The seventh week of quarantine. We work around and in and through this dilemma of being quarantined with a nervous hush; stepping tentatively. It still feels strange. I dream late in the night that I have spilled buckets of oil paint, heavy creamy paint all over and I can’t justify the cost and the waste. This storm must have come from somewhere. The rain must have come from somewhere when it rained. The wind must have come from somewhere when it blew and wailed around the edge of the house. But I have no answers. Only paint. That vanishes as I awake.

I drink coffee and begin absorbing my nephew’s bubbly morning chatter; an enthusiastic soul, this little boy. I sit at the table and I hear a lot of movement and thudding upstairs. My husband comes down and informs me he has completely changed the guest bedroom. I go upstairs and discover he is correct. All the furniture is moved around and resettled. It looks quite good. Even the bed is made up with the quilt lying neatly spread over the frame.  My husband is bored.

Afternoon slides into cool evening, spring sun skips along the edges of brick and I step out into the parking lot after a brief stop at the grocery store. I claw the mask off my face. I can’t breathe when wearing it.

The mask makes my shopping trips short and choppy as I pull it off my face in order to take in deep breaths and keep replacing it while my glasses fog over. I scoot down an aisle, choosing what is on my list. I find a solitary bag of dish washer soap pods sitting on top of a shelf and even though it is not my usual brand, I grab it, dropping it into the cart. The cashier and I wish each other well, making small talk about the plummeting cost of gas. For the first time in years, I fill my tank to the top for under $25.

I drive home in silence. My world has become so small. I am tired of the same old fields but I do not believe God is tired as I drive and notice the wide patches of New York farm land as they unfold in moist abandonment. They wait for spring plowing and planting. Every plot is surrounded by trees and they feel close together and bare and tight.

Most dearly, I miss the endless stretches of western prairies. Those gorgeous open lands where we spent time in July and August. They remain forever as a backdrop to the lives we lead now. Slate blue skies studded with gray and black rain clouds rest easy on one side of the highway and robin egg blue skies with vanilla cotton candy clouds sail along the opposite highway length. There are miles and miles of sunflowers and gold copper meadows buried deeply under bales of shiny hay. The chocolate creamed cattle and coal black herds of angus brutes, stand silently as wind ripples their skins. They chew slowly and watch a lone water tower and abandoned railroad tracks far, far in the distance.

How removed I am now from those loping lands, and they are what I crave more than ever; their vibrant colors and waving, shimmering grain. I miss looking out at one hundred miles of everything and nothing.

I still see the white wooden planks laid so carefully, line by line, packed up against each other; the floor of the porch, which lay under white wicker chairs and couches with rosy flowery cushions and stacks of books. Rolls of carefully measured tin foil fitted neatly along glass windows and over window frames as the shiny aluminum did battle against searing heat. We could have fried eggs on those sizzling pieces of tin foil as they stared back at scorching afternoon rays. Fried eggs on vertical glass; magical and impossible. We believed anything was possible.

I drive one loop around the neighborhood to extend the ride. Two neighbors walk their dogs and wave. The animals are blissfully unaware, happy to be outside sniffing and looking around for anything and nothing. I enter the garage and lower the door. I am back inside, caught in between walls and life and memories.

 

 

 

 

“So all else having failed, they naturally formed a committee”. She finished reading the page and thumped the book down on the table. She stretched her arms high over her head and announced to her husband, ‘And that my dear, is the problem with most situations in this old world’. She was just warming up, and he knew it.

