I’m marking my time in a different way. It is a slow slog. Every hour is a new normal after twenty two years of the same halls, the same corners and the same processes. This Coronavirus has dropped a smart bomb into my solid set of systems, ways of being, places of buying and eating and roads on which I drove. It’s a great reduction and we are in the sauce, at least for now.

Usually my nature, my culture, my surroundings look outward, forward…comfortable in movement, continual movement. Even is stillness and quieter days there has been that motion and the push of even more movement. It’s all sort of dribbling off and grinding down and sideways right now. ‘Maybe there will be an extension, a waiver, a check…remote learning’.

My neighborhood is very quiet. Very still. Today it shall be cupboards, then. All my cupboards will be clean; very clean. And then, I will look for something else.

What I think I hear is, ‘You’re dreaming with pregnant frogs’. I ask, ‘What?’ He answers, ‘You’re dreaming with pregnant frogs’. I pause and consider this image. My silence spurs him on to give some clarification. ‘You just told me you are having crazy dreams and troubled dreams because of all this virus chaos. I told you what we say in Spanish. You are dreaming with pregnant frogs’.

I think about it and decide that this is a perfect description of all things virus related. Consider the image of ‘icky’ things running in all directions and not running well because these secret frightening creatures are stuffed full with indecision, concern and anxiety along with more troubling things.

I am not a fan of amphibians or reptiles for that matter. I am not a fan of this virus. ‘Icky’ things indeed.

‘The Office of ACCOUTABILITY’…words splashed across the neatly displayed Orwellian power point. Indeed. ACCOUTABILITY. I pity the cog man, the messenger sent to ‘do the job’. He’s required to ‘school us’ in all the new terms, God bless his soul.

Here they come; rolling hot off the presses from Central Office and the building in Albany; locations where that which should be right side up, is upside down and those who row with great fervor to keep these systems afloat are unaware that they are rowing in a boat rapidly taking on water.

ACCOUTABILITY. Here they come; ‘Previous methodology’, ‘newly re-identified designation’, ‘different filters’ and ‘percent gap reduction’. Save us all and protect us from whatever substance was being ingested by those who thought to ‘school us’ in the excitingly new and improved.

Save the tentative first grader approaching me regularly with a carefully placed kiss on my right cheek and a murmured ‘I love you’…one English phrase she masters and likes to practice very, very quietly. She is unkempt, shabby and given to lengthy procrastination in the cloak room. She is unable to manage her coat, boots, hat, mittens, book bag. I present to you the child through the looking glass…as I keep my heart out of sight.

A little warming Irish schmaltz on yet another chilly March day…be ye warmed and filled…and know that if one is Irish, the world will always break one’s heart.

‘O Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling…from glen to glen and down the mountain side…the summer’s gone and all the roses falling…it’s you, it’s you, must go and I must bide. But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow…or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow…it’s I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow…O Danny boy, o Danny boy, I love you so’…and so it goes, and so it goes…

The spring winds are at my back; pushing the car along. As I drive through the rain along the beaten down edges of the muddy Genesee, I can almost see her behind galleon clouds. The faded Emerald Isle; swathed in brogue and resting side by side with family bones, rocky soil and troubles; the troubles.

A simple jig plays, as I search for green velvet hedges and my own leprechaun while sailing home through potato rain, thickened in time with all the promises and realizations of the new land.

I’m thinking of a photo of my Grandfather McMahon at the age of twelve; solemn and smaller than the others. He’s surrounded by greasy machinery in a glass factory. He looks at the camera along with bulky, dirty men twice his age; the impoverished boy with no shoes in a glass factory…the man with the lovely tenor voice…

Oh March, you oddity…neither here nor there, yet everywhere. The sort of month which finds flip flops in the kitchen and Wellingtons thrown into the back seat of the car; hot bowls of chili one day and a child asking for popsicles the very next day. Woolen blankets lie thrown over furniture and the stronger sun streams with heightened energy through the window…

The Ides of March saunters in with grim accusations and stabbing; the happy leprechaun appears, dancing two days later. You display your sillies while the winds off the lake rage against the side of the house and the street is white and thick with silence.

Perhaps I shall hazard a trip to the post office or I may peruse summer linens in the new catalog…

By fate, flaw or fancy, I make my home on an incline in the rocky soil of New York; land where tone and dialect change on a dime. From the tortured ‘o’ of a Brooklyn coffee to the unbearable nasal of the Buffalo twang buried deeply in snow and on to the flat sound of Rochester brushed even and irritating by open fields, hunters and the power of the Genesee flowing North for goodness sake!

I sing the true laborer out on the greasy roads, brunted up against frost bitten winds and the line man graciously allowing me time to read at home; to read of distant shores, for I am a true dreamer.

By hour and genetics I remember Daddy polishing my scuffed Mary Janes on a Saturday night for church; polishing in the cold. The lineman strings lines and props up broken and bent poles and slugs down coffee and salty Beef on Weck as Daddy polishes back and forth, first with a cloth, then with a stiffened bristle brush and I sit on the couch and watch and dream of heated shores and other lives somewhere else.

I am living on the incline of rocky soil, far from the roots of my soul…

‘Hey. Hey!’ At what felt like 3am, he asked, ‘What did you get for breakfast?’ Or that’s what she thought she heard at that hour. She began the work required to pull oneself up out of layers of deep, almost comatose primordial sleep. It was sluggish, heavy going. She heard her voice say, ‘Two kinds of sweet rolls; cinnamon with traditional white icing and the other plain with strawberry and cream icing’. Silence. ‘No doughnuts?’ ‘Nope…who asks about breakfast at 3am anyway?’ Silence. She must not have heard right and drifted off, back into deep slumber.

