Matching Tracksuits

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Day 21: Palm Sunday 2020

Sunday 5 April 2020

Palm Sunday — always an important Sunday for Christians, but it’s especially significant for Polish Catholic expatriates. It’s one of those times when the ceremonies and traditions of Poland shine for a brief moment in our community. What to do when we’re all shut-in like this, though? Continue as usual.

First, breakfast on new, freshly-ironed linen.

Holy Week in a Polish highlander house means the iron is out a lot. There’s all the linens and such, but there’s also much linen in the traditional outfits they wear to Mass, and even though we won’t be going anywhere this year, I fully expect the ironing equipment to stay out for much of the week. (K’s mother always irons on a table: she throws down a couple of blankets and off she goes. She’s tried an ironing board but she’s gotten so used to her table method that she just prefers it, and to be honest, it is more convenient when ironing a table cover.)

First, there’s the palm. K and the Boy went outside to gather blossoms and foliage for the creation, taking some branches from our Leyland cypresses,

some blossoms from our neighbors’ dogwood (surely they won’t mind),

some blooms from the Azealia (same neighbor — surely they won’t mind), as well as a few treasures that grow by our creek.

K picked some fern fronds, nearly falling into the creek in the process, and the Boy discovered a lovely bit of green that he gladly picked to help with the palm background/base.

K thought it was very sweet, his excitement and his willingness to help. Neither of us had the heart to tell him they were weeds. Besides, what are weeds? It’s an arbitrary determination — it’s simply a plant growing where someone doesn’t want it growing. In that sense, even roses can be weeds.

The last element: some of the flowers growing by the creek in our next-door neighbor’s property. K discovered them yesterday when she was going with L and E to see all the work they’d done cleaning the creek.

“Oh, such pretty flowers!” she said. “I shall come here in the early, dew-laden morning to pick some of these treasures.” (Well, that’s not quite what she said, but she’s been listening to the Anne of Green Gables series, and that has a decidedly Anne-esque feel to it, and I feel fairly certain K would have said it if she’d thought of it.)

After breakfast, K leads the kids and Papa through a Palm Sunday service, of sorts, following the directions our local priest sent out. It includes a long reading about Jesus’s trial and crucifixion, at the start of which Papa has to excuse himself temporarily and I head out for a quick walk. When I get back, the reading is still not done. It’s a very long reading.

Lunch, which L and I cooked together, was followed by some outside time, kicking the ball for the dog, shooting arrows and bbs, jumping on the trampoline — the typical things we’ve been doing for years but have done with increased frequency (i.e., almost daily) several weeks now.

After dinner — homemade cinnamon buns — we took K out exploring. She hadn’t been quite the same distance (i.e., to the end of the little woods behind our house, where it drops into the next neighborhood), so we took her for a walk.

Overall, a lovely Sunday. A different Palm Sunday.

Previous Years

Palm Sunday 2019

Palm Sunday 2017

Palm Sunday 2015

Palm Sunday 2014

Palm Sunday 2012

Sixth Sunday of Lent 2013

Day 20 in Two Parts: A View of the Day and a Rant

Saturday 4 April 2020

Part 1: The Day

Our weed eater — I think that’s a brand name but I could be wrong — has been broken for some time. How long? Embarrassingly so. Today, we finally got a replacement, but we didn’t get as sturdy a model as might be expected. The reason? Turning things over to the Boy.

A battery-powered, small trimmer that E can handle. His reaction? “I love, love, love this!” He’s going to want to trim every day.

Part 2: Will This Change Anything?

K and I were talking a few nights ago about how this whole tragedy perhaps could have been significantly lessened if our inept president weren’t the egomaniacal narcissist that he is when our talk turned to how this might affect the country. K suggested that it would be a turning point, that the fact that America — the most powerful country in the world, the richest country in the world, the superlative-in-every-sense country in the world — was brought to its knees like this will necessitate some change, a whole new way of looking at things.

I disagree.

What I fear is that instead of turning this country’s populace into a science-first, technology-led country where politics and religion take a backseat to what science says (and if this were the case now, we might not be in the situation we’re in), it will only reinforce the same backward thinking that continues to threaten us now. Instead of seeing it as a science problem, they’ll see it as a religious problem. “God took his protection away from us because of X, Y, and Z” — fill in your favorite liberal boogieman.

