Near-life

Adventures in re-entry

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

Yesterday our dog Rina touched noses with another dog for the first time in nearly three months. That’s all the contact she had. Then she bounced, danced, skipped down the sidewalk next to me. Her tail wagged like it just learned how.

I got it. I felt almost the same way when one afternoon a little over two weeks ago two of our best friends came by for a carefully orchestrated visit. We all had our own bottles of water. They even brought their own chairs. The four of us sat outside in our yard more than the requisite six feet apart and kept our masks on. We laughed. We talked. The hour we’d planned turned into two and afterward I felt lighter, less burdened, less walled in. Was it “back to normal?” Not by a long shot. Was it okay? More than okay.

We’ve had a few other of these “near-life” experiences as my mate calls them. Trips to the vet, the pharmacy, the grocery store. None of them went in the way they used to go pre-Covid 19. We sent our dog into the vet’s office with a masked and gloved tech and talked with the vet on our cell phone from our station on the sidewalk. Inside the pharmacy we stood on giant X’s marked in red tape and wiped down the prescription bottles before we take them into the house.

Then there was the trip to Trader Joe’s. Nothing was normal about that except for the moment when we realized we’d forgotten a third of the items on the list. For one thing, both of us went — in the old days there would be polite struggle over who would go which usually ended with me waving goodbye to my husband as he left with bags and lists. After ten weeks in the house, however, the prospect of a trip to buy food took on an exotic appeal, an opportunity for something like a “date.”

We didn’t go to our local Trader Joe’s, we drove another ten minutes to one that was bigger, new with very wide aisles for social distancing and early hours for people of a certain age. Our list was many times longer than usual because the whole idea these days is not to go any more often than we need to. We knew that safety guidelines said the fewer people the better, so we split the list so that we each could take a turn around the store, feel the full experience. We masked up, made sure we had gloves and disinfectant in the car, and drove on a shockingly deserted freeway to the store. My husband went first. I went second.

My heart beat a little faster as I approached the entrance where a man and a woman stood armed wearing masks stood guard next to a table with disinfectant and wipes to clean the shopping carts. Real live people standing just six feet away. Inside there were more people. Not an unreasonable number, very low for a normal Trader Joe’s but enough for me to feel unexpectedly overwhelmed. For a brief moment I flashed to that scene in Moscow on the Hudson when Robin Williams has a panic attack in the coffee aisle.

There were the new rules: stay six feet away from everyone, don’t touch the food and put it back, learn which side was “up” the aisle and which side was “down.” I was so pre-occupied that I walked up an entire aisle without noticing that the oranges and grapefruits on the list were to my left. I departed without them. But I didn’t depart without these little impulse purchases:

When we’d brought our food home, unloaded it, washed it down, and put it away, I was exhausted. Not physically, just mentally and emotionally. That was not normal. But I also felt good, like I’d rejoined the world in some small way. When I go out again, I’ll know what to do.

Or will I?

Seems as though the rules are shifting daily and depend greatly on where one lives. I’m curious, how are you faring now? What is normal for you where you live and how are you coping? If you have returned to work or any routine from the pre-virus period, how has it changed for you if at all?

Learning to say yes

I wrote an Op-Ed for the San Diego Tribune about the uncertainty of this new period we are all in and how some lessons I learned in a beginner’s improv class are coming in handy. I look forward to sharing more about the improv experience and how it is helping me write as well as to navigate these constantly changing times.

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Upcoming

Next week, I will launch the first in a regular series of mini-interviews with authors to get right down to the big questions about writing, art, and life. Our first in the series will be an author who also happens to be a member of the Spark community: Kathleen Rodgers whose fourth and “bravest novel yet”, “The Flying Cutterbucks” launches on June 2nd.

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Short reads and a good listen

Short story month lasts one more day. Here, under the wire, are some reads for you to add to your list in honor of saying it well in a few thousand words or so.

Two Nurses, Smoking by David Means. Kate O. a Spark subscriber read this first and sent it to me this week saying she was sure I would love it. She was right. See what you think and let me know how it made you feel.

Then I was thinking of all the authors I left off last week’s list of short story writers and I realized that I didn’t have to name them all at once. The end of short story month is not the end of short stories, so expect more recommendations to come your way. For the moment though, here is one: Elizabeth Strout.

Her most famous book, Olive Kitteridge, is really a collection of linked stories that all in one way or another tell the story of one, hard-edged but fascinating woman. She followed with two more novels and then two more collections Anything is Possible, and now, Olive Again. What I love about all the Strout books I have read is not only her sense of character but her sense of place. She does not write about flashy people. A native of New Hampshire and Maine, she writes about people who live or come from rural areas, small towns, places where it is difficult to get away with being anyone but who you are —or who people think you are.

If you are a Strout fan or even new to her, you’ll appreciate her interview with Caroline Leavitt, co-founder of A Mighty Blaze. She warns against caution in writing and explains how growing up in an isolated area probably fed her curious nature and imagination.

That’s it for this week. Let me know how you are and what you are reading whether it is short or long. I’ll add the books to our list on Bookshop.org. If you’re prompted to add any of them to your collection, remember that every order from this list helps independent bookstores and can earn a little money over time that we can donate to literacy programs.

Stay well. Dive into a great read. Let’s talk.

Betsy

P.S. Here’s your moment of Zen…I mean can we ever get enough of penguins looking at art? For more, click on the photo below or go here.