No Banner

I haven't been keeping an official count, but by my haphazard reckoning, today is the first in weeks when the Washington Post has not had a banner headline. Instead, there was a five-column head, "Stay-at-home orders for capital region," to explain yesterday's announcement from the governors of Maryland and Virginia and the mayor of D.C., that residents can only venture outside for essential business. You had to turn go page A5 to learn that Virginia Governor Northam's order extends to June 10 — which was big news around here.

What this says to me — the monumental announcement and the lack of banner headline — is that this is the new normal. You can't keep slapping a huge headline across the top of the paper day after day even though the news continues to shock, amaze, sadden and befuddle us. At some point the shock, amazement, sadness and confusion becomes the way things are now.

I realize I'm one of a vanishing few who even read a hard-copy newspaper, let alone pay attention to the width and point size of the lettering across the top. But what this says to me is that we are becoming inured to this upside-down world. How inured? Ah, that's the rub. The trick is how we adjust and what we lose as we do.

(Empty roads: part of the new normal.) 

Blossoms Remembered

It's been years since I've missed seeing D.C.'s famous cherry blossoms. It's one of my own personal rites of spring — walking beneath the massed pink flowers, petals falling gently on our heads, seeing the city transformed.

There are always crowds: picnickers, photographers, little kids who stray too close to the Tidal Basin. Many people dress up for the occasion, and it's a favorite for engagement shoots. But the clamor and craziness of it is part of the experience, as are all the times I've gone before with my family and with my parents years ago. Those earlier visits are with me each new year when I brave the crowds to see the blossoms again.

This year there are no tourists. Roads are blocked off discouraging congregation. Those who venture down are masked and gloved. They're maintaining social distance.  I will not be one of them.

But I can imagine what it's like, can take a virtual walk beneath the trees.

The Sunday Funnies

The pandemic is creating many strange situations, some terrifying, some exasperating and some ... unexpectedly funny. I just experienced the latter.

The humor came not from one of the many memes circulating via group text, nor from a streaming late-night comedy show but from the videotaped Mass provided by my Catholic parish.

The service was conducted with utmost respect and solemnity, but a series of little blunders left me chuckling by the end. First, the voice track of the video lost sync with the action, which made all the speakers look like they were being dubbed. Next, church bells started ringing loudly toward the end of the service, which seemed to surprise everyone on the altar.

And then there was today's presider  — a puckish older man who brings smiles even on ordinary Sunday. When it came time for the sign of peace, Father Dick shrugged, looked around and finally settled on a jolly, window-washer-type wave. Next, he had to be reminded to alert parishioners to the food van in the parking lot today (a whispered reminder from the pastor that was transmitted to the listeners through the mic Father Dick was wearing on his vestments). And finally, he began the dismissal before giving the blessing. When he realized his mistake, he knocked on his head and said, "Well, at least some things are happening like usual around here." It was a splendid self-deprecating  recovery that left me laughing out loud.

I'm not sure Hollywood will be calling my church anytime soon. But ... maybe they should.

Bingo!

The line stretched past the supermarket and the auto parts place, almost to the furniture store by the time I got to the store, pulled on my rubber gloves, picked up a cart and stood in line this morning. It's grocery shopping in the age of COVID-19.

Once inside I was making my usual rounds when I suddenly remembered I ought to make a beeline to the paper goods aisle. And there, almost mirage-like, were a couple dozen packages of toilet paper ... and even more of paper towels. There was liquid soap, too.

I grabbed one package each of toilet tissue and towels and some hand soap. My shopping trip would  have been complete even if I ended it right there.

But I was able to get everything else on my list — picked up not in the usual circular way, around the perimeters first then aisle by aisle but by zigzagging from one potentially scarce set of items to another. Skim milk. Check. Spaghetti. Check. Bread. Check.

Back home now, with cans and packages wiped down and put away ... I'm ready for a nap.

(Another day, another store. This week I was able to find everything on my list!)

