We’re hanging on to wholeness by the skin of our teeth.
Looking back four weeks ago, when the first rash of insecurity reached us in Westchester, New York, my thoughts were, how do I make this quarantine work? Let me study poetry. I’ll write, clean my office, I’ll love my husband more.
Now, I pursue the ritual washing of lemons, cucumbers, and radishes in soapy water, wiping down the mail slot and doorknobs with clorox, and letting the mail sit for a day before we touch it. It’s hard to concentrate on much else, even on days when I promise myself to stop listening to stories about the new evil—and the valiant work of our heroes. Ordinary people coming together is heartening. That some don’t feel this urge is disheartening.
Yesterday I removed everything from my drafting table that sits next to the window in my office. I moved piles of folders—works in progress, Latino essays, library talks, lit mags, poems—and stashed them wherever. Now, instead of facing a bulletin board choked with Post-its at my desk, I look out on a scruffy lawn, roots chewed up by the squirrels, empty stone flower pots, slender stalks of future blooms rising from the earth, and the green tips of grasses pushing past the stumpy canes of last year. The scene is calming. The resilience of spring makes me hopeful.
My always upbeat neighbor texted me asking how I was doing, revealing (between the lines) that she was out of sorts. This was so unlike her I called her live(!) One of the things that gives her pleasure these days is planting seeds. It’s too cold to plant outside, she explained, so she has a grow light in the basement and a heating pad that give seeds a head start, “like babies in an incubator.” I’ve got radish seeds from Italy, she says, Rocket Arugula, and seeds I harvested from the Nostertium in my garden. It’ll take 7 days for them to pop.
This conversation gave me a lift, although I don’t have seeds or a grow light, and the extent of my gardening skills are flower pots and weeding.
Yesterday, also, I listened in on a live conversation on Instagram with three smart and funny Panamanian women—a journalist and two professional cooks. They were chatting about the extreme quarantine in Panama City, discovering nooks and crannies in their apartments—almost everyone lives in apartment buildings in the city, so the hazards of infection are tremendous. Even with their engaging careers on hold, they are making do (one has five children at home!), staying exclusively indoors, cutting their husbands’ hair (and viceversa?), sticking their heads out the window when they need a whiff of the outside.
The sun finally showed its face here after five gloomy days, so D and I will go on a long walk. This is my personal, mental salvation. Sunlight, the gorgeous earth in bloom or on the verge. I know this is a rare privilege. “Essential workers” are making this kind of relatively safe quiet possible for others—as they always have.
Dear friends, I leave you with these questions:
* What are you good at and really like to do? For me it’s writing, dancing, folding laundry while warm, puzzle making with my daughters-in-law. What are favorite things you can still do while at home?
* Have you discovered a new room or nook at home that you can love? My old drafting table at the window is my new perch.
Stay safe. That is the imperative right now.
Spanish word of the day:
CUÍDENSE – You (plural) Be careful. Stay safe.
CUÍDATE -- You (singular) Be careful. Stay safe.