We really don’t have to wait for that — it’s already happening. The amount of religious stupidity coming out of this is just mindblowing. Stuff like this.

One would think that given the evidence, anti-vaxxers would be shutting up about now:

The person credited with saving the most lives ever is Edward Jenner, inventor of the smallpox vaccine. The disease had a much higher mortality rate than the novel coronavirus that is confining many people to their homes right now; about 80% of children and 60% of adults who contracted smallpox died of it. In the 20th century alone, it killed more than 300 million people before the vaccine eradicated it worldwide in 1979.

The polio vaccine is estimated to have saved 10 million people from paralysis just since 1988, and prevented 500,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization. A global vaccination campaign for measles that began in 2000 prevented an estimated 23 million deaths by 2018, the organization reported. (LA Times)

One would think — but then again…

And this old nonsense about Bill Gates ushering in the apocalypse. (Money says he’s using a Windows computer here…)

And people trying to call judgment down on a virus as if it’s an incorrigible child.

And when you mix in bat-feces crazy like Alex Jones and people who take him seriously, well…

When you see everything — everything — as part of some conspiracy that was foretold in a book written by Bronze Age soothsayers,  no amount of science, logic, or critical thinking can penetrate your worldview.

It’s not just a pessimistic sense that there’s a problem: there’s quantifiable data to show there’s a problem. Google has begun compiling reports on the changes in people’s mobility during this time.

As global communities respond to COVID-19, we’ve heard from public health officials that the same type of aggregated, anonymized insights we use in products such as Google Maps could be helpful as they make critical decisions to combat COVID-19.

These Community Mobility Reports aim to provide insights into what has changed in response to policies aimed at combating COVID-19. The reports chart movement trends over time by geography, across different categories of places such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential.

What do the data show? Well, as a disclaimer, Google warns about doing what I’m just about to do:

Location accuracy and the understanding of categorized places varies from region to region, so  we don’t recommend using this data to compare changes between countries, or between regions with different characteristics (e.g. rural versus urban areas).

Still, data from three locations show the vast difference in national and local response.

Here’s the data from our county:

Now, we made the news recently as being the most mobile county in the nation during this time, so our stubborn little county is an outlier, but it’s where I live, so it’s the data I’ll use.

And here’s the data from the administrative district in Poland where K grew up, where Babcia still lives, and where I spent seven years:

A randomly selected district in Italy.

Are these two countries faring better than America? I suppose in raw numbers, they are. The long term picture looks better there. Why? Because they don’t have people going around saying, “I’m covered in the blood of Jesus — I’m saved and safe” like we do here.

Of course, in Poland, some bishops and priests are desperately trying to get churches reopened on some kind of limited basis, but even there, they understand the risk and want to have limited attendance. These bloody American Evangelicals — i.e., “covered in the blood of Jesus,” which is itself a disturbing image, but the second, British meaning of “bloody” works as well — want to have full, regular church services. The data makes their claims a little spurious, though:

And it’s not as if this virus is enough: we as a species can’t even go through this without some people turning it into a hell on Earth for those who are stuck with them:

In Hubei province, the heart of the initial coronavirus outbreak, domestic violence reports to police more than tripled in one county alone during the lockdown in February, from 47 last year to 162 this year, activists told local media.

“The epidemic has had a huge impact on domestic violence,” Wan Fei, a retired police officer who founded a charity campaigning against abuse, told Sixth Tone website. “According to our statistics, 90% of the causes of violence [in this period] are related to the Covid-19 epidemic.”

It is a pattern being repeated globally. In Brazil a state-run drop-in centre has already seen a surge in cases it attributes to coronavirus isolation, the Brazilian broadcaster Globo said.

