The cat and I slept till 6 a.m. this morning--a luxurious change after a week of 4:30 alarms. The boys are still sleeping, but I am sitting in the dusky living room watching first light open among the roofs and trees. A steady breeze roars in the branches. Chimneys pose against sky. Sunshine is on the way, and I will wash sheets today and hang them outside in the cold spring wind.
I have not stepped inside a store of any sort since last Sunday morning. When Tom told me, last night, that he needs to go the hardware store today (the fittings are shot on his compressor, which he needs for his nail gun, which he needs for his job), fear spread through me like a blush. Go to the store! I had a sudden image of myself as a prairie dog, peering out of the family hole, then diving back into our burrow.
A trip to the hardware store: that is today's giant risky venture. This life barely seems real.
Yesterday, I read an announcement from the Harmony selectmen. To protect the town's 900 residents, they are closing the transfer station and the town office. There's a comic sadness in making sure that two people in pickups, 50 feet away from each other, can't toss a few sticks of rusty old rebar into the dump's metal pile. But of course the major meeting places--Morrison's Garage and the C&R store--aren't closed, and maybe, at this very moment, 90 percent of the current guys-hanging-around-doing-nothing are blaming COVID on Hillary Clinton. I hope not. I hope they understand that this emergency is real.
In the afternoon Paul and I rode bicycles up into the cemetery and then around the neighborhood streets. This was the first time P had been on a bike for a while (his vanished at college a couple of years ago), and it was lovely to watch him speeding and looping, hair flying and face lit up with happiness. Bicycle riding is sheer physical joy: an instant return to childhood . . . the brilliancy of air and speed, the texture of road shuddering up into hands and seat and legs. The three of us are lucky, lucky to be stuck in this loop with our two fine bikes. But we are worried about our James, alone in Chicago, antsy and cranky and not handling solitude or confinement well. He's a social being, used to working long hours in the midst of a crowd of colleagues. I wish he could be here too, with his bike and his chatter.
Tonight's Cafe Quarantine menu will feature vegetarian minestrone alongside a salad of beets, pecans, and sorrel sprouts. I might make some sort of dessert: maybe an Italian olive-oil cake, to save butter and calories.
And today, if the backyard isn't too muddy, I'll rake some flowerbeds. I might organize my garden tools and clean the snow-equipment out of the shed. The comforter on our bed requires some serious mending. One end got caught under the washing machine agitator, and the fabric has basically shredded. So I need to cut a new strip from whatever spare fabric I can find in the attic, make a casing, and sew it over the shredded end. Because I don't have a working sewing machine, this will be a long hand-sewing job: at least two movies' worth. Fortunately, the Criterion Channel has a Rita Hayworth special.
I do hope to read some Rilke and Blake, and I need to video myself reading one of my students' group poems (Monson Arts is going to feature some of our classroom voices online: I'll keep you posted about that), but I have no plans to edit anything. I don't want my weekends and workdays to become indistinguishable.
Lifting a glass of clean water to you, dear friends.
2 comments:
Be well. All of you.
I have gone back to reviewing and doing some blogging, and, of course, I always have lots of good reading; currently on my table: Carolyn Forche, Tommy Orange, Erik Larsen. My beautiful exhibit, "Contemporary Artists Interpret Stations of the Cross", hangs unattended in our now locked parish; another to follow in May I've postponed. At least I was able to have a reception for the artists before the crisis hit.
Arlington, Va., has not yet ordered us to stay home but I do. I'm used to being alone and never bored. Besides, I will be 68 in November and have type A blood, both enough to put me in a vulnerable group.
My son is I don't know how many miles away in San Rafael, California, in a little town called Fairfax (I think of it as a holdover from the '60s), and, like your son in Chicago, under orders to stay home. He's stressing not being able to earn any money (he works for a home construction and improvement firm). At least he has his band, his music-writing, books to read, three others in the house he shares, and a huge number of friends who are women with whom to SKYPE.
I'm glad you're managing reasonably well at home, Maureen. With a son in Chicago, I know how anxious you must be about yours, so far away in California. We are sad and worried about that separation, but trying to maintain daily contact.
Post a Comment