Revisionist Thinking

I've never cared much for March, an opinion formed in my young adulthood, when I lived in Chicago and became acquainted with the unique form of misery known as a Windy City Spring. March was when the snow melted and you started to see what was lurking underneath. March was known for winds so strong that ropes were strung across open plazas so you could hold on while trudging your way to the bank or bookstore.

But in recent years I've been mellowing on March. Global warming may have something to do with it. Or living in the mid-Atlantic. Or perhaps greater tolerance. Whatever the case, I've come to understand the unique advantages of a month that can offer you snowstorms and cherry blossoms in one day. I've come to admire the variety and bluster of the month.

One word of caution, however. I came up with this post idea while strolling through a drop-dead gorgeous March afternoon yesterday. Every bush and tree seemed to shimmer with seasonal cheer, with growth and forward motion. It was divine. But it's the 27th. It's easy to see the advantages of March when it's almost April. The moral of this story? Beware of revisionist thinking — especially at the end of the month.

Light Show

There is sunlight this morning! It matters more these days, the weather I wake up with. It will be with me all day, as opposed to office days, when I enter a box of glass and steel and often don't leave it for nine hours.

But today the light pours into my house, and I know that in the morning it will come from the front of the house and in the afternoon from the rear. And as I sit here in the living room (one of my working spaces, being an office nomad of sorts these days) I can see both the front and back of the house in my peripheral vision.

It's as if I can see the morning and the afternoon rolled up into one. A preview of the light show that is mine every sunny day, as long as I pay attention to it.

Drifting Westward

Untethered by office routines, I find my days starting and ending a little later each day. This is especially true because I work closely with people in Central Time, so without the cues of the local office, I am being pulled into their frame of reference.

At some point, there will be a rude awakening. I will have to get up early, put on work clothes and make my way down to the office. But that time seems far away.

For now, we live in a netherworld where there's work aplenty but not only can it be done from the living room couch, but it must be done from the living room couch (or some other remote spot).

So on this rainy Wednesday, as I sip my fourth cup of tea, I find myself drifting ... ever westward.

(Not as far west as this photo would make you think, but a girl's gotta dream!)

Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Entertainment in a time of coronavirus: We need it, though we may be a bit reluctant to speak of it when the death numbers keep rising and the photo above the fold of today's Washington Post is of a stack of caskets in Italy.

Nevertheless, entertainment is helping many of us make it through. The Netflix servers (if they have servers) must be groaning from the load these days. And the same for Amazon Prime and Hulu and of course all the cable news stations, especially the news and movie ones.

I began to watch a show called "Pandemic," a Netflix documentary. It was made last year but is so spot-on in its depiction of what's happening now that it's worth watching for that alone. But I decided last night to try something different, and watched "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood," a movie about Mr. Rogers and his relationship with a cynical journalist.

Turns out, there really was a cynical journalist. He really did write a long article about Mr. Rogers in Esquire magazine, and he and the journalist really did become friends.

Interested in how true-to-life the movie was, I read an article on its accuracy. It pointed out the differences, and also said that we don't see enough of Mr. Rogers, that we don't learn enough about his life. I saw the documentary about Mr. Rogers and found it boring, as I found Mr. Rogers (though my kids did not, and that's what mattered).

But the movie's story about Mr. Roger's effect on others touched and inspired me. We see Mr. Rogers stooping to talk with a boy with cancer and assure him that he's strong on the inside. We see Mr. Rogers swimming and Mr. Rogers praying for the people in his life, saying their names one by one. 

I took from it a simple truth: that there is always hope and that we must help each other. Not a bad message in a time of coronavirus.

(Photo: Screenshot of the Esquire cover from the 1998 article by Tom Junod. The film also contains a great scene of magazines being printed that I loved, being an ink-on-paper journalist at heart!) 

Solace of the Suburbs

The title of my blog has always carried with it a faint whiff of irony. The suburbs aren't made for walking, as anyone who's lived in them will attest. And I've never hidden my mixed feelings about living in the suburbs.

However ... the pandemic has reminded me of urban density, suburban space — and why we ended up with the suburbs in the first place.

People moved out of urban cores for green grass and family harmony, to stretch their legs and put some distance between themselves and their in-laws. But they also moved for their health and safety, for clean air and open space.

