Pandemic Times

I’ve lived alone for the most part since my youngest child grew up and went to college. I don’t know if being alone is a muscle that I’ve strengthened over time, or if it’s more like Vitamin D, where you get increasingly depleted over time in a northern latitude. (I don’t know if that’s true about Vitamin D. Jeez, I’m not a doctor. It’s just a metaphor.)

Each day is the same. The dog gets me up at 6:30. She takes me out walking at 7:30. At 8:30, I sit on my friend the couch and do my usual stroll through the internet: I check Fivethirtyeight to see how Trump’s ratings are. Steady. They hold steady, even while everything goes to hell in a bucket. I check the Worldometer to see what the death toll is. I try not to imagine all of the suffering that those numbers reveal. Then I try not to harden myself to suffering. I can’t decide which is worse: becoming immune to the horror of people dying alone on ventilators, or thinking too hard about it, so I move on. I check my e-mail. If I get an e-mail that requires a response, rather than replying, I carefully add it to my to do list.

I get e-mails from lists I’ve subscribed to. I don’t read any of them, but I don’t delete either. I scan past links to essays with titles like, Four Things You Should Never Do, and Six Easy Ways to Be a Better Human, and Ten Things You Must Do before you Die. They make me tired. I do the puzzles on the NYT page, in order. I never do Tiles, though. Well, maybe a few times. I try to write but keep going back to Sudoku. I scan Facebook and notice how grouchy everyone seems to be. Lots of this and that about masks. Lockdown, yes or no. Someone went the wrong way in the grocery aisle. Someone saw someone standing too close to someone else. Someone doesn’t want to wear a mask. Someone has a question about a broody chicken. I’ve always wondered about the broody chickens. Are chicken owners just super observant, or is a broody chicken that obvious?

At about 11:00 I realize I’ve been up for hours and done almost nothing. I resolve to do something. I make another cup of coffee while deciding. There’s usually something I want to make that I just thought of five minutes ago, and it’s become urgent. I can’t restrain myself long enough to make a solid plan. I’m not a real artist. I don’t have patience or forethought or follow through, but I have a burning desire to create. My ideas appeal to me until I’m 50% complete and I get bored or in over my head or unbearably lonely or the project seems stupid. So far, I’ve painted a few bugs on scraps of cardboard, sewed part of a large maple tree out of cloth, knit half a sweater, half a hat. Nothing is finished. I could care less. I hear about people deep cleaning and I’m amazed. My house is messier, dirtier than ever.

Every evening, I watch a few episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. I’ve never been much of a tv watcher. I’m not good at it. I stopped understanding how to operate a tv when you needed that little box. Anyway, I got Netflix as a pandemic gift to myself. Pandemic gift!

I’m the only person who didn’t watch Grey’s Anatomy a decade ago. I’m like that guy who had pho for the first time in 2020 and starts telling people about this wonderful new kind of soup. “It comes with condiments!” We know, they say with patience and scorn. Everyone else loved Grey’s Anatomy a long time ago. They know what happens. They know if Izzy dies, and if Meredith marries Mark. But I go to the hospital every evening to see my friends. They are my real friends! I want that life. I want to scrub in and save lives during the day, and then hang out at the bar drinking whisky with these people who are weird and smart and determined, and they forgive each other. They act poorly, they go off the rails, but their friends see through it every time, and forgive them.

I fold hats from newspaper. I found the instructions in the Sunday NYT. At first I thought the new At Home section was for children but I found an article describing how to set up a bar at home, so I understand that the NYT has requested that I fold hats. It’s unclear to me why but I do what I’m asked. I fold twelve hats. I wear them around the house.

I make other stuff, too. I build a bench out of twigs and a slab of wood. It’s not all the way finished but I put it in the garden next to the ant hill. If anyone comes over to watch the ants, they will have a place to sit.

I make a gateway into part of the garden so that if someone comes over, they’ll know how to enter that part of the garden. No one is coming over. I know that. But if they do…

I make a phony video of my dog having a zoom meeting with other dogs and post it on FB. A friend asks why her dog wasn’t invited. I try to explain that it’s not real, but she doesn’t believe me.

I remember reading My Side of the Mountain over and over as a kid. I need to read it now. That boy from NYC, he left home and lived alone in a stump! I am basically living alone in a stump myself! With electricity and internet and a full kitchen and mattress and food and stuff, but other than that, I’m essentially living in a stump. I round up a tattered copy — a friend leaves the book in a bag in a farm stand under some kale where I retrieve it wearing a mask. I record myself reading it, chapter by chapter, and post it in a google classroom. I’m not sure if this is entirely legal but I think broadcasting from a stump is probably fine. Like Pirate Radio. Come and get me. I invite my grown kids to listen. They’re truant. They don’t seem to understand that this is SCHOOL. I invite a friend and she listens raptly. I make reading comprehension quizzes. She aces them. I quit reading at Chapter 10, right after he captures the baby falcon.

With most projects, I get to 60% complete and quit. I text my sister. She says keep going. Finish something. She sends me videos of artists doing painstaking beautiful work that requires planning and patience and many hours.

I go outside and start building a scarecrow. I work on it for a short while and find myself back on the couch. What’s the point of a scarecrow? What’s the point of anything?

The dog is in charge. She watches me all day. Like that old couple who finishes each other’s sentences, I know what she wants. A walk, food, or playing with a toy. It’s not complicated, but sometimes, like that fake-deaf husband, I pretend I don’t understand. She cocks her head and stares at me, wagging her tail, barking. Ignoring doesn’t work. She’s stronger than me. We go for another walk. I call her The Warden.

I work on the scarecrow more. She will be my friend. We will face this together. We’ll stand together against The Warden. We will sleep past 6:30, and stay inside when it rains. I feel proud of the noble tradition I’m part of. I try not to think about Gepetto, Frankenstein, and those sorry people who made the Gingerbread Man. I name her Wilson. Each day, we get up, the three of us, and scrub in. It’s a beautiful day to save lives.