Change Can Be Infectious

September 21^st marks the Autumnal Equinox.  If you’re a nit picker, it officially happens at exactly 8:30 a.m. on the 22^nd.  At that precise moment length of day is the same everywhere on the planet from the poles to the equator. 

Summer ended quickly.  I was picking peppers and tomatoes in shorts and a tee shirt in the garden on a hot Monday and by Friday a forecast of temperatures in the 30’s had me bringing house plants I’d nurtured on the shack porch since spring inside.

For all the awfulness of the pandemic it was a beautiful summer.  My garden got me through it in many ways.  It got me out of the house and into the country, concentrating on plants rather than political turmoil and violence.  It was only a six-mile drive, but it shook me loose from my tightly controlled Covid affected existence.

I tracked the weather and rainfall.  I tended each plant like it was a friend.  They became just that.  And my friends rewarded me in a big way. 

I am sad to see summer end because the garden ends with it.  But change can be infectious.  I resist it at first but at some point, I welcome it like a hot meal on an empty stomach.  Fall?  Not so bad.  Fall offers new things.  You have to find them.   

With the need for heat clearly coming to the shack, I cleaned the ashes out of my wood stove, buffed it off with steel wool, and put a coat of black polish on it.  I brought out brown paper bags for starting fires and checked my kindling supply.  I would need to split wood into small sticks.  There were things to do.

I trimmed up a couple logs with the chainsaw and brought them inside to serve as chopping blocks.  I’d been thinking I needed two, one for the kindling cracker and another for splitting wood with the cleaver.   I put them side by side and tied them together with rope.

As I worked on that I kept looking at the fan that got me through the hottest days of summer.  I decided to keep it out a while.  We may have a few hot days yet in store. I’m wearing a flannel shirt.  That happened fast.  Next, I’ll take the screens off the windows.  Where will I stow that new screen door?  Or do I leave it on?

Four days before the Vernal Equinox I worked the primary election.  It was St. Patrick’s Day, March 17^th, which always in my mind marks the start of this whole damned Covid mess.  Ireland closed the bars for St. Patrick’s Day.  That is how cautious that country was, how much its government sought to protect the health of its people.  I worked the election without a mask.  At our precinct polling place in the Lion’s Club we wiped off the pens people used.  Some brought their own.

We swiped the plastic tables of the voting booths with paper towels and sanitizer.   We had little or no idea, in those early days, what we were doing or trying to prevent.  Touch seemed to be the thing.  We had our groceries delivered and invariably got things we didn’t want.  But primarily we were scared of the virus on surfaces rather than in the air.

Weeks before that primary election we went on an eye care mission to El Salvador.  While we were departing, making our way through O’Hare, there were people wearing face masks which seemed odd.  When we came back, we feared officials in the San Salvador airport would take our temperatures and not allow us on the plane. 

Arriving in O’Hare in the wee hours of an early March night we never imagined that would be the last time we were in Chicago for seven months now and counting.  Our two kids live in Chicago.

We love the city.  We used to go there often.  My wife would find good deals on hotels through the internet.  Together with the kids we would explore a bottomless well of restaurants with creative menus and food we rarely found at home.  We’d see movies that we knew would never come to our small town.  We’d listen to music, fitting ourselves into crowded bars like The Hideout, listening to bands on the way up, and staying up later than we ever did at home.  Being in the city made us feel young.

We’ve not be back since that long flight from Central America in March.  We have chosen to stay home and be safe.   Our kids encourage us to do just that.  They worry about us and for us.  We were surprised at how much. 

We saw our son for the first time in months sometime in April.  He had  tested negative for the virus and showed up on the patio in a mask with no intention of staying the night or eating a meal.  We were all very tentative at first, even with our own family.  He wasn’t sure if his sister, our daughter, approved.  She had not yet felt she should have contact with us.  Our son was recently unemployed.  Life was not easy in his Pilsen apartment, surrounded by sidewalks and streets.  He enjoyed our yard, the one he grew up in.  I think he’s gained a new appreciation for his hometown. 

He’s working again, downtown until they get him set up to work from home.  He tells us he doesn’t think we should go back to the city yet.  Downtown, he reports, is eerily empty.  The Loop hotels we love are at low ebb.  Lots of restaurants are closed and now with the weather changing, their outside seating is going away. We fear more of them will close.  The movie houses are closed.  There are no new movies anyway, and bands have not had a live gig since God knows when. 

Our daughter, who with a partner owns her own business (that has survived, much to our surprise, owing to their hard work) is even more cautious about exposing herself to the risk of infection now.  She is pregnant with our first grandchild.  When she and her boyfriend told us, while her Mom and I sat together spaced apart from them in the backyard, we broke the rules, closed the gap, and hugged them.  Cried all over them as I remember.  Life has a way of going on, whatever the obstacles. It is wonderful to see their joy and celebrate new life for our family, amid the fear and death that surrounds our country.  It makes us forget for a while.