The suburbs have no urban buzz, no throngs surging up the avenue. But if you're looking for social distancing, the suburbs are the right place to be.

Sunday Stroll

So far, at least, we're allowed to go outside, and I'm not alone in taking advantage of this privilege. The sidewalks and paths have been filled with bikers and walkers and rollerbladers. Today I found myself in a different neighborhood for a Sunday stroll.

It's brisk, temperature in the 30s, but spring has sprung. The Bradford Pears are fully flowered, the daffodils are hanging on, and the forsythia is still sending its brilliant sprays skyward.

On this walk I found a swing and spent a pleasant few minutes pumping and flying, to the tune of Beethoven's Waldstein, third movement.

Right up the path is a little lake bordered by flowering shrubs.— and there, I saw a bird I think could have been a scarlet tanager. It was a red bird with black wings, and it was gorgeous. Maybe it was a tanager, maybe it was not.* Either way, it was lovely.

(*Reason I will never be a birder.)

New Shopping Etiquette

The local supermarket opens at 6 a.m. I was there by 6:30. I was not alone.

Inside, the place was bustling, with many customers wearing masks and gloves. As expected there was no soap or paper products, and the meat case was almost empty, too.

There was little to choose from in the lettuces and greens section (one of my favorites). I managed to score a small container of arugula (it lasts a while) and a small bag of mixed greens.

Moving on, I was delighted to see the dairy case fairly well stocked. I grabbed what I thought we needed but am already wishing I'd bought more.

The new shopping etiquette makes for a delicate dance these days. If you grab too much you feel greedy. If you don't take enough you feel foolish.

I tried for the middle ground. I hope I achieved it.

More Fragile

On this day I will always associate with Dad (six years today), I think about him and his generation, what they had to deal with — a depression, a world war, polio, scarlet fever, random infections which could easily lead to death in those days before antibiotics.

It was a more fragile world but not a worse one.

Where will this worldwide pandemic lead us? Right now it's to confusion and panic. But where will we be, what will we be like, when the dust settles?  Will we let fear transform us to meanness? Or will we become wiser, kinder, more prepared, chastened to a greater compassion?

For us, too, a more fragile world could, perhaps, be a better one.

Social Distancing

On a walk yesterday I spotted these well-spaced blossoms, which are part of an uncultivated weeping cherry, I think. There's a tree like this at the end of our yard, too, though until the last few years it had no space to bloom.

I ponder the pale pink of these flowers, a d their delicacy and freshness. Surely they're an antidote to what ails us.

And yet, when I look more closely, all I see is the space between blossoms.

These
        days
              even
                    nature
                            seems
                                     to
                                        practice
                                                    social
                                                              distancing.

Prison or Prism

Midway through the first week of strangeness with the prospect of many weeks to come, we are looking for lifelines. One is staying in touch with family — and, I'm glad to say (dinosaur that I am), more through phone calls these days than through texts.

Another are the spiritual tethers that keep us connected. My parish church was open last Sunday but will not be next, so count it among the number offering online Mass. A dear friend who lives in Paris sends me links to the resources her church is sharing, which include music, reflections on Scripture and a complete Sunday service.

I've also been exploring the world of online sermons, finding one of my favorites, Forrest Church, whose books I read long ago and whose homilies I'd long wanted to explore. They do not shy away from difficult topics. From a sermon titled "How to Make the Most out of Hard Times," he reminds us that in Greek drama the crisis is not the outside event but the way we respond to it. "The moment of crisis is the moment of decision."

These days can be seen as a prison or a prism. We are either locked in by quarantine or freed by it to see the world in a new way. As I sit here marveling at the morning light, how it spills through the shutters and lands on the bookshelves, I remember ... on a typical workday I would be missing this.

An Irish Lesson

Yes, we're in a pandemic, but Saint Patrick's Day shall not go unnoticed. Here there will be corned beef and cabbage, Irish music, and placemats with shamrocks on them. In my spare moments I'll look at photos of the auld sod. There will not be a gathering of the clan, but we will be together in spirit.

