Too Much Time on my Hands

Dear Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. The family is still asymptomatic. The lovely Miss Beverly and I are finally starting to ease our anxiety levels.  You see way back in early March the lovely Miss Beverly and I went to Hawaii to get away from it all. Yes the Covid storm clouds were gathering but nothing had changed yet. Change it did and quickly with each of our 10 days in paradise. One day the lovely Miss Beverly was sunning herself (ooh la la) on the beach. The next day, our fellow sun worshipers from Europe were reading texts that travel to their continent was ending. The day after, the mall was closing and we had to plead with a native in the drive thru of Star Bucks to buy a grande 2 pump mocha because we weren’t being allowed inside. I suddenly felt the sting that shirtless, shoeless Americans have endured for 70 years.

Bev and I started this strange disconnect from time while in Hawaii. We had booked it after Christmas as a needed respite from foster parenting. Things rapidly cascaded soon after we arrived,  10 days left. 9 days left. What day are we leaving? Was that the day we hiked to a gorgeous Pacific overlook, or the day the president declared a national emergency. Or both? Will they shut down domestic travel? Can we get home? It looks like LA is a hotspot. We are traveling through LAX. Should we? Shouldn’t we do this? 

We did, and in the year since we have been back, our two week incubation period has passed. That has been a weight off of our shoulders. However, in waiting for those 14 days to pass the Sharritt train of time has completely gone off the track, as we’ve heard it has for many of you. Early in the fortnight, Chris, Grace, Maggie, Viki, Vaeh, the lovely Miss Beverly and I were sitting around the table wondering which of us we should eat first if we didn’t find something sweet to eat soon. Thankfully, the lovely Miss Beverly remembered that we had one can of pumpkin from last fall. It was agreed that a pumpkin pie would spare the weakest and slowest of us.

Then someone pointed out that it wasn’t October. We have a hard rule at our house. No pumpkin pie except for during pumpkin pie season; October. Sweat broke out on some of the foreheads around the room. I was hoping that I could change into tennis shoes before the great race began. Then Grace spoke up, “Its okay. Time is now meaningless.” Its true. How many days before the weekend? It doesn’t matter. While I may not sit in front of a work computer in the corner of my bedroom on Saturday and Sunday, I am not going any place. I will stay on the same acre of ground. I venture out to the 17 miles of asphalt on a bike, but the same 4 walls will be my landscape. Time will continue to mean nothing.

I hope that we have reached our nadir today. It was noon on WhateverDay and we hear the garbage truck down the road. “Oh no! We forgot it was trash day!” I looked out the window and the trash man was coming our way. We live 150 yards from the end of the drive—it would be close, but we had to try.  Run Beverly Run! Off she sprinted to the garage. It was a hobbled sprint since she was only wearing socks and the limestone drive is brutal on anyone’s feet this early in the spring. The driver caught site of her, and waited. Thankfully, I could not find my phone or I would have taken a video and posted it under #ItCan’tBeThursdayYet #MonTueWedTRASHDAY. 

Another set of days erased. Will we ever start tracking days again? Will we ever gain our rhythm again?

Very good questions. But we shouldn’t be surprised. I was listening to someone yesterday who described what we were going through as a collective national (international) grief. As R.E.M. once sang “Its the End of the World as We Know It.” When will we get back to normal? Will we get back to normal? Have we been thrown back to the dark ages? Do you know how to butcher your own chicken? Grief, grief and more grief. We know that we lose time when first immersed in grief.

We have experienced it a million times or at least dozens of times. Can you remember any of the days between a loved one’s death and the funeral? It was all a blur. Can you remember the days between that big break up and your fourth pint of ice cream? Can you remember what you did last weekend or any of the big projects you’ve plodded through at work to save the world this past last week? Of course not. It is grief. Grief erases time.

It is grief and it will pass. Time will come back. Sand of the hourglass will flow like the days of our lives again some day. (Did Salem suffer from a Covid outbreak? That would have been a good soap opera plot.) No this too shall pass and while we will not get the days back, time will restart. And in the mean time? Put some cool whip on that slice of pumpkin pie.

Take care.

Roger

Shelter in Place

Dearest Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. We are fine and asymptomatic. Which really is about all that you can say during these times.  They say we can be carrying and asymptomatic for two weeks. So who knows, we may be a percolating cesspool of Covid 19 waiting to leap out at the world. For now we remain untested wondering if that sudden sneeze is a harbinger of spring allergies or the of the world as we know it.