“We think there has been a rise of 40% or 50%, and there was already really big demand,” said Adriana Mello, a Rio de Janeiro judge specialising in domestic violence. “We need to stay calm in order to tackle this difficulty we are now facing.” (Lockdowns around the world bring rise in domestic violence in the Guardian)

The virus is always teaching me something new:

The increased threat to women and children was a predictable side effect of the coronavirus lockdowns, said activists. Increased abuse is a pattern repeated in many emergencies, whether conflict, economic crisis or during disease outbreaks, although the quarantine rules pose a particularly grave challenge.

Predictable for some, that is. I hadn’t even thought of this — that’s how privileged I am.

So, no, I don’t think anything will change. At all.

Day 18: Without Subtitle

Thursday 2 April 2020

“I just want some attention!” The Boy was frustrated: K was gone; I was working on school matters; the Girl was being a typical thirteen-year-old. It struck me at that moment how this quarantine is affecting them.

Cleaning out the creek behind the house

I’ve been using Flipgrid with some classes to take a wellness check. I recorded a video; kids record videos in response. The Boy has been watching the videos and responding with me, and a common thread in most videos is how much students miss seeing their friends. “I don’t really miss school that much, but I miss interacting with my friends,” one might say, and the Boy mutters, “Me, too.”

A lovely portion of our evening family walk

So when he asked specifically and directly for attention, I thought about those responses and the simple fact that he has been isolated — completely isolated — from all his friends for weeks now. It’s less annoying for the Girl because she Facetimes with her friends and texts them. We’ve set up a Facetime session with a few of his friends, and his teachers have done a great job using Zoom to get the class together at least once a week. (I’ve tried to do the same with my students, but with less stellar results.) But it’s not the same: he cannot just contact his friends whenever he wants to. He is much more dependent on us.

Exploring the easement

It’s one of those unexpected lessons we learn during this troubling period.

The log that was in our backyard
is now several houses away.

Day 17: Spiders and Compressed Script

Wednesday 1 April 2020

We probably should have taken him seriously, but I think even he was joking. Papa’s handwriting has gotten more and more compressed over the last couple of years, becoming almost impossible to read.

“It’s probably a symptom of something,” he laughed. We laughed, too, because Papa likes to joke about growing old. We took it as a joke; he meant it was a joke. It wasn’t a joke — or it shouldn’t have been.

What would Papa have to write about now? Perhaps a description of the spider he was sure he saw in the corner of the room the other night. He called me in to take care of it.

“There, in the corner,” he said, pointing.

“What?”

“A spider.”

I looked closely — no spider. “It must have just been a shadow,” I said.

What is hallucinating spiders a symptom of? If you’d asked me before this afternoon, I would have suggested it was a symptom of listening to the Cure too much:

On candy stripe legs the Spiderman comes
Softly through the shadow of the evening sun
Stealing past the windows of the blissfully dead
Looking for the victim shivering in bed
Searching out fear in the gathering gloom and
Suddenly
A movement in the corner of the room
And there is nothing I can do
When I realize with fright
That the Spiderman is having me for dinner tonight

I listened to that song in high school more times than I care to mention — a favorite from a favorite album of 1989.

But that’s not what it was. Nothing so innocent.

Today, Papa went for a consultation with a neurologist. The unperceived symptoms combined with other issues (blood pressure jumps, moments of temporary near-paralysis as if someone hit a pause button, slight loss of balance, some tremors in the hands, memory issues — issues that have appeared in the last few weeks and sent us to the doctor for an answer) to give the doctor a diagnosis which, in his words, has a 95% probability of being accurate: Parkinson’s.

There is one other option, but we’re hoping for Parkinson’s, because option two has no treatment possibility at all. What an odd response: we’re crossing our fingers for Parkinson’s because Levodopa can make it manageable. The other possibility — well, I don’t even want to think about it. Luckily, the neurologist said most of the symptoms are more indicative of Parkinson’s. Especially the spiders. “The most common hallucination Parkinson’s patients have involve spiders,” he explained. Who knew? (Answer: a neurologist.)

Fortunately, we have caught it relatively early, and medications should be able to manage the symptoms and perhaps even slow things. Or not — PD is a different disease for every patient.

