Promise of spring

Spring this year seems to have an extra level of spring to it.  

Of course there is the usual joy of having made through another cold dark winter.  I am always thrilled by this time of year, seeing the colors of our forsythia, daffodils, and tulips, greet my mornings, instead of winter's icy grey.  Yet this year even more so - with vaccinations allowing our lives to begin to return to some semblance of normalcy, it feels even larger than the usual spring joy. It holds more import than previous springs. It feels weighty enough to warrant a fifth question at the Seder table, 

"Why is this spring different from all others?"

"We have a vaccine!"

My family will be fully vaccinated by the end of April. I was so relieved when I was able to finally book our youngest's appointment that I actually cried. Soon we will all be able to be together again. We'll hug friends. We'll wear lipstick. We'll leave our cocoons and be part of the world again.

I wish us all the promise that this spring holds.

NOT MY COVID STORY

This is not my story, this is my friend's story, I won't use her name, or include too many. details, because, well, it's not my story. I tried to write short version for Rye Moms, but it was rejected as "not right for the page." I'll leave you to your own conclusions about that.

My friend is a nurse. She went back to school to get her nursing degree in her late 40s after she beat cancer. That the kind of person she is. I hadn't seen her in over 20 years, and when she found out I was all alone, cleaning out my parents' house after my dad died, she dropped everything and came over to sit with me. That's the kind of person she is. She and her husband were high school sweethearts. That's the kind of person she is.

As I type this, she is in a rehab center, relearning to move her body after nearly two months on a ventilator. She can't go home until she can take care of herself. A day after she was released to the rehab center, her twenty-something aged girls had to tell her that their dad, her husband of 30 years, couldn't visit, because he died shortly after she succumbed to this vicious bug and went onto the ventilator. The last thing she remembers is sitting by his hospital room, holding up a card she brought him for their anniversary. That was late-May.

The summer is nearly gone, and our COVID cases are now few. I hear people saying it's gone, we can socialize again safely, and I see how they look at me when I refuse. I know many people think wearing a mask outside is unnecessary, but I'm wearing it anyplace people might get near me. Because the heart of what I do as a Mom is to protect my family. So my questions are, what would you do to keep your kids from having to break that news to you?  What would you do to save them the pain of 2 months of not knowing if tomorrow was the day they might become orphans? What would you do to keep your family safe?

Keep wearing masks, even when your friends roll their eyes. Keep six feet away from people not in your household. Stay out of crowded spaces. Limit your time indoors with others to only necessary trips. Eventually we will have a vaccine or a cure, but until then, stay safe.

Happy 4th?

This picture is from 3 years ago. THREE!!!!!! This is what the 4th of July used to look like. This year there will be no pool, no BBQs, no fireworks, no friends. Because the administration that is in charge of our federal government thought it could gaslight a virus.

This chart shows the result.

I have had a very privileged life. I've spent every 4th of July I can remember at the beach with friends and family. I love this country and everything it actually stands for.  So the 4th has always been one of my favorite holidays. But I have never seen a 4th of July like this. Because you can't actually gaslight a virus. The virus doesn't care about your politics. The virus only wants a host. Our TV game show host delivered it millions.

The virus is new, so we are a long way from knowing all about it, but we do have some information about strategies for stopping transmission. Wash your hands. Wear a mask. Limit social interactions as much as you can. Outside is safer than inside. Shorter interactions (under 15 minutes) are safer than longer ones. You protect me with your behavior and I protect you with mine. Be safe. I hope by next year we can truly celebrate the 4th of July, and be together again.

Mid-March-Mid May 2020

If a picture is worth 1,000 words...

Pandemic Posts 2020

#TrumpPandemic 2020 I have become far too fond of Gov. Cuomo.  I've watched way too many talented people sing, dance, and flip pancakes while doing flips. I've read 22 books. Exercise classes now live on the computer. I've designed and knitted a large Aran cape/wrap. I've baked 3 loaves of no-knead bread. I've finished the first section of DuoLingo's Beginner Spanish. I have heartily applauded moms teaching fractions by gulping wine, moms who day drink and paint, moms who drink while teaching kids to ride bikes, and moms who have decided to do interpretive dances to ringtones. I've cheered for kids who 3-D print masks for medicos and Captains who protect their sailors over their own careers. I've virtually volunteered for the Eliot Engel and Joe Biden campaigns. I've learned about a new type of Zoom. I've had far too many cocktails. I've mourned many too many musicians. I've watched Tiger King for godssakes! I have been home and social distancing since March 1. This is certain to go on through May, maybe longer. I am tired. In addition to the laugh/cry memes, the news articles and opinions proving and decrying the lack of brains and interest from the marmalade menace's admin, the following is a selection of my social media posts from this unprecedented weirdness.

