That reprieve we needed… it’s here, as of yesterday evening, and it’s pretty sweet. Temp of 72º this morning, and the only reason the humidity is in the upper 90s is that it’s still raining a little. We asked, we received, it feels like a benediction.
Decatur Man and I exchanged quick humor bytes this morning before he texted this in response to my question about his schedule:
“I’m in Covidland today. I got floated here yesterday, and the unit manager, who’s a friend of mine, was crying because she’s so overwhelmed. So I picked up an extra shift today (12-hr shifts), along with 2 of my 4200 (Oncology unit) buds. It’s terrible here these days.”
At this point, any united effort to halt the spread of the virus would be a godsend. Anything, any level of genuine concern, any solid indication that the naysayers are at least trying not to make it worse. It seems somehow unAmerican that the helpers are fair game and entirely expendable – our teachers, healthcare workers, and the countless others who keep the great world humming. I dislike the fact that everyone’s chances of survival seem to be linked to the common sense of others – the odds are not in our favor.
But Pool Man will be home soon from the Ponderosa and he’ll probably stay tucked in with me until the skies clear – he’ll have to get out and ride his bike or walk at some point, rainfall permitting. Life continues to be a desirable thing… irreplaceable and worth defending for everyone I love, however long it takes, so no whining here about anything but the flies in the honey.
Showersbring flowers. Reminds me of my grandma’s house.
It’s one of those Zen mornings when the sun comes up but hides behind dark clouds right away and everything changes. Kim had to vacate the PickleBall court ahead of the rain, so maybe we’ll pretend it’s still the weekend, have a big breakfast with the fresh salsa a friend delivered, and hit the spa tub again. I would not object. Rain is cool – it happens, literally, out of the blue, and always feels healing to me.
The process and experience of healing means different strokes for different folks, and I used to see it in my imagination as a fluid line moving forward, when it’s anything but that. You have to want to get there – the work, receptivity, and humility required don’t come cheap.
The isolation 2020 has imposed, in all directions, is proving to have some benefits, as most things in life do, however grim they may be at the time. It never hurts to take a step or two back and look things over from a new perspective, in fact it’s what keeps us from solidifying in place and letting life go on without us. The rain washed those thoughts in…
Weather forecast says showers could hang with us for a couple of days, so we’ll happily hang in…
The joy of reading has eluded me this year, a true frustration. I’ve finished a handful of books, but have yet to find the one I couldn’t put down, good as they were. A few sentences in, my mind runs off on its own and I end up reading the same paragraph three times before I give up. I have literary riches at hand… it’s all the not knowing that keeps me off balance and unable to concentrate. I started a book yesterday, though, that might be the one… hope so.
I’m good with fairly mindless tasks like dumping computer files and email. I walk. I watch TV with the sound off while I rearrange my virtual world ever more to my liking. My life isn’t so very different from The Before, except that I leave the house about once a month just for the heck of it, and the vibe is so changed. We miss the sounds of life around us – kids running down the street, laughing and yelling; a band warming up somewhere in the neighborhood; our parking lot full on Farmers’ Market mornings; the buzz of daily living.
The atmosphere outside has been ponderous for the past few days – we need rain again to break the heat and humidity, which was in the high 80s this morning when Kim walked. The picture up top is his, taken in South Park at sunrise. He said the blooms are big as dinner plates.
So, yeah… we’ll have our omelets in a bit and then… maybe I’ll read for a while.
It’s hot. Damn hot. The days are full of stretchy hours – when it’s three in the afternoon it feels like ten in the morning and takes forever to get to five o’clock. Rita’s busy with vital things, Susan is long hours away, John’s working his butt off at the hospital, my friends are all immersed in day-to-day survival… so Kim’s stuck with my company full time and I’m a quiet date these days. My brain doesn’t shut off, even in my dreams, but it’s too much to talk about so all I can do is direct it in ways that don’t take a toll on my body… that’s the plan.