Papa is relieved to have a diagnosis. We all are. It’s no longer a mystery: these moments of paused movements, the balance difficulties, the memory issues are less depressing when they have a name and a treatment plan. We had a heartfelt “it could be worse” talk in the evening. It could be something truly devastating like Alzheimer’s (though I never feared it was). It could have all reached this point when Nana was still around, which would have absolutely broken her heart, filled her with guilt (“Why didn’t I see those things as symptoms?”), and wreaked her with anxiety and worry.

Not forever, though — when Papa was admitted for a surgery on his lung that ended up taking 2 lobes and leaving him in ICU for a week, she cried a lot at first but then went into full Nana mode and became a lioness protecting Papa, keeping track of treatments, medicines, shaving, and making sure the nurses were running a tight ship. That’s what Nana did: process her anxiety with tears and then become a fearless protector.

That’s our job now. I don’t know that we could do it as well as Nana, but we’ll do our best.

Day 16: Uncertainty and Certainty — Random Thoughts

Tuesday 31 March 2020

I am no longer certain about anything regarding school. We’ve been out for almost three weeks now and we have another three to go, but the rates of infection here in South Carolina are not decreasing. I, and many of my students, suspect and fear that we won’t be heading back this year. But we could be wrong; I hope we’re wrong.

I am no longer certain about Papa’s condition. Something neurological seems to be going on, and with COVID-19 pillaging our country right now, it throws the whole medical community into comparative chaos. It’s not a simple matter getting an appointment with a doctor anymore.

I’m no longer certain I want to update this daily. It’s been my longest streak: over 100 consecutive days at this point, stretching back to December 22. I’ve been doing it more out of a sense of stubbornness than anything else. “I’ve made it a month: might as well try to make it two.” “I’ve made it two months: might as well try to make it three.” And to what end? And if I do continue, to what loss? A few minutes’ time every night to make a record for — for whom? I don’t even think it matters.

I am certain about the value of the increased time we’ve been spending together. Being it home makes schooling both easier and more challenging, but we’re spending more time together as a result of everything being shut down — nightly walks, movie nights (tonight, Hugo — E loved it; L claimed it was boring but still demanded we pause it when she went to the restroom), evening games of Monopoly, afternoons spent in the backyard messing around.

Day 15: Monopoly and Growth

Monday 30 March 2020

We were playing Monopoly again tonight (E’s choice), and E was having a hard time of it. He really didn’t have any property, and he was landing on L’s or my property fairly regularly. He soon grew fussy.

“I never win at this game!” That sort of thing.

L and I kept encouraging him to continue, but he was reaching a point of frustration that seemed like it might overwhelm him. And then he landed on one of the two orange properties that he was missing.

“I’m buying it!”

I glanced at my own marker: I was standing on the final orange property he would need.

I turned to L, who is always our banker, and said, “Oh shoot, I forgot to buy that property.” I looked her dead in the eye, hoping she would realize what was going on.

“Oh, you wanted to buy that?” She grabbed the card and traded it for a little cash.

I turned to E: “I’ll sell it to you.”

The point of the story is not helping the Boy like that. The point is L’s reaction. There was no “That’s not fair!” There was no immaturity. There was the simple understanding that we were going to try to help the Boy in some little way because his seven-year-old patience had reached just about the end of it.

“Our little girl is growing up,” I said to K when I told her about it later in the evening.

In the afternoon, he’d brought in some wisteria blossoms and declared, “I’m going to make some perfume!

Day 14: Another Sunday

Sunday 29 March 2020

The Boy is sometimes too sweet for his own good, I think. “Perhaps all seven-year-olds are like this,” I want to say, but I know it’s just not true.

There would be the dim coffin-smelling gloom sweet and oversweet with the twice-bloomed wistaria against the outer wall by the savage quiet September sun

This is not to brag on our child, for we’ve certainly done little, I think, to develop this side of his kindhearted demeanor. And this is not to suggest that he’s always like this: he can be as selfish as any other kid his age, but those moments are often short-lived and his sense of generosity and fair play returns.

He often comes with a snack and offers to share with anyone around. When he was collecting rocks today, he wanted to make sure he shared with everyone in the family.

But it often shows in places one wouldn’t expect, like normally-competitive situations — boardgames.

