I am a confessed aficionada of calendars. I have five in my house, and each has a special place and must be a particular size. I choose them carefully. They have different purposes. One introduces me to an artist whose work I don’t yet know. One helps me reflect on the great wisdom of the ages. One commemorates a trip I have taken in the past year. One is a freebie that comes in the mail and is kept in a closet. And one is folksy, with pleasant aphorisms, such as the one above. I never peek at the pages ahead, so on the first day of each month I make a trip around the house and am surprised and delighted.
On the first day of March 2020 I was invited to “Brace Myself,” and for the whole month of March I was doing just that. Everything was up in the air, and staying grounded was more and more of a challenge. COVID-19 sent our known world into a tailspin.
If that was not enough, when April came and I turned the calendar I found this image. Here I see myself, a little petulant, deep clouds, waiting for sunlight. There you have it; calendar wisdom for a pandemic. Brace yourself and wait it out, preferably in the company of animals!
Mary Englebreit
Have you noticed that your inbox is full of reflections on what all this means? It is a quite terrifying prospect to add my ideas to the overflow. I just found out that Shakespeare wrote King Lear during the Bubonic Plague. If that doesn’t stop me from writing, then there is also Margaret Atwood, who, in a recent Globe and Mail said everything I might have said about quarantines. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-growing-up-in-quarantineland-childhood-nightmares-in-the-age-of-germs/
As a child, I used to take food parcels and school assignments to my friend’s house which was plastered with “Polio Quarantine” signs and we would blow kisses to each other through the window.
As I wrote these words, my neighbour knocked on my window and said she would be grocery shopping in the next two days and to let her know what I needed. My daughter would be smiling knowing that finally her mother was being cornered into accepting help.
Here are some observations that, so far, are not coming into my email box.
I am a vulnerable person because I am older, and though fortunately I am not compromised, I am still the subject of much care and concern. I wonder how other people like me are experiencing this? I have been startled by neighbours I have never talked to, who seeing me putting out the garbage, are asking if they can help me in any way. Whatever fantasy I have of being young and not vulnerable is ripped away. Who was I fooling? It has got to be the crazy mop of white hair I have. Maybe I should have kept colouring it.
My children are especially solicitous. I check this out anecdotally and find that I am not alone. I find that children are not quite as kind about this as friends. I got an email from a dear friend who wanted to advise me gently to stay inside. Between each admonition she paused to write that she loved me. My children are, in my experience, bossier. After all, I know they love me ,they say. Is this a reflection of how I was with them? Did I delight in laying down the law with them? I rather expect so and now it is their turn to insist upon my obedience. They care that I stay safe and follow all the protocols. I have to confess that I feel rebellious. I even lied to my daughter.
I am a person who likes to see what is on the other side of any locked gate . Throughout a long life this has been both rewarding and troublesome for me. “Stay home,” my Prime Minister tells me daily. My mind starts squirming. Where is the loophole? Can I go walking? Yes. Can I meet up with a friend? No. But what if I meet a friend by accident? Can I go and get my own groceries? Maybe not because I am so old, but then I am also so well. And then I begin to bargain. Maybe I could have a birthday party at the beach and we could all stay two metres apart? Why not? I saw some 30-year-olds doing it just before the shutdown. My desire for freedom is not easily constrained. I prefer to lead and I strain against being led. Inside my intellectural embrace of interdependence lies a noisy and selfish independent urge.
Since I am not able to live my normal life I find that it is important to have a routine. Part of that for me is to look good. I exercise, bathe and shower, and get dressed every day. A radio programme suggested I look for fun items in my closet and today I am dressed in hot pink accents! However, I had forgotten to get my hair cut before the shutdown happened. I managed to squeeze in an appointment, the last one my hairdresser had before she closed down. Prudently, I got my hair cut very short. Then I Zoomed with my daughter, forgetting that my hair was different. She said my hair looked good and asked what had I done. I lied and said I had tied it up. Then I spent a sleepless night, in the midst of which I penned and sent off, a very long and sincere apology. This whole parent-child thing went into reverse. I am pretty sure that something like this is happening to more people than just me. I look for loopholes at least twice a day. I am learning restraint, but the urges remain. I resist yielding to even the most loving and wise guidance which can sound to me like so much like unkind authority. My daughter who lives in Ontario responded to her mom in Vancouver’s apology ever so warm-heartedly. “Mom, Vancouver has never seemed so far away.”
Have you been receiving tender poems and tiny essays on the joys of being shut in? I have been. I am sure they are all written by smiling oldster introverts. How many of the classics have you read that you had always hoped to find the time for? Are you listening to symphonies provided free? And the extroverts all wish they had purchased stock in Zoom.
You may not get so many reports from the overwhelmed. I know a young conscientious mom who is having to work from home who has three young kids with school closed, a husband not quite accustomed to all the family demands also working from home in a closet and she is trying to wash her fruit and vegetables in soap and water. She is getting up at 5 a.m. and working two hours, then parenting until 7 or 8 p.m. and starting work again until 2 a.m. if she is lucky. There is not much time for poetry reflections for her. She reported to me that her life was a blurrrr…!
I remember what that was like. As a young mother I was so busy that I literally missed all of the Beatles. We hear from those who are working on all the front lines and how terrifying it is for them. We know some of them. Among us are those at each end of the spectrum and all places in the middle. I am concerned that we not forget the many who will need the support of our mental health caregivers to stay sane and recover from incredible stress. My profession and my country needs to prepare to counsel the exhausted, the grief stricken and those suffering from profound trauma.
Alas, I have not written King Lear, but I want to acknowledge that most of us have Goneril and Reagan moments, wildly searching for loopholes. We have Lear moments, longing to lead when, blinded, we are actually called to follow. What we all hope for is plenty of Cordelia moments of kindness and compassion to see us through to the other side. Although it stretches us to the limit to hold on to hope, that is what will lift us through these unusual times.