They come down more now, as does my son and his partner.  We cook out on the charcoal grills, spending most of our time outside.  They believe life outside the city is safer, more controlled.  We’ve convinced them, I think, that we remain careful.  They now come back home and relax.  They think it is great to get out of the city.  Little do they know their visits are a lifeline for us.

It was bad during those first few months.   No one quite knew what to do or how to behave.  It was foreign and uncomfortable to be cautious with neighbors and friends.   But still we isolated ourselves.  The days dragged.  I was consumed by the news and the grim specter of public health policy being viciously politicized.

My wife and I became more and more emotional.  She was scared I would catch the virus and die.  I was afraid she would be consumed by fear and lose it.  We were scared for each other and those we love.  We still are, but we’ve learned to cope.

It helped immensely when things loosened up, even just a bit.  The YMCA let its members back into the pool under strict conditions.  We could reserve a lane for 45 minutes to swim laps.  The locker rooms were closed at first, with no place to change.  We walked in wearing our suits and when our time was up pulled sweatpants over damp suits on the pool deck and walked out wet.    

I didn’t know how much gaining access to the pool would mean to me.  A bad leg now prevents me from walking for exercise.  Lap swimming has been my go-to work out for years.  It came just in time.  Not only did I get my heart rate up again for an extended period each day, it gave me somewhere to go, something new to look forward to, a daily challenge.

I realized how sedentary the pandemic had made me when I swam my first lap.  That day and for weeks after I felt like a loaded barge going upriver.  But slowly I swam faster and farther, filling my 45 minutes with more and more laps.  I’m back to where I used to be and beyond.  I added Saturdays, which I never did before.  I thank the YMCA for taking the risk of making the pool available to the community and to me.

Summer helped.  My wife and I took day trips, driving on two lane roads mostly, going to small towns and out of the way uncrowded attractions.  We reacquainted ourselves with the refurbished concrete Native American chief that stands in Lowden State park looking across the Rock River valley near Oregon, Illinois.  On the way back we stopped at the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie looking for a herd of bison that never showed. 

At home we fed the birds and ourselves almost too well.  When the restaurants first opened we tried them but it didn’t seem right.  Occasionally we get a carry out but for mainly we trade off cooking.  It became a big focus.  We’re going to have to stop that at some point, not the home cooking, but at least the size of the meals.

Something unexpected happened.  Our church, Open Table UCC, stopped worshipping in person and went online using Zoom, the interactive group video program.  I was against it.  We are a small congregation with a church building much larger than we need.  I thought we could space out, practice social distancing as they say, and safely continue.  We would have to change the way we behaved, but at least we could be together in person.

Turns out the danger of this virus is not so much transmission by touch but breathing the same air in a confined space.  We would be unable to sing.  Choral singing is an especially effective spreader of this airborne virus.  Being together for an hour and a half as we do at church simply posed too big a risk.  So, like many other churches we took to flat screens and mouse clicks in our homes.  We are apart but digitally together.  We lost some people along the way who did not have, or preferred not to make use of, the technology.  But we also picked up people who can now participate long distance.  We’re doing fine.

I have been amazed at how good and how meaningful those services have become.  I don’t think I’ve missed a Sunday morning online with my faith community.  We stumble with muting and unmuting ourselves, but we have learned to present beautiful music by pre-recording it.  Our pianists give us solo instrumental pieces, and some four hand performances as well.  We have talented musicians in our congregation, and they have teamed up to bring us a woodwind trio, a flute duo, a number of songs with guitar.  Is it live music?  Not quite.  But it’s so good to hear.

We sing hymns, led by talented song leaders, but we can’t hear each other.  Zoom cannot seem to put us all on the same time loop.  Any type of responsive reading or shared singing through our individual microphones is an audio disaster.

I belt out the hymns alone in the shack.  I imagine standing next to the fellas in the back row of the choir, straining to hit the notes those who can read music hit, if even a tad late, and loving the sound,  the harmony, when we all get it right.  It doesn’t work, but I think of it anyway.  Being part of a choir again is a stubborn longing.  We won’t be singing as a choir, or as a congregation, for a while I’m afraid. 

But we’re together. And the part of the church service where we share joys and concerns has become more heartfelt than ever.  We’re all going through a lot it turns out.  And we don’t seem as reluctant now to admit it to each other.   We see more keenly that we need each other very much.  We don’t experience community the way we used do, but community proves once again to be critical to our collective well-being. 

The same thing happened with our poetry group.  We switched from in person meetings to reading and discussing poems on Zoom and didn’t miss a beat.  We meet for an hour and a half monthly and are sad when our time is up.  I think it has become, like church, more important and more valued than we realized before we were forced to separate.

If someone were to ask me how we made it through the pandemic so far, I’d say we found new ways to maintain what is most important in our lives.  I dread cold weather and the coming of winter.  But I’m no longer worried  life is going to be awful.  I have worries mind you, but I know now by experience that those closest to me will help me keep my head above water.  No one is going to drown.  We act as each other’s lifeguards.

I hope you've experienced that too.  I think we're going to make it.