Tonight, while playing Monopoly, K was hemorrhaging cash. She was down to a few ones and fives. Sure, she had a fair amount of property, but she had a definite liquidity problem. E, on the other hand, literally had a pile of $100s. He grabbed a few from his pile — not even counting — and gave them to K.

“Here, Mama.”

“No, honey. That’s very kind, but you don’t need to do that,” she smiled.

“But it’s my money. I can do what I want to with it,” he protested.

Later, he tried to do the same with me.

He did not, though, ever offer L any money, so I suppose the generosity doesn’t always overcome sibling rivalry…

Day 13: Landscaping

Saturday 28 March 2020

A house is a never-ending project, inside and out. There’s always something to fix, move, repaint, replant, shorten, lengthen, reinforce, replace, recalibrate, nail, screw, fasten, dig, hoe, spread, gather, clean, spray, scrub, feed, kill, water, or simply do. Our yard has been part of this ever-growing project, with a couple of landscaping elements that weren’t even there when we moved in and some that were there long gone, and some that we put in ourselves also long gone.

Our driveway planter has now grown and joined the original planter in the front yard that has changed very little since we moved in.

It also grew at the road end as well: the elderberries that were languishing in the backyard are now in the front yard, and we can’t just plant elderberries in the yard and be done with it…

Day 12: The Project

Friday 27 March 2020

The Boy’s teacher was ambitious: a project during their time out of school. “Design your own island.” The Boy came up with Ice Cream Island, with volcanos that spew ice cream, a chocolate lake, and a whipped cream waterfall…

The Girl let him use her paints with the understanding that she could help.

Day 11: Safe in Bed

Thursday 26 March 2020

Everyone is safely in bed, and I find myself thinking that this is the sweetest moment of the day because I can reassure myself with the knowledge that everyone is in the safest place imaginable — their own bed. “We made it through another day,” I can think.

In the past, this thought rarely popped up. These days, it’s a daily realization.

In the past, this thought reassured a fear (that something could go dreadfully, nearly-fatally wrong) that I rarely experienced. These days, that anxiety is a daily shadow, adding a touch of gray to most everything if I let it. And when I think of it after not having thought about it consciously for some time, I’m grateful for the respite.

This is not to say I go around in near-paranoia about COVID-19. But I realized today that we go through this crisis with the assumption that nothing is going to happen to us — all those who are sick, all those who die, they are not us and will not be — just like we do with everything else. Smokers know that inhaling smoke into the lungs can ultimately result in cancer, but because it doesn’t happen 100% of the time, everyone has that wiggle room: “Yes, it happens a lot, but it won’t happen to me.”

With a pandemic, though, I don’t know that we could really function any other way. We go through all the precautions yet still have to take chances, going out shopping with the realization that asymptomatic people could be anywhere but with the hope that social distancing and proper hygiene will ultimately keep us safe. I don’t know that we could function any other way and not fall into a depressed fatalism that paralyzes.

So when everyone is in bed, I can say to myself, “They’re safe once again.”

Yet how many dangers lurk around us that, were we cognizant of them, would paralyze many of us with terror? Maybe none; maybe countless. Just look at the run on supermarkets that just occurred. When people are scared, they panic. Panic leads to pandemonium. Just how close to societal collapse are we at any given moment? Probably much closer than we like to think, so we don’t think about it. We all do our part and rely on everyone else following suit.

Online scavenger hunt
Online scavenger hunt

If there’s any blessing that comes from this whole thing, it should be the realization — a collective epiphany — that we are much more fragile than we would ever like to think, both as biological and societal organisms. The technology of modernity has led us to believe that we’re invincible, but, of course, we aren’t. I wonder if a loss of that sense of invincibility is the terror that would paralyze some. In other words, a willful obliviousness to our own fragility.

Day 10, Part 1: Perspective

Wednesday 25 March 2020

A video from March 10 detailing the pandemic in Iran and officials’ refusal to take it seriously:

A video from March 24 detailing the pandemic in Mexico and officials’ refusal to learn from Iran:

 

Day 9: Conferencing

Tuesday 24 March 2020

Our admin staff held the first video conferencing session today at 9:30 on Google Meet. We’d had an informal one earlier in the week, but with everyone talking, it was far too chaotic for me. I thought I’d lose it. Very hard to follow. It seems everyone learned from the experience: the principal was unmuted, everyone else was asked to mute themselves. Questions went in through the chat box option.