This is the long hot summer Kim predicted last winter, with blood in the streets by August. He was only three months off, the streets of our cities were red before May was done. America has seen its full measure of brother slaying brother but it never ends. These are extraordinary times, and as during the Civil War the future of this democratic republic hangs in the balance – will we emerge intact as a nation, still under the constitution, with freedom valued and afforded to all? Or will we fall under the rule of one man and his enablers, and then the next in line, who will undoubtedly be smarter than Donald J Trump and thus able to capitalize on the foundation that’s been laid? Will the 4-headed monster – racism, pandemic, money, and moral rot – end us, or will we kick fascism in the teeth again and start rebuilding? Inquiring minds desperately want to know.
This is our 19th weekend since we chose to stay out of the public fray, which doesn’t even seem real, and with the lack of intention on the part of so many to help end the virus, we’ll spend a lot more weekends to ourselves before it all finally winds down somehow. This is the way it is and I’m mos def not complaining in the face of so much illness and death… it would simply be easier if everyone was pulling in the same direction.
Appreciate… notice… the minutes and what they hold.
Let me just say that I’ve been a pip about weathering the pandemic, but yesterday afternoon in a who-really-gives-a-shit mood I arrived at Stage Two of the Kubler-Ross grieving process – Anger – which is specifically not the same as being peeved or annoyed. Solitary souls don’t mind being solitary, but when isolation stems from pure selfishness and shortsightedness it rankles after about so many months. The anti-mask people and other naysayers have managed to rule from the minority, prolonging the prison term for every human currently alive, such that we’re not likely to see the denouement for another year or longer.
The United States government could have had this handled in under six months had the ardor been there for it, but when you’re underwater even before the next crisis hits and you haven’t a clue about any of it, you can only wash your hands of the whole thing and blame the other guy. The “greatest nation on earth” is the only world power that has allowed COVID-19 to run amuck and extract its human toll at will – the picture grows more astounding every day and now there’s no safe spot on the planet that any of us could get to under current conditions, not that I’m in a running frame of mind… yet.
Our death toll, ruined-health toll, economic toll could have been kept in comparable ranges with other first world countries. Should have been. Didn’t happen. It’s crazy-making when elected officials refuse to do the jobs our tax dollars pay for, especially when it comes to matters of life and death.
A place to rant (thank you, Diary) is a needed grace – it’s constructive to put it all down, partly to vent, partly to check myself. To wit, in summary: Why would anybody want to make this near-catatonic state of limbo in the nation last a minute longer than necessary?
I’ll go live in my free-range virtual world for a while – a place where I get to be in control; therefore, oh-so-comforting. The characters have brief, interesting, adult conversations, and I never get voted off the island. 💋
Happening as we speak. The storm hit this end of town with wind gusts that knocked over our swivel rockers on the balcony, and now rain is falling straight down by the bucket. Rainy days… we’ve had a nice spa soak and Kimmers is on the other side of the wall playing blues/jazz/rock with one of his side chicks (of the 6-string description), and we might just roll through another day here.
Meeting challenges from all sides at once makes for a twitchy psyche at times, so a Zen dip in quiet waters is always welcome. It’s tapering off to an easy rain now, but it was timely and cleansing while it lasted.
Equilibrium, essential in any crisis, isn’t always easy to maintain. Visualizing events and their factions from a drone’s-eye view helps – getting above the fray – but it’s hard to stay up there when life-and-death is happening nonstop on terra firma – hard to divorce myself emotionally from the various upheavals going on when they all directly affect people I love more than life.
So yeah, the flipside of loving rain is the melancholy – the losses wrought by 2020 in its first half are feeling more permanent and the acceptance of them more difficult. But I’m a strange duck – an optimistic German with Irish angst – and it’ll be a good day because I will make it so. This beautiful life is not to be trifled with.
Easter was three months ago but we all pretty much missed it so this lightly-edited return to 2013 seems okay… and yeah, still feeling sentimental. A piece I wrote seven years ago…
Yesterday for the first time in memory, Easter Sunday buried me under a huge pile of nostalgia. You’d think Thanksgiving and Christmas would have considered that their sacred duty, but no, it was innocent pastel little Easter that blindsided me.
