't even have favorite objects because our household goods hadn't arrived.

My desk was one row over from the windows because of course, we sat in rows. I gazed out the windows that overlooked the playground and grassy space and fell into deep thought. Mrs. Patrick thought I was dawdling; I knew if I didn't "daydream" I would cry.

People who dwell in imagination, children or adults, are often accused of being out of touch with reality. Lazy, head in the clouds, not all there. You've heard the words, whether they apply to you or not. "Why can't you just pay attention?" "Snap out of it!"

The netherworld I occupied most often was found between the covers of a book. It was there that new worlds opened and I could travel to distant times and places. It's a bit of a chicken and egg question: did I begin to dream because of the stories I read and those read to me, or did the stories I encountered mirror my innate inclinations?

I've reached a point in life in which I can dream more freely, just as my ambitions and "real world" options seem to be narrowing. In that regard, it's much like childhood. I have more agency now, and the ability to call my own shots. Nobody is going to move me from one continent to another without consultation. Perhaps that lack of decision-making gives rise to a rich childhood imagination for some kids like me.

I love being asleep because of the vivid dreams that come to me. At the same time, I resist going to sleep because being awake is so interesting and I'm afraid I'll miss something. So I stay awake "past my bedtime" (sorry, Mommy) and fall into a colorful panoply of stories and actors that I then resist waking from.

I've often heard people say they don't dream when they sleep. I don't know the physiology of that because I don't understand the mechanism of dreaming. But it's surprising to me how often that pronouncement is made with pride.

"I don't dream." (subtext: dreaming is a namby-pamby waste of brain power)
These are often the same folks who brag about only needing four hours of sleep a night. Hmmm. Is there a connection?

Me, I have taken to sleeping 8-10 hours a night and spending so much time in dreams that sometimes I can't remember what's real and what I dreamed. With my background of two parents with Alzheimer's Disease, that can be troubling, but there's no sense worrying. In the meantime, I reap the benefits by waking up with stories buzzing around in my head waiting to be written down.

Next year, ten short months from now, I will turn 70. Just as childhood is a time of rapid growth and change, I feel like this time of life is filled with questions and answers I would not have anticipated. As my body begins to change in ways I don't approve of, I find myself renewing my acquaintance with the pastimes and enchantments of my youth. I may not travel the world in real life -- too expensive, too difficult -- but I am once again loose in the liminal world between worlds and it's a welcome return.

Mom reading a bedtime story on the picnic table.