E’s class had their first video conferencing session on Zoom today. At 12:30 everyone logged on and the chaotic chatter began. The teacher had a clever idea: use classroom management techniques for quieting everyone. “If you can hear me, touch your nose.” Everyone got a chance to chat and tell everyone what they were up to. The Boy seemed awfully quiet. When his turn came, he simply passed.

I held my first online conferencing session with students just after the Boy’s. I used Google Meet. It stinks. After participating in a Meet and leading one, I’ve determined that it is useful for chaotic nonsense only unless everyone is muted but one or two. Next time, Zoom.

Still, it was a relief to see the kids again. It’s only been a little over a week, but it feels like so much longer. “It’s so much different than, say, spring break,” I told them. “During a break, you know that in a week or two, you’ll see your students again. Here — who knows when we’ll meet in person again?”

Afterward, once it finally stopped raining, I suggested to the kids that we take the dog for a walk. They jumped on it enthusiastically. The simple pleasures are becoming pleasures for them again. If there’s one bright side to this whole pandemic, it’s that.

On the walk, the Boy and I got to talking about favorite books and authors. “I think my favorite author is Roald Dahl,” he said, then asked me about my favorite books.

“I think Absalom, Absaom! is the best book ever written,” I said, wondering how he’d respond.

“Is that a book a kid could read?”

“No, most definitely not.” I wouldn’t even suggest to my best readers in honors classes to tackle that book. It’s beyond challenging the first time through. Perhaps not as bad as Finnegan’s Wake or even Ulysses, but quite a challenge.

“What other books do you like?” he asked when I’d finished explaining all that.

“I’m partial to Charles Dickens,” I said.

“Didn’t he write Moby Dick?” asked L.

“No, that was Herman Melville. But now that I think about it, I believe I see a little similarity between Dahl and Dickens.”

E raised his eyebrows as he does when he’s excited.

“They both tend to give characters names that somehow reflect their character.” I explained how “Trunchbull” from Matilda seems to be a portmanteau of “truncheon” and “bull.”

When we got back, I introduced E to “Lunch Doodles with Mo Willems.” “Do you know how he is?” I asked.

“Yeah, he wrote the pigeon books and pig and elephant.”

Then, at a little past three, I get this statement from the governor:

At this time, students, parents, and families should plan for South Carolina’s schools to remain closed through the month of April. Our dedicated teachers and school administrators have done a tremendous job in making it possible for our students to learn at home. We understand that the prospect of schools remaining closed for an extended period of time places stress and strain on parents and children. Rest assured, if there is any way to safely open our schools earlier, we will do that, but schools must remain closed to protect the health and safety of South Carolinians.

So it seems our adventure is just beginning. The worries will build, I’m sure, as the cases rise in our little state, and as our president begins to make noises that indicate he thinks money is more important than lives, I wonder if a crisis in government might accompany the crisis in our national well-being.

But as long as everyone ends up safely tucked in their beds at night, my primary anxiety is assuaged.

Day 8: Rain

Monday 23 March 2020

It was supposed to rain all day today. It was also supposed to be a day off school today, which would have made the rain seem particularly dreary as we would probably have gone out and done something on this early spring day. Since this is the sixth day without school, it just felt like the new normal.

In the morning, while K was reading with E, I spent some time working on a couple of web sites I’m creating, one for a friend’s about-to-be-launched home organization company and the other an online guide for the church we usually attend (the parish built a new church just a few years ago). The virus, though, has put a damper on both projects: no one would start a business right now, and the church is closed.

Once I completed what I wanted to do, it was nearing lunch. And it was also about time that I help hang L’s pegboard that she got from Ikea two months ago. I don’t like to rush into anything. And I didn’t have the appropriate drywall anchors. And I kept forgetting to get them in Home Depot.

Of course, there had to be some playtime. The Boy and I worked with Legos: he built a car; I built a suspension bridge. When she saw it, K laughed that I should have been an architect. (Forget for a moment that it’s actually civil engineers who design bridges — I knew what she meant.)