I’m the eldest of three sisters. Our brother is gone, our parents, too, all of our grandparents have passed away, a lot of aunts and uncles, a few cousins, and without warning yesterday a tsunami of loneliness sent me rolling end over end. My sisters, although close in spirit, don’t live nearby, my son and Kim’s are long hours away in different directions, so it’s just me and Pa, which is ordinarily more than fine. The KIMN8R himself is now an “orphan by default” — grandparents, parents, step-parents, sister all went off and left him via death. His niece and nephew, cousins and aunties live far away. So. We manage, and we have a very good time at it. Yesterday was just one of those days.
The growing-up years. Depending upon the whims of the calendar, Easter morning sometimes dawned sunny and mild, but more often cloudy, gray, and chilly. Regardless, we four munchkins threw jackets and hats or goofy little headscarves over our jammies at the crack of sunrise and ran across the driveway to our grandparents’ big yard where Grandma was waiting with our Easter baskets. The hedges and trees and other hidey-holes yielded up an abundance of chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, candy eggs and assorted Easter-y gifts until our baskets were full. Then back home for a breakfast of waffles and bacon, followed by a mad scramble to get into our new dresses – made by our mom – white anklets, and patent-leather shoes. Our little brother was stuffed under protest into a pair of pants and a jacket, and the tie that always gave him a church headache. As for the three of us girls, we could be found complaining bitterly about the way Mother did our hair — it looked dumb, too curly, too straight, too not right. Caught up in the joys of motherhood, she continued the grooming ritual on the drive to church, straightening or smacking anything within arm’s reach and using Mom Spit to clean the ears of whomever was fortunate enough to grab the middle position, front seat. When she managed to get dressed is a mystery for the ages, but at least our dad knew enough not to sit in the car and honk the horn the way one of our uncles did every Sunday. I have to wonder if he would have lived to see another glorious Easter morn.
Once there we sat in a row, with Grandma in charge of keeping order through the judicious application of Juicy Fruit gum, pencils and church bulletins. Our parents were in the choir shooting us the stink-eye if we whispered or giggled too much, while we pinched each other under cover of the pew in front of us. Grandma gave it her best shot, in her Sunday dress and hat and one time wearing a pair of earrings lovingly shaped out of flour-salt-and-water paste and gifted to her that morning. Grandpa went to church with us about once a year, at Christmas time. He always said he wasn’t cut out for church because “When I work, I work hard. When I sit, I fall asleep. And when I go to church, I sit, so… ”
Our parents would leave the choir loft and sit with us for the sermon, during which time Daddy invariably found it imperative to clip his nails. That little task accomplished, his next aim was to free a piece of hard candy from its crackly cellophane wrapper. His painstaking efforts to keep the whole process quiet only resulted in its taking f.o.r.e.v.e.r. … one tiny explosion at a time. If I’d been the pastor I’d have marched down from the pulpit and thumped him on the head, but I couldn’t think about it or the giggles would do me in.
Church blessedly over, we all piled back into the station wagon, our brother sighing loudly and claiming a window seat so he could stick his head out and breathe again. He’d already ripped his tie off on the way to the car.
We’d come back home to the aroma of the Sunday dinner Mother had somehow put in the oven that morning — another mystery of time and space — shuck out of our good clothes, and start sorting our Easter basket haul. Pretty sure we managed to stuff a goodly pre-lunch portion of it in our faces.
The afternoon usually consisted of endless egg hunts of the boiled-and-dyed variety, culminating in the cracked and battered dregs getting thrown at whichever sister, brother or cousin veered into our line of sight. It was all fun and games until somebody put an eye out, of course.
I’ve been contemplating what sort of cosmic convergence might have set off yesterday’s blue mood, but nothing momentous stands out. Just a little too much, maybe. A little too much perfect day, a little too much sunshine, too much quiet, too much capacity for remembering, too much of not seeing people I love for too long.
The earth is back on its axis now and life goes on …
1951 –the year I fully realized I was no longer an only child. My sister Susan was about 3 months old that Easter.
My Wagner/Stauth/Dierking/Fuhrmann DNA is pretty straight, as in straight off the boat. I have a copy of the ship’s manifest for my Great-grandma Caroline Fuhrmann Dierking’s voyage with her parents and eleven siblings from Germany to the United States on the S.S. Silesia, and I heard all the stories, still fresh, from my grandma, Caroline’s daughter.
