Diary Day May 12, 2020
I wake up at 7:50 to glorious rays of sunshine. With the stay-at-home orders, the weather affects my mood more than it used to. I pad out, barefooted, in my robe, to pick up the paper and enjoy the progress of the Washington State tulips we planted in November. Tall and stately, with names like Temple of Beauty, Princess Irene, and Strong Gold, they are coming on, one color at a time, and should be at their full glory within a week.
The garden is going to be my anchor this year. A week ago we shopped (fully masked and gloved, of course) at Wise County Market at Centennial and Walnut. The truck was unloading. We bought impatiens, snapdragons, zinnias, asparagus fern, spikes and creeping jenny for the containers we fill every year, as well as two of our favorite hanging planters. Usually I make three or four plant runs to various places in town; this one trip will have to do this year. I am glad I planted State Fair zinnias in the potting shed in March, because a woman who arrived ahead of us got those two flats as they came off the truck. The plants have been waiting just inside the garage door where they get sun every morning and are safe from frosty nights. The weather looks good for planting tomorrow, and I am almost giddy with excitement.
I take my usual morning walk down the drive and into the back-garden, taking comfort in marking its progress…some things haven’t changed. The Indian Hyacinth my son gave me several years ago (because they bloom on Mother’s Day) are at their peak; the wild geranium and blue bells dominate the shade garden. By the time they fade, the Siberian Iris will be blooming.
After our usual breakfast of steel cut/oatmeal with berries and kefir, it is out to the potting cottage to check the seedlings. The shed was designed with a hanging grow light, but it has been several years since I planted seeds. It was a waste of effort being gone several weeks in March or April. But this year I am carefully tending two kinds of basil, plus the tall zinnias that bring dramatic color to the sunny side yard starting in July.
I am limiting the TV news these days to NPR in the morning and am keeping up just fine with
The Star Press and Sunday New York Times. But today we decide to watch the Senate hearings with Dr. Fauci and other medical experts. It was not as partisan as I feared. Tim Kane wore a bandana as a mask, Patti Murray denounced Trump from her home in Washington, and Rand Paul wondered why schools didn’t open because children aren’t as vulnerable as older adults. Fauci repeated what he has said before, that we can’t expect a vaccine soon and we can’t open too fast or there will be another outbreak. I can’t say I learned very much, except one of the medical experts brought up testing the waste water of college dorms to learn whether anyone living there had the virus. That was a new idea.
So I listened with one ear while doing my weekly check of credit cards and online banking. No stimulus check yet. My mind wanders away from the hearings as I write a note to accompany a memorial check to my hometown historical society to mark the death of a 96-year-old man, the last survivor of my dad’s first freshman Ag class in 1939. Dad remained in my hometown during his 30-year retirement; he and M enjoyed each other all those years. Memories of hometown scenes flood my mind. I didn’t want to stay in that tiny town, but over the years I have grown to appreciate the safety and nurturing of a mid-century upbringing in a small community.
The early afternoon hours flit away with a zoom meeting, a short walk, and checking the weekly Aldi Instacart order. I decided several weeks ago to provide a job to someone to do my grocery shopping. I like it so much I may never go back to in-person shopping again! I can add to the order over several days, and the shopper texts with me about any replacement items. I save my outings for buying flowers.
I watch the clock, waiting for my weekly 4 pm zoom with my two sisters on the west coast. The virus hit a few weeks before our annual spring trip with our spouses. This year we were going to Tucson, and on the day of our scheduled arrival I booked a zoom meeting. We had so much fun that we are zooming together every Tuesday for about two hours…and plan to do it indefinitely.
Today is special as it is my younger sister’s 69th birthday, and I pour a glass of cabernet to go with a bit of dark chocolate. I left for college when they were eight and 14, then L. and I moved to the Midwest for grad school and never returned to the west coast. The two of them live in different states. For most of our lives we have maintained long distance relationships, depending on vacations and holidays to be together. We are, each in our own way, strong women, and I continually marvel at the excellent job my parents did in raising us. Today I share my initial disappointment in 1951 that the youngest of us wasn’t a boy. I am so glad I didn’t get my wish! Before the virus we kept in touch with email and texting, but several weeks could go by between contacts. Our weekly zoom visit discussions range from political complaining to sharing recipes, from family history to recent events in our lives. We laugh and we cry.
Today in our sharing, my sisters and I recall the polio scares of our growing up years. The city pool closed, our family doctor became ill and, after recovery, returned to his practice in leg braces and crutches. Every time one of us got a fever, our mother worried. We shouldn’t be surprised that something like COVID-19 has happened, because history tells us it just does. L’s grandfather nearly died in the 1918 Spanish flu. My father had to repeat first grade because his teacher died.
We suffer from a myth of American exceptionality…how could this happen to us?
I pay attention to public health journalist Laurie Garrett, who has made a study of pandemics. She estimates we have 36 months of uncertainty ahead of us, if we are fortunate. We are going to have to figure out how to live until there is a vaccine or cure, as well as work to remedy the exposed economic inequities that as a country we have so far refused to acknowledge.
At 8 pm L. moves the fire pit from the back garden onto the driveway and we set up four chairs, safely distanced, which I sanitize with Clorox water. Close friends of 40 years come over to visit and share a bit of C’s leftover birthday cake. No hugs, just the pleasure of being together, as we watch the day end. After they drive away, C. calls me and reports there is discarded wood down the street from us. At 11 pm L. and I spend 40 minutes hauling home the remains of a slat wood fence for future fire pit evenings.