Speaking of testing. How in the world can an actor get on social media and say I tested positive for Corona (virus not beer) but am asymptomatic when people who are hacking up a lung, on a ventilator can’t get tested and are presumptive positive for Covid 19? Don’t answer that. I know. It’s because he’s and actor and his poop doesn’t stink.

I have decided to pick up some blogging (at least for today) while staying at home. It is an effort to connect with people again. While being an introvert, I have a really strong baseline of the human contact that I desire. It is as if by limiting social contact all of these years for my emotional comfort any reduction in its level throws me into panic. So I am taking up an old hobby for a while to connect in a one-sided manner with you. We can make it two-sided if you comment back on the face book post.

The extended Sharritt’s are camping out around the lunch table right now trying to figure out how to get our 19 month old grand daughter, Margaret (or as we like to say Marge in Charge) (actually we call her Maggie); trying to figure out how to get Maggie to eat left over beans and Thai chicken. She loved them 18 hours ago. Ate 3 helpings. We all thought, this is a keeper recipe. And now 18 hours later it is kryptonite and her name is Maggie-El. (Look it up. You’ll figure it out) She squawks when you put it down in front of her. I kid you not she just threw an expression on her face that looked exactly like Jack-Jack on the Incredibles.  I said a little prayer; “Lord I pray she is wearing the asbestos diapers!” She is not liking the Thai chicken. At 19 months, her significant others are wondering how to increase the palatability of any vegetable based meal. Nothing doing. Those fancy French cut green beans were not gaining access to her digestive track.  Success was finally found via the quesadilla Trojan horse. Success until she tasted a green bean and started to perform queso dissection. Our nefarious intentions were discovered and queso hit the floor.

I know what your saying, “why are you visiting your children and grandchild during these times of social distancing and quarantine?” Well decisions were made early on to shelter in place together. Grace and Chris brought Maggie and Kevin the cat to quarantine with grandma (the lovely Miss Beverly), grandpa, Viki and Vaeh, our foster daughters, Marlin the dog and Jacques the cat. There are lots of expectations of child care, elearning, and work from home. So the hope is that we can help one another out. It really does feel a little bit like we are in the middle of a three hour tour that went wrong.

Just like Gillian, the weather started getting rough and our tiny ship was tossed. But the courage of our fearless crew and passengers has kept our tiny ship from sinking. As we enter the second week of this stay at home thing. We are doing pretty good. Viki and Vaeh wish that they could visit friends and are doing the calculus budgeting social media time between TicTok and FaceTime. Adult children and parents are doing a good job breathing deep and thinking “not the way I’d do it but no one is going to die from that method.” The stranger cats are having a stare off at times and small skirmishes at other times. And the dog is laying asleep underneath the kitchen table.

I am coping by writing about what is clacking around in my head. I was telling my counselor the other night via FaceTime; “this would be a great time to be a sociology PhD candidate. You could freeze all of your data points during a calamitous time and spend the next forty years writing scholarly papers about it.”

So stay tuned. The Sharritts, Kozaks, and Becks have placed a tablet and pen on the dining room table and we are writing down possible topics for another day’s blog. Who knows? If this lasts, we may create a virtual tablet and I may write about the things you put on it.

I want to leave you with a great story that I saw in the paper this morning. A pregnant woman was due April 8th. However, she started having contractions yesterday morning. With social distancing and its challenges, they intended to stop by a gas station on the way to the hospital to hook up with grandma and grandpa to drop off the soon to by oldest sibling. The paper said in the couple of minutes it took for the handoff to take place things progressed in the car with mom. I’ll say! When dad got in the car, he looked over at mom and saw the baby’s head, How shall I say this; sticking out, making an appearance, coming through the door, oh crap (my personal fav.) Let’s stick with the medical term crowning.

So the baby was crowning; dad shouted out to the Pilot employee “call 911”. He ran around to the other side of the car, opened the door, and at 7:45 a.m. on Saturday March 29, 20Covid, made a diving catch in the outfield. Baby and mom are fine. 

As you are want to do after catching a baby, you stand around the parking lot waiting for the emergency personnel to arrive, the Pilot employees ran inside, grabbed a blanket, a couple cups of coffee and cigars for the new father and grandfather. I read that story and started to cry. In the midsts of dark times we need some new birth, some regeneration, some hope. Just like Jeremiah once wrote about a plague of Babylonians. “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters.” Shelter in Place.

Take Care.

Roger.