My Reese heritage is more mysterious to me, but only because I didn’t grow up next door to it and I spent far less day-to-day time with that part of my family. My Uncle Vic’s extensive family genealogy, lovingly and painstakingly assembled over the years, is priceless. Without him I would likely never know that my grandpa, his dad’s, lines were from England, Wales, and the Netherlands, or that grandma’s were from Ireland, France, the Netherlands, and Germany. See? Mystery…
My Great-grandmothers, each holding a grandchild, my Uncle Bob and Aunt Bette if memory serves.
Great-grandma Somerville on the left was a wife, mother of three sons and three daughters – one of whom became my grandma, Jennie Reese – and she was a midwife and ran a boarding house. Unfortunately, she was gone before I arrived, but I remember visiting Grandma Cummings, my grandpa’s mother, in various tiny houses that always smelled of mothballs and peppermint. She gave me my first real acquaintance with what “jolly” meant, but I know her life wasn’t easy.
Great-grandma C and Me – 1948
My grandpa, Victor E. Reese – enlisted in the U.S. Army underage, was at the front during WWI at 18 – came home to marry my grandmother and start a dynasty.
Jennie Marie Somerville at age 15 shortly before Victor Reese met and married her. They raised a family of six boys and three girls and were married for 56 years.
4-Generations – Great-grandpa Somerville, Grandma Reese, my mother Virginia, and new-baby me. Apologies to my sisters – it’s just all about me today.
Vic and Jennie Reese with their six sons, three daughters, and their first grandchild. Grandma received the title before she was 35.
All nine Reese siblings with their mama.
Not even half of the cousins. One of the last big reunions we had.
The Queen Bee at 95, livin’ the good life at home. I was privileged enough to be with her as she left…
When nostalgia hits (see yesterday), my mental viewfinder fills up with images of family and the farm where I grew up, or at least came of age. If you liked my Memorial Day post, these photos are for you. (Link follows)
The people in the image above are my Grandma and Grandpa Wagner, my dad and his dog Sarge, in 1933 when my dad was 11 years old. The garden in the story was north of the house but you can see my grandma’s pretty fish pond in the background, filled in before my memory because of the dust off the cattle pens and the hazard to toddler grandchildren. Grandma had plans that didn’t always suit farm living, but she never gave up.
My grandparents, my dad, about 6 yrs old, and his brother Ed, eleven years older. They had a good relationship as adults.
The Dierking sisters – Nora, Ruth, and Clara (my grandma)
My Great-aunt Ruth in flush times
The dugout/livestock barn/root cellar where the three girls grew up, shown during a visit by family in the late 50s or early 60s, long after it had been abandoned.It was outside a little town about an hour SW of where I live now.
Caroline Dierking on the right, mother of the girls – and my great-grandmother – with her sister Emma.
In Sheboygan, Wisconsin with my Great-aunt Emma and a little relative on her right whose name was Colleen.
My cousin Katie, Uncle Ed’s daughter, and I after playing dress-up in Grandma’s big upstairs closet. I was about 5 and worried that my dress would end me as I negotiated the steep stairs.
The Wagner munchkins, Rita, Judy, Susan, and our brother Danny in Grandma & Grandpa’s shelter belt north of the garden. Says 1957 so I was ten years old. And our mom was obviously curler-happy that day.
Tomorrow… barring anything unforeseen… my mom’s people. 💙
Looks and feels stormy out, which makes me wish for lightning, thunder, and a downpour. This morning the humidity was the same as the temperature, both in the 80s, so a rain would be soothing.
I can feel the nostalgia creeping in as the days go by – missing places that were once home, wishing I could see family who are gone. I wouldn’t tell them what’s happening now, I’d just look at them for as long as I could and remember…
The current mood has no doubt been heightened by the fact that I’m in the process of winnowing my cache of 5,500 photos and graphics and I’m finding a lot of treasures.
Texted with John this morning. A couple of pertinent comments:
“According to the daily COVID-19 update email from Emory System Communications, we have exceeded the highest peak that we ever had back in April. Emory University Hospital, the flagship, and Emory Midtown hospital, which used to be Crawford Long Hospital many years ago when I moved to Atlanta, are both bursting at the seams on the regular floors and in their ICUs. The same is true at our facility. The ICU is so full of Covid patients that the step-down unit had to be turned into the ICU, and now even that is filling up with Covid patients. The MedSurg floors next to us are becoming Covid units as well, and the fly in the ointment there is that several of the nurses and one of the techs on that unit have become infected and are out on quarantine. Despite the system being close to bankruptcy for paying nurses, they are offering overtime and hazard pay again because they are desperate for people to come in and work.