“Actually, I did. For several years.” I took drafting in high school to that end. “But then I realized I didn’t want to do that for the rest of my life. And besides, if I’d gone that route, who knows if I would have ended up in Lipnica?” Which is to say, who knows if we would have met? A change in career choice determined who I married? Perhaps. Perhaps not. It’s impossible to say.

It’s that kind of dumb luck — or lack thereof — that has me worried now. Our family is largely isolating itself, but someone has to go to the store occasionally, as I did this morning. (Only one dozen eggs per customer, I learned at checkout.) How many asymptomatic people are walking around? We take precautions, but in the end, it’s just a crapshoot in a sense. Just like so many other things in life that seem inevitable, I suppose.

Finally, in the afternoon, it stopped raining for a while. The kids and I went out to walk the dog. In the evening, it seemed like it had stopped again, but by the time we’d gotten ready and headed outside, it had started misting again. And then stopped. And in crawled L, rollerblades still on, to tell us, “Come on! It’s stopped! Let’s go!”

Day 7: Sunday

Sunday 22 March 2020

With the diocese of Charleston making the decision to close all churches in the current emergency, today had a different feel from most Sundays and a somewhat different feel from the previous six days.

Previous six days? Has this only been going on a week? It was indeed a week ago that we learned the governor of South Carolina was closing all schools for the rest of the month, but I swear it feels like that was weeks ago. I know it’s been going on for several months now with the original outbreak in China, and while I’m tempted to go on a rant here about how much time we wasted between that initial outbreak in China and even a week ago when everything started shutting down all because our narcissistic shallow president views everything as if it’s about him and went so far as to call the pandemic a hoax at one of his rallies and still behaves as if this will all blow over because he’s now taking it seriously and pretending to put some resources into it — no, I’ll resist that urge and simply point out that it feels like it’s been longer than a week.

First, there was no church — no Mass at a church, that is. Second, there was church — something like it, a series of readings and a recorded homily that Kinga, the kids, and Papa did while I was out taking the dog for a walk. It just didn’t feel like a Sunday.

Is it possible that someone could look at this and understand how much exponentially worse it could get with a different virus with, say, a 60% death rate and understand that something like that could very well lurking in our future and still, understanding that a belief in God would necessitate an acceptance that God would have also created such a virus, it would have been in his plan, part of his mysterious ways — could someone hold all this in their head and still believe in a benevolent god? Thinking how relatively mild this is compared to what could be or even has been makes it all but impossible for me.

Another change: we got a new hot water heater installed today. We’ve been wanting to do it for some time, and I’ve had a feeling that our old heater was going to malfunction any day. The guys who did the installation for us — the guys who did the renovation of the carport, turning it into Papa’s room — were going to come next week, but with so much uncertainty, they decided to come today. We’re expecting a significant drop in our power bill as this was our last power-hungry appliance/system in our house. Changing the HVAC system cut our power bill by 30-50% (depending on the usage); this change should result in additional significant savings considering the heater dates from 1992 — the year after I graduated from high school.

Why am I so negative about all this? Why do I see only gray to any silver lining? It’s my eternal battle.

In the afternoon, the kids and I went out in the backyard to — guess — shoot. The dog does not like when we shoot as she gets stuck up on the deck for her own good…

E and I have figured out that if we fire toward something a little bit darker than the surrounding area, we can actually follow the flight of the bb, so we’ve taken to firing into the forest behind our neighbor’s house on occasion. We’ve also been trying to shoot from various positions in the yard, all of them significantly farther away from where we normally shoot. And we still take shots at the dog’s fetch ball because, well, why not?

After shooting, the Girl decided to bake a cake. The aesthetics were something like I would produce, but that comes with time. The taste is all that matters, and I think we all agreed: it was delicious.

Random day, random thoughts.

Day 6: A Realization

Saturday 21 March 2020

While working in the yard today, I got to thinking about the rumor I heard from a neighbor that the rest of the school year was going to be canceled, moved to online learning. I’d thought this myself, but hearing another person say it made it seem like less like one of the silly thoughts that sometimes rumble around my brain and more like a possible outcome.