4/6
I have spent the whole frigging day hand sewing masks out of old flannel PJs and baking bread and I am so OVER this Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House on the Prairie fantasy. I want to go out in a slinky dress and heels in NYC and drink martinis! Hell, I just want to go out!

4/5
So fucking tired. day 36 of social distancing, and none of it means anything if other people won't too. If you could play Russian Roulette with only your life I'd call you an idiot, but you are playing with mine too.

4/2 JHROLLERSKATINGFC - JARED KUSHNER???????? FFS

4/1 Joe Exotic being on COVID-19 watch in jail is pretty much proof that this simulation is breaking down.

also 4/1

just so you all know - April Fool's Day has been cancelled this year.

3/31 Tuesday March 31, 2020 A typical day in our atypical new normal. Get up, feed dog, use clorox wipes on anything that might have been touched in the downstairs yesterday. Wash hands. Take vitamins. Have coffee, read facebook. Take the dog to the park. It's 9AM.  

My plans for the rest of the day are, take an online yoga class with Bill at noon. Drop off a packet of yeast (I scored at WF last week!) in a friend's mailbox. Do some data entry stuff for the Engel campaign. Sew pockets onto the shawl/poncho I designed and knitted. Read (I think I'm up to about a book, book and a half a day). Attempt no-knead bread in the dutch oven. Talk to friends and family on facebook. Make trouble on twitter. Scroll through Instagram. Make dinner. Drink wine. Sleep.

3/30 I have adopted an emotional support demon named tequila. 

3/28

3/20 So, anyone else moved their upstairs tiara to downstairs for Skype calls? 

3/19 today, just exhausted. overwhelmed and exhausted. no real treatment, no real cure, and the knowledge that if I get this, I don't have great odds to survive it. and I've been yelling at everyone to stay home for almost a month now to try and save my own life, and so few people seem to care. I'm tired.

3/18 

3/15 We are exactly where Italy was 10 days ago. We can choose to stay home or face the same fate. #whichofyourneighborsareyouwillingtokill?

3/14 2020 has been an exhausting year so far. I feel like I have been a Cassandra on so many fronts. I am overwhelmed.

3/13 Please call Governor Cuomo’s office to close all NYS schools for a minimum of two weeks (the incubation period of the Corona Virus is 14 days) to contain the virus and protect public health! (518)474-8390 - Option 2

3/12 I have to say, as a Kindergarten teacher and Jewish Mother, I'm both appalled and baffled that you all didn't wash your hands properly or have a month's worth of food in the house before now.

3/11 As someone with asthma, I'm gonna have to say, I'm disappointed in a whole lot of you people. You may never have struggled to breathe, never felt like you were drowning while out of the water, never given up on the medicine working and just accepted you were going to die. All of the minimizing of the severity of this virus tells your friends with lung disease, heart disease, immune systems compromised by cancer treatments, (not to mention you grandparents) and all the other high risk folks, that you don't care if we die. And I have to say, that kind of sucks.

3/10 without immediate aggressive social distancing, the US infection rate will look like Italy's in under 2 weeks. (and it may already be too late) We don't have enough ventilators for the people who will need them. this isn't hyperbole. it's just fact. also fact, those of us in high risk categories can hear you when you say it isn't a big deal.

3/7 OK, I admit it, I did not have pandemic taking out *POTUS and *VPOTUS because of CPAC, as how Nancy Pelosi Gets to be President on my BINGO card.

3/5 dear lord

3/4 Wash your hands like you've got a club stamp you don't want your mom to see

3/3 From a friend who works at a large firm in NYC . New guidelines. "You should not book venues for large events until further notice. Where a large event (over 20 people) has already been booked but the invitations have not yet been sent, you should seek to postpone the booking. Small events (under 20 people) which involve no international travel may go ahead as normal, subject to any further developments. If an invitation has already been sent for an event then we should continue to progress as planned but while keeping the event under careful review."

3/2 Every week this year has been a very long year.

and finally

My Love Letter to NYC

I love cities. I always have. I find them energizing and inspiring. New York most of all. Over the years, I have been lucky enough to see quite a few cities around the world, and while they all have their charms, Paris is perfect in the springtime, Madrid magical in winter, and Sydney's summertime can't be beat, there is nothing in the world like New York City in the fall.