“Everyone’s nerves are starting to fray and that is showing up more and more in the interactions among staff at work, and between various departments. There have always been tensions among particular departments, but some communication could barely be regarded as civil now. And I feel bad for the food delivery people, and the family members who drop items off at the one secured entrance to the hospital. The staff there are overwhelmed, and have started basically barking at anybody that walks through the door. It is taking on a very Lord of the Flies sort of feeling, as if we are all stuck on an island and only the strongest will survive, LOL.” – John Latta
I notice, of course, that my posts are better-received when I keep everything away from the edge, but real life isn’t like that. My edgy “knowing” today is that we are two distinct factions in the U.S. – and each believes the other is plotting to overthrow the government.
And that far too many world citizens still don’t grasp that a pandemic means life changes for everyone on the planet until the virus wears itself out or there’s a fix for it. End of story, one way or another.
No rain yet. But the day, with its weird light, isn’t over.
This morning when I headed out for a walk my friend Shirley was in the parking lot so she did the rounds with me while we caught up. She lost her husband last year and is learning how to live alone, so we made two trips around the block and three around the building while we compared notes and shared encouragement. It was a much-needed serendipity to start the day, and a reminder that all of us are by ourselves in this experience called life since nobody can inhabit our thoughts with us.
This remote and solitary feeling grows daily as world events spiral out of control and human interaction becomes more and more of a minefield. There’s no safe topic anymore between one-time friends, no comment that doesn’t have to be weighed against a potential shitstorm. Every word carries the likelihood of being misinterpreted, misapplied, misquoted. If I knew who considers me an adversary on Facebook – where I post only to “friends” – I’d cut them all loose just to break the tension.
It’s July, hot summer, but other than the temps, there’s little to define the days, so I have to be intentional about mood in order not to get plowed under by ennui, a sense of suspended animation, and grief. The outdoors has a static vibe, the indoors is safe and cozy but also fairly changeless, food is a pain in the butt – what to eat when you do next to nothing and your throat feels like a pinhole…
Some days the cumulative losses of 2020 have their way with me. Tomorrow will be better.
Can’t get going today. Got up at 6:30, walked around the block, then around the building, came back inside and went into neutral. Seems like it should be about 3 o’clock, but it isn’t even noon yet, and the things I’ve accomplished aren’t visible to the naked eye, other than a passable job of making the bed.
It’s been mostly in the regions of heart and brain, the work I’ve done so far. Took care of a business detail… and spent time texting with John when he “made rounds” to check on us. My system was jammed with thoughts and emotions after we talked… a lot to process. A portion of what he said, shared with his permission:
I worked both the 4th and the 5th and they were pure hell. I worked the (once again bursting at the seams) Covid unit on Saturday, followed by my own unit on Sunday. We’ve hit our new peak, so far, as of yesterday, with no end in sight. Glancing at the system-wide update this morning, I see that uniformly across the system we are higher than what we thought was the peak (April 27th).
The difference this time is that no one is calling us heroes anymore, there’s no dropping off of food at the hospital, and, most importantly, we are severely understaffed because of the attrition that has occurred since the pandemic started.
I didn’t care for the free food and adulation; the sentiment was nice but it made me uncomfortable because I know there’ll always be a backlash, and we’re reaping that now. Nurses are “shit,” we’re “spreading this hoax ‘cold’ to make money” and everyone, including us, is just tired of it all.
There were a record number of call-outs over the weekend; so severe that the CNO and CEO showed up Saturday morning to try and calm and reassure everyone. A joke. I don’t envy them, they’ve got a real problem on their hands and it’s not going to get easier. They’re out of money and can’t use that to entice us to work more/longer anymore.
He’s called to what he does and he won’t be one of the walk-offs. Also, don’t mistake his words for “poor me.” His challenge comes from the people making this crisis worse day by day.
