Blue-Footed Musings

I still get weekly e-mails from a particular cruise line. Even in the middle of this pandemic, the company is trying to convince me to willingly confine myself and my family on a ship that could become floating death trap. And to pay for the privilege!

I have no intention of cruising any time soon, but I clicked on one of the e-mails today, because I was curious about the details. Sailing dates start in November. How could anyone look out on the world today and have enough optimism to commit to a November cruise?

I couldn’t. Here I am, looking at the large boxes in my dining room that are filled with brand-new dishes, wondering when I’ll ever get to use them, and if I’ll even need such a large set. I had bought the dishes for Thanksgiving, a November holiday, with great optimism. That was before we knew about the coronavirus. Now I think it’s likely that Thanksgiving will be cancelled. Easter was. Then Mother’s Day. Father’s Day will be cancelled. My son’s birthday, which we had been thinking of traveling for, will have to be celebrated at home, in self-isolation. How far does this pandemic spread into our future? How many holidays and events will it cancel?

It’s almost as if I jinxed myself by buying dishes called “Calamityware.” When the company jokingly advertised their dishes with the slogan “Things could be worse,” I laughed. Then I bought the dishes, and now things are worse, so maybe it wasn’t so funny after all.

I’m not serious about being jinxed, though. At the time I bought those dishes, I needed the reminder that things could be worse. I still need it now. Things can always be worse, but as long as we’re alive there is hope. Maybe not for cruises, maybe not for Thanksgiving, but farther out. There is light somewhere ahead. We just have to keep sailing forward until we see it.

But not on a cruise ship, because that would be crazy.

We can’t watch the pandemic unfolding in real-time. Coronavirus starts with one person, then spreads exponentially, but we can’t witness the individual catching or spreading it. We don’t even know it has happened until critically ill patients start hitting the hospital. It takes days for a person to become symptomatic, days more to feel sick enough to go to the hospital, then weeks to recover, or to die. It takes several more weeks for hospitals to be overwhelmed and months for the death toll to reach the kind of numbers that make a nation weep. But every single day over the course of those months, individual tragedies are unfolding. We just can’t see them until after the fact.

The people running our government made stupid decisions at the beginning of the pandemic because they couldn’t understand the arc of the future, not even after having seen it happen elsewhere. They are making stupid decisions today for the same reason. Their thoughts, when they finally have them, are too little and their actions too late. All of us, but especially our leaders, must come to terms with the lag time inherent to a pandemic and learn to think weeks, months, and years in advance.

It’s always been pretty common for people to use the word “well” in e-mails, as in “I hope you are well.” Under ordinary circumstances it’s just polite filler and it doesn’t really mean anything. Wellness used to be the norm, and we assumed it would continue to be. It’s not a safe assumption these days, though, and that has changed my usage and interpretation of the word. Not only have I started including it in my e-mails more often, but I actually mean it. And when I read it in e-mails that are sent to me, I feel like it’s sincere. The pandemic has given the word back its meaning.

Marshall can ride a bike. He can also fall down on his way to the bike and scrape his hands and knees, then fall off the bike and hurt himself again. That’s how things go some days.

It’s good that he can ride a bike, though. Summer is coming up, and the kids will need things to do, more this summer than usual, because they won’t have day camp. So we are thinking about buying new bikes for them, as well as for ourselves. That way we can take trips together on the bike path.

As for me, I remember how to ride a bike. No problem. Alas, my muscles don’t remember being in shape. They will not like bicycling.

I did a few tasks from my ongoing to-do list, including a donation to the food bank and an order from my local bookstore. I don’t need any books, but I would like to still have a bookstore when we finally get through these “uncertain times,” so I threw them some business. Speaking of books, I am trying for the second time to read Greenglass House by Kate Milford, but it’s painfully slow, and I don’t know if I’ll stick with it.

Today, had it been a normal, non-pandemic Sunday, I probably would have gone out. First I might have stopped at the library to drop off old books and pick up new ones. While I was there, I might have taken a walk on the trails. How nice that would have been! I might also have gone to Target to buy new summer clothing for the kids, because it’s that time of year. But who cares anymore about clothing? The kids have clothing left over from last year. Sure, much of it is old and worn, stained, perhaps getting a mite small, but it’s not like anyone else is going to see how they’re dressed. They won’t need much anyway, since they probably won’t be going to summer camp. Perhaps I might also have picked up some cereal and snacks, two things that we used to need constantly. Quick breakfasts and handy snacks help a mom get her kids to the bus stop on time! But there are no more morning school buses and no more classroom snack breaks.

So today was a simple Sunday. I simply worked on my blog, cleaned up a little here and there, and mused on how different things are now.

I took Marshall with me for a short walk today. I should always take a kid with me when I walk on the road. Drivers actually slowed down and practically drove in the middle of the road to put more distance between us and them. Had it been just me, they would have zoomed past without a care.

I am finding some of Philip Glass’s compositions to be therapeutic to play on the piano lately. It’s a type of music that is rhythmic and repetitive, and not very melodic. People either love it or hate it. I sincerely hope that the people who hear me playing these very similar and repetitive pieces every day don’t want to kill me.

Me today: Tomorrow is Friday? But that would mean today is Thursday. Is today Thursday? OMG, today is Thursday. I had no idea.