What a sad realization then when I thought, “It’s a very real possibility that the last time I saw those kids was that Friday, just over a week ago now.” In some ways, this has been my favorite group of students: a fun mix of varied personalities with relatively few high-maintenance (i.e., poorly behaving) students. Sure, there are some talkers, but that’s nothing compared to issues I’ve faced in the past.

And instead of saying goodbye to them, wishing them well, sending them on their way, it just came to an end.

That’s the fear — because deep down, despite the facade I wear at school, I’m a sentimental schmuck and things like this bother me…

Day 5: Toilet Paper

Friday 20 March 2020

We had TP from the last time we purchased it — we tend to buy in bulk from one of the warehouse stores a few times a year. It’s amazing how long 48 rolls of TP will last. But all things come to an end, and we were nearing the end of our collection, so this morning, there was only one must-do item on the agenda: get toilet paper.

Working on her argumentative essay

I headed to the Publix down the street just before seven. “Get there when we open at seven,” a cashier had told K a few days earlier, so that’s what I did. Only to discover that in the intervening days, they’d changed their hours and were now opening only at eight.

In the meantime, I went to a couple of other stores just in case. Nothing.

It’s the second international crisis, a crisis of inconvenience (and incontinence, I suppose).

Getting ready for dinner outside

I returned just before eight to find several people waiting outside. The doors opened and we all headed to the same aisle. There was a fair amount of toilet paper, and everyone could get two packages, but I decided one twelve-roll package would last. “Let’s not behave like the other people who caused all this,” I thought.

Day 4: A Walk in the Park

Thursday 19 March 2020

We’ve been going on walks with the dog as a family every evening. It’s probably the best thing that’s come out of this pandemic for us. What we’ve noticed, though, is that a lot of other people are doing the same. Going out for a walk used to be an isolating experience: we would walk a mile, a mail and a half together and not meet a single other person. Not one.

When we went for walks at Conestee, our favorite local park, we’d encounter people, but sporadically. A couple here; a jogger there; a family around that corner. Nothing major.

Last night, however, we encountered several people along our 1.5 mile walk. Tonight, while out jogging, I encountered two or three couples out walking. This afternoon, when we were at Conestee, we saw more people there than we probably ever have.

Everyone was out. The turtles were out on the logs,

the snakes were out sunning themselves.

And people were everywhere.

“Perhaps this will bring about a change in people,” K suggested. “Perhaps we’ll all get back to enjoying the simple things in life.”

Perhaps.

Day 3: First Day of School

Wednesday 18 March 2020

The day started out foggy and stayed dreary — it could be a kind of metaphor for everyone’s mood, I suppose. But we’re fortunate: we have food; we have (a bit of) toilet paper; we have money in the bank; we have a home; we have a family that’s together. That’s what’s most important.

Today was our district’s first day of online learning. There’s a vast spectrum of what this means. For E, it was a 90-page packet of reading, math, social studies, and science work. He took on the reading first, making it through a fairly long retelling of Goldielocks with relative ease and breezing through the questions.

“We’re not seeking to further their education,” was the mantra as teachers in my school prepared for our own students earlier this week. “We’re just tasked with providing work that will keep them from slipping.”

That seems like a fairly succinct description of the work E got.

I helped him with some of it; K helped him with some of it; he did a fair amount of it on his own without direct help. Helping him usually just means giving a nudge when he gets overwhelmed and frustrated — a kind encouragement, a hint. Sometimes it becomes too much, though, and we need a break. Such was the case today.

Still, we managed to work through all the challenges and completed the work just after lunch.

L had video conferencing with teachers and they went over some new material. Of course, she goes to a charter school, which means there is a bit of a semi-natural selection process involved in the enrollment.

As for my kiddos, I got a few emails, exclusively from honors kids and mostly about outstanding assignments.

“When is that paper due?”

“When can I take my makeup test?”

As for the rest of them? I’m not sure. I didn’t hear from them. And I got word today that if kids are not doing the work within two days, I need to be contacting parents. That ought to be fun.

Not as much fun as our little fire this evening, but fun.