On the upside, only one other guy showed up for PickleBall this morning, so Kim spent his time biking on the Burroughs Trail instead. Rode from here to the trail, to Hiway 10, to South Iowa, to McD’s for a breakfast sammy, then took all the zig-zag shortcuts home. He brought me the photo above, looking off into infinity, which feels right.
The trail is named for William S. Burroughs, who moved to Lawrence in 1981 and died here in 1997 at the age of 93. Little bit of free history for you this morning.
William S. Burroughs and James Grauerholz in the alley behind the Jazzhaus in Lawrence, Kansas (1996)
Drinking pomegranate tea while fragments of thought pop in and out of my headspace.
It’s a wonky 4th, but I’m two for two so far – the traditional breakfast and a spa soak. The rest of it is gravy.
Thinking of a story I heard a while back about someone who’s managed to alienate their cache of friends and family and now they’re old and not in good health, with few human resources – a pitiable spot to find oneself in, and one I hope to avoid. But I’m outspoken to the max on social media among like-minded friends, so I always hope people who are on another page entirely will either out themselves or find the door… preferably both. They’re not the hearts and minds I’m talking to, and they will inevitably be offended. Oh well… they weren’t gonna come change my sheets at the end anyway, so…
Ray of sunshine here, veritable 4th of July sparkler! It’s those damn morose German genes, and before I bring the house up a little, let me just say this is the most demoralizing Independence Day observance of my 70+ years. If we reach the next one with our democratic system of government intact, functioning, and regaining health, we will be a blessed nation indeed.
So, the good news. The sun’s breaking through the clouds and the humidity is only 74%. The neighborhood is quiet this morning – no mortar rounds going off since last night. The flowers are perking their heads up and taking advantage of the wet air and sunshine to do that thing they do… likely only to get slammed by another rainstorm. Makes ’em strong, right? The day feels lazy and free, so imma celebrate that.
Running through my head for the past few days is the phrase “when the light goes.” The air is still and the sky has an odd yellow tinge suggestive of a planet other than Earth. As the weeks pass, any desire to mingle fades in the harsh light of day – Douglas County’s COVID cases took a jump over the weekend, in step with what’s happening everywhere in America. It’s best that I stay isolated – my anger and disappointment with people who care about no one but themselves are fairly toxic at this point. Here in town, people are generally being careful, but the virus finds opportunities. We’re under a mandatory state and county mask requirement as of yesterday, but it remains to be seen whether the holdouts comply in the same way they hook their seatbelts, buy the required car insurance, and wear shoes and shirts inside restaurants.
For the first three months inside, I sensed that I was growing old in not-good ways, but I’m on my way back. Walking, either with Rita or by myself, getting my food intake in order again, imposing a modicum of discipline on my unruly self. Life devolves quickly if not monitored and it becomes easy not to shower every single day, to eat whatever provides comfort, and to spend the hours spaced off in another world. It’s hard to stay completely tuned in to everything when so much of it is painful. So in view of current circumstances:
And I know it’s “do unto others,” but when you’ve warned them repeatedly and they continue to disregard your boundaries, shit happens. Besides…
We’ll weather this storm, as Americans do, minus the 200,000+ fellow citizens who won’t make it through, a staggering and totally unnecessary loss in a few months’ time, and we’ll go forward with what needs to be done. Because…
On the heels of yesterday’s Pollyanna post, I’m hitting the wall today. It’s like August outside – windy, dirty, and hot. In here it’s a Sunday with no live sports, my computer games have temporarily lost their charm, and my brain still wanders away a few pages into whatever I’m reading. I’ve thought about all the things… I’ve written about all the things… I’m too tired for all the new things. Every. Day.
My spirit is a caged animal but there’s no place I want to go, so I’m pretty sure what I crave is answers… and resolution. A blessed denouement to the chaos of the realm. I do only what’s required to sustain household life, how can I be so exhausted all the time? That was rhetorical.
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Welcome to my weekly blog on life's happiness. We are all human and we all deserve to smile. Click a blog title or scroll down. Thanks for stopping by.
Creative humour, satire and other bad ideas by Ross Murray, an author living in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada. Is it truth or fiction? Only his hairdresser knows for sure.
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