He glanced up at her from over the rim of his glasses and nodded. She sighed and sat back against the cushions, dropping her arms into her lap. She yawned and then began to talk. ‘Do you remember that school librarian from a few years back? The one who was so incredibly cranky all the time?’ He watched her from the edge of his newspaper. ‘Yes, what about her?’ Leaning forward with a conspiratorial look, her eyes gleaming, she said, ‘Well, I always suspected that what she really wanted was a library full of books and empty of children’. He put the paper down, took off his glasses and rubbed his forehead. ‘Well, who wouldn’t actually, truth be told? Some of your kids…?’ His voice trailed off, not wanting to dredge up ‘work talk’. She grinned, ‘No, no, you’re right in that case. Anyone would have been cranky. Permanently’. She looked at him and he smiled back, both of them quietly recalling older conversations with colleagues about failed urban education policies, the history of race in Rochester and the intractable Board of Education which drove everyone mad. But those were discussions for other times. Not today.

She continued, ‘But guess what I found out about her after she retired?’ He played along, listening in hopes that the conversation would eventually land somewhere and preferably quickly. He stretched out one leg, then the other. ‘What did you find out about her?’ She propped up an errant cushion. She waved her right arm to add emphasis as she spoke. ‘She had a degree in school committee structure!’ He was silent. ‘Don’t you see?’ She surged on, making her point. ‘She went to school to learn how to organize and lead school committees and somehow ended up working in the library. Absurd! A library! An elementary library contains books AND children and to be honest she did not really want to work with children. She wanted perfect book shelving and the power to be able to give directions to her committees about running schools. The children were a sorry secondary afterthought, attached to the school. There were no committees for her, just real live children!’

‘Ah’ he said. He shook his head and looked out the window. She ran her fingers through her hair, stood up and moved the ottoman away from the couch edge. She paused a brief moment before picking up the coffee mugs and empty pastry plates. The aroma of the orange chocolate brew lingered over the edges of the glassware, and she took a deep breath. ‘Lovely’ she exclaimed. The smell followed her as she headed into the kitchen. One pink linen napkin fell off the plate and onto the floor. She sighed, bending down to retrieve it and spoke again as she stood up. ‘I find it really funny’ she said.

‘What?’ he raised his voice because he had returned to his newspaper as she exited the room. ‘I said’ she began again, ‘It’s funny; not funny as in strange but funny as in humorous’. She turned toward the sink, shaking the napkin gently over the stainless steel. ‘I mean, the whole thing, the whole district…it’s what I just read about now. The response to deep abiding failure, is always the same. Form a committee. Imagine obtaining a degree in school committee structure? When did a committee ever really accomplish anything?’ She snorted in derision.

Her husband came into the kitchen. “You know what I think is really true?’ She turned to look at him. He approached her and as he opened his arms to embrace her, he said simply, ‘I think you think it’s funny, not because it is funny but because at a deeper level, you yourself are very sad. That’s what I think’. She stepped back slightly from him and looked at him intently. ‘Yes’ she said simply. She looked out the window. ‘I am sad. I feel the same way I do when it snows in the month of April. It’s long term betrayal, something which can’t be shaken’. She sighed.  ‘It’s the same way I felt when I saw a classmate’s obituary. He was only 54 years old. I remembered he would not share his Green Hornet coloring book with me in kindergarten. That’s all I remembered. His photo moved me. He looked so old, so completely unrecognizable to me in that picture and that made me sad. Someone who is only 54 years old should still be recognizable’.

‘Yes’ he responded gently. ‘It’s the sort of sad I feel when I awaken and know that I missed hearing the early morning rain. It’s a sad shame to miss the rain’. Then, as if to reassure her, he said, ‘It’s as bad as forming a committee’.

After the good party, the kitchen feels melancholy. I pad down the hall and enter the room. Dirty plates stacked on counters, half empty glasses, crumpled up napkins, knives with cake frosting, the creamer jug and the coffee pot gather around the edges of the kitchen as if viewing a funeral. “What? It’s over? But surely not? We know these people”. The floor creaks overhead indicating my husband is awake. I look up toward the creaking sound and consider things, this morning after the party.