In the morning, she looked out the upstairs window and noted the strong winds from last night had leveled the neighbor’s swing set. The blue plastic slide jutted off at an angle and pointed toward the street. There was a large piece of black rubber lying along the edge of their property; the brown beams, swings, chains, silver nuts and bolts, and braces were all collapsed on top of themselves in a crumpled heap, broken and pointing toward the bright blue March sky. ‘Well, there goes my asymmetry problem’ she said. ‘Solved by the wind’. Last summer when the neighbors with the two small children set up the large beamed swing set, they placed it at a jaunty angle on a slight slope; the left end of it lined up crisply flush with the property line…and the far right end of it bent awkwardly inward. It was a fluke of physics; perhaps the right side was heavier than the left, or they had measured badly or the ground was uneven or muddy. Whatever the reason, the entire swing set was not symmetrical, not flush, not sequential in its ‘flow’ and she could see this from the upstairs window. It leaned drunkenly forward waiting for a stiff breeze to knock it over. ‘It makes me nuts and dizzy’ she said on more than one occasion. She had drawn the curtains in a huff. ‘Now I can’t look out my window’. He had rolled his eyes and laughed. ‘Do you want me to go tell them to fix it?’

Now the morning brightened differently; with wind damage but with symmetry. She put the coffee on to brew. She heard him coming down the stairs and turned as he entered the kitchen. ‘Hey! Hey, did you see the swing set?’ He grinned and pointed in the direction of the neighbor’s yard. ‘There’s your asymmetrical problem. Gone with the wind!’ She wandered over to the kitchen window. Looking out through the steamed glass, she glanced upwards as a sunbeam began a golden descent over the curtain’s top hem, through the window, touching the edge of the table and moving slowly in the direction of the oven.

‘The wreck of the Hesperus in the suburbs. They didn’t build that thing right’. He shook his head. ‘They didn’t pour cement to set the posts in or to lay down chains under the soil. They just sat it on top. On top of a hill!’ He shook his head again. ‘What do you expect? They’re jazz musicians. They’re gone every weekend playing those venues. Can a jazz musician pour cement?’ He sipped at his coffee. She looked at him. ‘Well…maybe. I can’t pour cement for sure. That I know’. He sipped at his coffee and tapped his spoon lightly on the edge. ‘Things better left undone’. She thought about a recent wall papering incident which had ended badly. Despite an inordinate amount of time spent measuring, the wall paper had come up short; leaving the bottom quarter of the wall uncovered. The paper came up short. Or she had come up short. No. She should not venture into the world of poured cement.

‘Hey. What’s for breakfast?’ He looked at the oven. ‘Did I ask you already?’ She stared at him. ‘Don’t you remember? At 3am? You asked if we had doughnuts?’ He stretched his neck a bit, ran his right hand over his beard and queried, ‘Doughnuts? What about sweet rolls? Are there sweet rolls?’ She sighed. ‘I have the wreck of the Hesperus out there and a Jackson Pollock in my kitchen. And no, Jazz musicians, no matter how talented probably shouldn’t pour cement. They’d hit that high note and assume it was all good. Richard Wagner seems more appropriate’. ‘Who’s he?’ he asked. ‘Nobody, nobody at all. Nobody a stiff March wind couldn’t take down’. She smiled quietly to herself.

He swallowed the rest of the coffee. ‘After I eat my doughnut, I’m going to go over there and ask if they need help setting it back up’. ‘Sweet roll’ she countered. ‘Think Wagner. Poured cement. Flush with the property line. No jazzy notes…’

Carry me on my way…o rambling road…for where you stride, is my abode. Whether brick on brick with sturdy, heated walls…or by a rain-sodden portico with scalloped edges…I go where you go and rest in your dwelling. For my people, have become your people and your family, mine. A pegged tent driven hard by life’s rain or at the blue edge of wealth’s offering…I saunter side by side and hand in hand, together with you. Carry me on my way…o rambling road, for where you rest, is my abode.

‘My goodness, you’re tall’, he said while reaching across the table length for a cocktail napkin. ‘I mean tall in a good way, I mean’. He faltered slightly. ‘Thank you’, she replied. ‘I work hard at it’. He looked at her. ‘Work hard at what?’ He seemed puzzled. ‘At being tall’, she countered, reaching for her own napkin. ‘I work hard at being tall’.

He looked down at his plate and spent what felt to him to be an inordinate amount of time working out the pattern of food spread in front of him. Dip, chips, mini-sandwich, over priced cracker, glob of cheese spread; looking up sheepishly, he tried again. ‘So, what do you do?’ She turned slightly to the left of him and glanced out over his shoulder at nothing. She shrugged. ‘I work at being tall’ she said. ‘I work very hard’.

‘Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it’…he mumbled quietly to himself. She looked at him. ‘Yes. The poet Robert Frost, I believe. You’re quoting Robert Frost’.

It was the sort of conversation which at the root found itself far down the twisting rabbit trail of ‘I’d rather be anywhere else’ and ‘perhaps today would be the day to learn to fly or to spin sugar webs’. She opted for flight, and in her mind she was already gone. She picked up her plate, nodded politely and drifted cautiously away…