Day 19: Shooting in the Cloudless Afternoon
COVID-19 quarantine
Day 18: Without Subtitle
"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.
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."
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.
It's one of those unexpected lessons we learn during this troubling period.
Day 17: Spiders and Compressed Script
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
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
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.
“IÂ 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
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.
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
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
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
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.
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 2: Blooms and Games