The Irish are no strangers to adversity, having survived mass starvation during the Potato Famine (a fact you hear often when touring Ireland, a place where the past is more present than most places I've visited). But the Irish are also no strangers to joy.

You can hear these twin themes in their music, which alternates between raucous jigs and mournful ballads. In this the Irish are instructive: they can find fun in the midst of gloom. I'll hang onto that lesson today.

Becoming South Korea?

Odd that less than two weeks ago I was writing about "Sweet Normalcy." Now, each day becomes less normal than its predecessor as we hunker down with new work and home routines — and absolutely no idea how this will turn out.

The U.S. surgeon general has just said that the country is at a "critical inflection point," a statement I learned after looking at the Washington Post online (there being no hard copy paper yet at the end of the driveway).

"Do we want to go the direction of South Korea and be really aggressive and lower our mortality rates, or do we want to go the direction of Italy?" Surgeon General Jerome Adams said.

I think there's no question how most of us would answer this. The question is, are we willing — or do we have the capability — to be South Korea?

(Photo taken at Incheon Airport, Seoul, South Korea)

Being Outside

Inside, we are quarantined, faithfully keeping our social distance. But outside ... we are free.

I felt it today when I went for a walk in a gradually clearing day. The cold rain of early morning had misted away and what was left in its wake was a landscape filled with birdsong and puddles and forsythia popping.

All of a sudden, the day didn't feel as gloomy. The fears of pandemic gave way to the beauty of spring.

(I'm rushing it a little with this photo; these iris won't bloom until May.)

Where We Are Now

The president has just declared a national state of emergency, the schools have closed and grocery store shelves are empty of staples and cleaning supplies. So it might seem a strange time to give my spider plant some TLC. But that's what I've been doing the last hour.

The poor thing has been suffering from scale for years, but it's been at the office, and even though a colleague with a green thumb gave me his favorite scale-eradication solution recipe, I've had no chance to use it ... until now.

But now the plants are home with me, along with a monitor, laptop, backup disc and the folders and files I think I might need the next few weeks. Now is a good time to concoct the oily, sudsy solution and wipe off each leaf and stem. I love this plant, have had it for years. I want it to live!

It's a micro effort in a macro-scary world. It's where we are now.

(The spider plant in an ironic setting, since my office is not where I am now.)

The Walk There

From Tuesday through Thursday I attended a retreat/team-building conference held a mile or so from my former place of employment.

Work neighborhoods aren't the same as home neighborhoods, but over time they make an impression, so the day before yesterday I took a sentimental stroll over there before my day officially began.

The soundtrack was Charlotte Church singing "When at Night I Go to Sleep," which long ago became associated with this particular walk, especially the eastbound version of it.

It's big, florid, sweet music, and when I hear it I remember those walks into the rising sun, the freedom I felt before I  entered the office, the fact that it always seems to be summer in my memory, pavement shimmering, folks already dragging in the heat.

I walked east on F Street, down 8th to E, then across the bridge. A major public works project was completed there in the four years since I've been gone, so the building looks different, more expansive. But arriving at the place wasn't the point. It was the walk there.   

Adventure Stories

Maybe it's because I just read a book about exploring caves and catacombs, but I'm finding myself drawn to adventure stories these days.

Which is why Into Thin Air is on my nightstand and in my backpack. Jon Krakauer's tale of the 1996 climbing disaster on Mount Everest is nothing if not gripping. Even though I've read it before, even though it's dedicated to the ones who didn't make it, I'm still pulled along by the power of a good story well told.

Adventure books are good for pandemics, inspiring in their accounts of adversity overcome. Some day, people will be writing stories about this time. They will know by then how the virus behaves, how long it lasts on surfaces and why (thank God) it spares children. They will know how we handled it here in this country, what we did wrong and what we did right. They will know how it all turns out. But for us, right here, right now, the adventure story is still being written.

Counterbalance

The coronavirus has arrived along with the crocus and the daffodils, the sweet woodruff and forsythia. It's arrived along with the balmy breezes and the occasional rumble of thunder.