I begin to clear things. Silverware and cake plates clink and clank, rattling around and clashing together as they sink into hot sudsy water for their pre-rinse bath before heading into the dish washer steam. Bowls of richly colored mums and the arrogant blossoms of pink hydrangeas watch from their perch on the dining room table as my movement in the kitchen folds, turns, bends and evolves in front of them. I sweep away the brownie cake on its china platter and the rising patter of rain drops on windows and roof, sweeping along with a whoosh and windy rasp and they bend wet sounds and rivulets down the walls toward the discouraging view of the end of the party.

I don’t have time for melancholy today. I am 56 years old and I am at sixes and sevens. Those numbers flow well. Sixes and sevens. Now I can say, “Hello there. I’m 56 and I’m at sixes and sevens. 5, 6, and 7”. Marvelous. I am tempted to greet strangers with this announcement since I now hide behind face masks. Actually, being at ‘sixes and sevens’, my feeling confused in this new normal leaves me with fewer boundaries and greater inhibitions. I want to shout. I want to hide deeply. I am living in the middle of a pandemic and every day comes with a new set of rules. Nothing feels even.

I set to grinding the coffee beans. The noise seems particularly loud today. I’m grinding up a part of Puerto Rico. I watch the beans spin around and around as they pulverize. The aroma is magnificent. Somewhere, on some warm patch of land on the lovely island and long before this season of virus, someone planted and harvested a wonderful crop of coffee beans which in time, traveled far, far north and rested on a cold grocery shelf, and then in a cloth bag in my car and then in my cupboard and finally on my table…boiled up in a mug on the day after the party. That was a long time ago.

2020 started out with the usual celebrations, the cold nights, resolutions and the continual whoosh of the furnace. We settled in to long gray weekends, watching out frozen windows and drinking strong coffee…and suddenly, in a shaking of a down comforter and two loads of laundry, the year spun promptly downhill into strange days. Initially, we heard rumors…somewhere. Then a number of things weren’t so good. There was something about China, always China.  Then New Rochelle, New York. New Rochelle was under quarantine. It seemed strange and not quite right. I remarked that New Rochelle was where Dick and Laura Van Dyke lived on their television show and my husband said, “Who?”

We listened to the radio about the history of the word ‘quarantine’ and it all seemed so old, so long ago, so old world Europe; not part of us. Quarantine. On a cold Friday…all of a sudden we were told to take our laptops home. It came over the PA system in school and for the first time, it felt ominous. We weren’t going back on Monday. Someone said, “It is probably for a week or so, until they can thoroughly clean the school”.  I rolled my eyes, telling a colleague it was going to take more than a virus to get that building thoroughly cleaned. I thought the swine flu started on my office carpeting. I joked that day.

Now, it is after the party. We woke up one morning, after the party and now we are swimming in the big cooking pot with all the frogs. Frogs sit in cool water in pots on a stove and don’t sense danger as the burner clicks on and the temperature rises. Frogs sit and blink and heat up…and die. I think a lot about frogs these days.

On April 15th, our governor announced that we are required to wear a face mask whenever we go out in public. The masks are miserable, irritating things. I can’t breathe with them and my glasses fog up and I trip over the grocery cart with the spray bottle and the rolls of paper and the sanitizer and the heavyset guard is looking at me as I shift the mask over my nose. He looks uncomfortable. Everywhere in a mask is uncomfortable.

My husband enters the kitchen and glances at the dish and glasses chaos. I look out the window through raindrops onto the patio. All the chairs are covered in flexible rain proof dark green covers designed for winter protection. The chair closest to the house door has a tendency to shed the cover when gusts make their way around the corner of the house. It lifts up, folds itself neatly over into the center of the chair seat, and collapses. It’s off again. I sigh. I have placed a heavy brick on the arm, but today the brick is in the seat’s center. Heavy iron lawn poles haven’t worked either.  The rain falls more insistently.

My husband looks out the window and then at me. He says, “Thank you for all of your work”. I nod. The kitchen is silent. It is the morning after the party and it is melancholy. I pour a large mug of strong coffee and return to the table to look outside at the soaking lawn. My kitchen drawer is full of face masks and we are watching the rain together.