It always brings me a thrill, to be part of the ballet of bodies criss-crossing the busy sidewalks, weaving in perfect syncopation. New Yorkers pass each other like swifts, with just the bare minimum and precise amount of room necessary to avoid a crash. It is glorious. I'm attune to the sights, the tourists, the shop windows, a photographer trying to get a shot of her model from across the street, as cars and trucks force her to be momentarily unseen. I adore the sounds as well, people speaking languages I can't identify, birds chirping, horns honking, the slap sound of paper pulled off a stack and thrust at you, and yes, even the scents, leaves underfoot, roasting chestnuts, fancy lady perfume, all mixed in with exhaust fumes. I love it all. I stop thinking, I just breathe and live in the moment. It is a type of meditation in motion.

I had my perfect day in NYC yesterday. My morning was spent at the glorious Sisley Spa at The Carlyle Hotel on 76th near Madison. The combination of old world elegance and modern spa treatments make me so happy. An elevator operator! And their glass of champagne is served in crystal, and it isn't plonk! Heaven. After being steamed and kneaded into feeling like Wagu beef, I took a great walk back to Grand Central. The weather was my absolute favorite, sunny, with just enough of a crisp breeze to make walking a non-sweaty joy. I windowed shopped at every jeweler between The Carlyle and the train. I rescued a pack of lost German tourists, and got them pointed towards the right subway. I ate a dirty water dog with sauerkraut and mustard. I got to be a New Yorker again for a few hours. That's as close as I get to Nirvana.

L'Shana Tovah

First of all, and most importantly. L'Shana Tovah to all, I hope you are inscribed in the Book of Life and have a happy, healthy, and sweet New Year. To anyone I accidentally wronged this year, I'm sorry and I will try to do better next year, to anyone I purposely wronged, I am very sorry and will try to be a better person next year.

The Jewish holidays inevitably make me miss my mom. The same way the first Pats game of the season makes me miss my dad.  If we are lucky, only the good memories stay present after our parents are long. I am very lucky.

Thinking about my mom and the High Holidays inevitably leads me to thinking about my mom's jewelry. She loved jewelry, and all things sparkly. My mom grew up in a working class neighborhood in a  working class town, her father was a tailor, but died when she was in High School. I have the last present he ever gave her, for her sixteenth birthday, a moonstone ring, saved for my daughter.  I love it, but I can't wear it, because she wore it every day of her life, so it seems too much like her for me to put on. My daughter was only three when my mom died, so she will be able to wear it someday without the pain of the loss.

My grandmother was an immigrant who never learned to speak English all that well. Money was tight after my grandfather died. My grandmother had some money from my grandfather's social security.  My Uncle Sam was ten years older than my mom and was already established working a factory job, so he helped support his mom and baby sister. After High School my mom got a job as a Secretary in that factory and helped support the family as well. She worked there even after she and my dad got married, while they waited to have children, and then later, while they waited to adopt. She loved pretty things, but mostly sparkly things. Jewelry was an outward expression to the world that she was taken care of, that she was safe. The cultural history of the Jews and portable wealth is well documented, and that was part of her feelings of safety as well.  "If it all goes down the tubes, we can run for the boarder with all the jewelry sewn into the hems of our clothes."  I never understood her, never thought I could feel that way, we were Americans, but here we are, America 2019, and I understand her now.

Some time after my mom and dad got married, they started a small business, and moved from working class to middle class. Although I don't think either of them ever felt secure there. But my mom was always striving to be appropriate to her station, and wore her nice quality, solid, one-carat engagement ring, alongside her wedding band, pretty much every day (except in summer, when she had a special white, enameled, summer band that took the place of both). But for the holidays the big guns came out and she would wear her twenty-fifth anniversary diamond to shul. Rosh Hashanah services were interminable for me as a child (because they ARE!) and my reward for good behavior was getting to play with my mom's rings, moving them back and forth on her finger to catch the ceiling lights in the Synagogue and sometimes even catching the lights from the Bimah.  I could feel the waves of contentment coming off of her as she watched her little girl as entranced by her jewelry as she was. I sometimes find myself playing with my own rings like that now. Even without the synagogue lights.

I am not an observant Jew. I don't believe in God, or that organized religion is a good thing. But I am a fervent believer in cultural traditions. So for Rosh Hashanah although I don't go to shul, I do make a brisket the size of a Buick, apples and honey, and cheat and buy the tzimmetzes already cooked from Whole Foods. I very much like the idea of taking a couple days to reflect on the past year and apologize for my mistakes.  I miss my mom, and I am glad that I can look back to the last conversation we ever had. It was about a fifth anniversary ring Peter was getting me. Because I know that conversation made her feel at peace, knowing I was taken care of and safe. We sad our "I love yous" at the end of the phone call, not knowing we wouldn't have another chance. She had not been written into the Book of Life for another year. But we got to say it.

My New Years wish for all of you is that you are able to say your "I love yous" hoping you have more time, but making it count if you don't.