I'm wondering if there's a connection between the two, the virus and the early spring, and have decided that only in the most general, humans-messing-things-up kind of way. That and how they both heighten the disjointedness I'm feeling these days, a sense that the world is out of kilter.

Still, the one can be a balm for the other. Pulling into my driveway last night, I glimpsed the blossoms that popped during the 70-degree day and felt all tingly and alive again. Yes, I still rushed in to wash my hands — but then I rushed back out again to snap this photo.

In the CIty

It wasn't where I thought I would be when I climbed up the Metro stairs, but it was close enough. It was the city, the city where I worked for 10 years and don't work anymore.

It was the city where sidewalks would gleam with water sprayed from hoses in the hot summer sun.

It was the city where I would traipse home at the end of a long day.

It was the city that now, surprisingly, welcomed me home.

Late Light

After a late light evening, a late dark morning. The drive I normally do in full daylight I did today in the gloaming, with the glow of an almost-full moon to guide me.

It's no matter. I've experienced this enough by now to expect the shift and roll with it. The missing hour of sleep is another issue. In my experience once you lose it you seldom get it back. The long catch-up snoozes do little to erase the deficit.

Nevertheless, I look forward to acclimating soon. I want to be awake and alert to enjoy the endless afternoons, the dusks that go on forever, the sense of possibility that late light can bring.

ISO Hand Sanitizer

I've read enough psychology to understand when my actions are simply seeking a little control over a situation that's beyond any. And for me, these last few days, it all boils down to hand sanitizer.

No matter that I've been washing my hands like a fiend. I want hand sanitizer to carry in my purse and backpack. I want to know I can slip a glob of it in my hands when soap and water aren't available.

Of course, as anyone who's been shopping knows, there's no hand sanitizer to be found. Not in pharmacies or grocery stores or anywhere else. When I enter a store and find no hand sanitizer, I buy paper towels or bleach or something else. This is getting expensive!

Which is why I'm glad to hear you can make the stuff. Combine two-thirds cup alcohol with one-third cup aloe vera gel. Of course, you must have aloe vera gel, which strangely enough, I do. It was buried in a bag in the garage where I keep sunscreen and insect repellent.

I still feel out of control ... but not quite so much.

(Photo chosen for serenity enhancement)

Requiem for a Tree

It comes down today, this mighty oak, the tallest in the yard, once a noble specimen but now a victim of drought, development and Lord knows what else. It bravely endured the amputation of its leeward half, a move that was meant to save it or at least forestall its end.  While that gave it a few more years, it was not enough. The executioners arrive in an hour to cut it down.

I've lost track of how many trees we've lost through the years, ones blown down by strong winds after soaking rains; ones felled before that can happen; and one that was cabled for years to keep it upright only to have it plunge to earth on a warm and still May morning.

I went out early this morning to say goodbye to the tree, patting its great hoary trunk, mossy and lichened. I thought of the games the children played at its feet, recalled the haphazard forsythia hedge that used to grow in front of it, the playhouse and sandbox that were there. I thought about its role in Suzanne and Appolinaire's wedding, when, decorated with a fern, it was witness to their vows.

Once it was one of a number; now, it's the last of its breed. There are no more 100-footers. They have died and gone away.

I know this is the right thing to do. The tree is rotting and weakened. If left to its own devices it could fall down, taking other trees and the neighbor's shed with it. But I will miss its shade in summer and its bare branches in winter. I will miss its salute to the sky.

Blank Slate

It's the first time I've been home in the morning light since I pruned the rose bush, and I sit at the kitchen table looking at the results. There are fewer branches, to be sure, and there is a clarity, the beginnings of new growth.

How I wish I could bring that clarity to other tasks at hand: to the boxes and shelves and hidden corners of my house. To the jumble of ideas in my brain.

What's required is the kind of careful, methodical approach I used last Sunday. That requires time ... and space. Long afternoons, mornings without appointments. The blank slate of an empty room.

Underland

Like the underworlds Robert Macfarlane plumbs in his book Underland: A Deep Time Journey, there is much going on beneath the surface in this marvelous new offering by one of my favorite authors. 

And there would have to be to combine prehistoric cave art, Parisian catacombs, the "wood wide web" (the fungal and rooted connectedness of trees in the forest), underground rivers, sweating icebergs and burial sites for nuclear waste — all in one book.

One theme that ties them together, besides Macfarlane's exploration of them (no one is better than he at describing fear) is a growing recognition of the Anthropocene, the geologic age that experts have come to accept we are living through, one defined by human influence on the environment.

To comprehend the enormity of this designation, Macfarlane brings many tools to bear — literature, myth, science, philosophy and language, always language. "Words are world-makers — and language is one of the great geologic forces of the Anthropocene," Macfarlane writes. But of the many terms for this "ugly epoch," only one seems right with Macfarlane — "species loneliness, the intense solitude that we are fashioning for ourselves as we strip the Earth of the other life with which we share it." 

"If there is human meaning to be made of the wood wide web," he continues, "it is surely that what might save us as we move forwards into the precarious, unsettled centuries ahead is collaboration: mutualism, symbiosis, the inclusive human work of collective decision-making extended to more-than-human communities.”

And so the image at the heart of these pages, he explains, is that of an opened hand — extended in greeting, compassion, art — the prehistoric hand prints in ancient cave paintings and the touch of his young son's hand. 

I know I will write more about this wonderful book; this is a start.

Sweet Normalcy

Okay, I take back what I said about yesterday. It wasn't a "not so super Tuesday." It was a surprisingly pleasant Tuesday, and went a long way toward removing the sense of existential dread that has been dogging me of late.

It gave me hope that someday we might have sweet normalcy again — a time when civility rules, when I'm not afraid to read the newspaper, and eventually, when it's permissible to shake hands or cough discretely into a tissue.

Normalcy is always underrated until it goes into hiding. But today I sat on Metro appreciating the ride and the sunshine streaming into the car when it was above-ground. And now I look over at the nondescript office building outside my window, watching a reflection of the planes taking off at National Airport. And I think that normal hasn't looked this good in a long time.

Not So Super Tuesday

Yesterday began with a meditation session — a few minutes of peace that were quickly blotted out by the panic in the air. Had I bought enough staples at the grocery store? Should I pick up extra dog food? What about dried beans and noodles? And hand sanitizer? I hear there are runs on that in the stores.

At meetings and at the water cooler, talk of Covid 19 alternated with talk of Super Tuesday, with a similar degree of cheer, which was none at all. Disasters seem to be looming on both fronts.

One searches for a center of gravity, for normalcy, for what passes as calm. Is it better to be informed or stay ignorant?

At this point, I vote for the latter.

Pruning the Rose

Pruning the rose is one of the more zen-like gardening tasks. While it may seem daunting at first, once you've found the rhythm — deadheading the spent blooms, tracing each shoot to its origin, discovering the essential order of the plant — it becomes as engrossing as any occupation I know of.

It's not mindless but mindful. It requires that we study each stem, follow it through a tangle of thorns and the green gardening wire I use to lash errant branches to their railings. It's almost like entering the plant, learning its secrets, understanding it enough to diminish it, knowing that in making it less we ultimately make it more.

Gardening mirrors life in many ways — but pruning the rose mirrors it more than mowing, say, or weeding. Because in life must we often need to shed the extraneous, to find the essential and amplify it, to train first ourselves and then our children, to guide and shepherd. And that means meeting things first on their own terms.  In gardening, as in life, it's important to pay attention.

Almost-Spring

To say there are signs of spring on this first day of March is to be redundant. We've had signs of spring since January. Better to say there is a freshness in the air, a whiff of change. It's not as cold as yesterday, and the breeze that's blowing is warmer.

We're only a week away from the time change, and the light is racing toward equilibrium.  Though we've barely had winter, we are inching toward spring.

I remember a time when I would have thought this cheating, would have felt we hadn't paid our dues and needed one good blizzard to set us right. I don't feel this way anymore. If we can sneak by without a polar vortex or "snowpocalypse" so much the better.

It's almost-spring, a season of its own this year with snowdrops blooming in January and daffodils in February. When there's almost-spring ... there's not much of winter.