Tag: #corona

Virus Diaries: Uprooted

It began as a routine trek to retrieve the garbage cans from the street in front of our house. I could have left them there for a bit longer. But a good citizen am I, and mindful of the Good Neighbor reputation I am advancing.

Trudging down the drive, garbage can trailing behind, why not pick a few weeds on the way, weeds sprouted after recent rains, weeds whose miserable greedy roots suck my moisture from my nutrients from my soil in my garden. Pathetic chlorophyll freeloaders, posing among the properly planted and well-cultivated, invaders among my master-planned hybrid specimens.

I plucked one final garden-invading fiend. I thought I did. But it pulled back, hard. I yanked again, and again met unexpected resistance for so small a green growth. The final pull wrested loose its hold upon the soil, and its naked root danced in the air. I relished that this thing, like a hooked trout, would gasp and fade away.

But wait. The frail roots descended into an unexpected pod, split open like a bean exposed to moisture. This excavated thing was not a weed. Instead, I had uprooted a baby tree.

I felt a sudden guilt, the guilt that comes when a life is aborted. This thing was meant for a long and sturdy life, a life that I had destroyed.

Many years ago and quite by chance, I came across a high school friend at a bus station in Kalamazoo. Her youthful, carefree high school face had devolved into a lined, worn mask. She explained that she had had an abortion, and had never since fully recovered. Uprooting a life takes its toll.

And there lay my baby tree, uprooted. It was meant for grand things: nourishment for bugs and birds, shade for beasts and joy for two-legged guests. And seeds to birth new generations.

Limp and frail, I held its tiny trunk and naked roots in my hand. I met God’s creation, this tiny tree, in my front yard—now the vanquisher and the vanquished. I uprooted the tree, and, I suppose, it uprooted a bit of me.

Virus Diaries: Social Distancing—It’s Simple Math

Once it was all the rage: “Six Degrees of Separation.” We discovered that we’re each just six relationships away from everyone else. I know you; that’s one relationship away. And you know other people. You know Sylvester, and he knows people. Bingo, two relationships away. He knows Edna, and she knows people. That’s number three. Our relationships multiply exponentially. So if you do that at six levels, or “degrees,” you could know everyone on the planet. Friends of friends, and so on. So there! All people are six, or fewer, social connections away from each other. Six degrees of separation.

It’s simple math.

But wait a minute. Nowadays, on my daily walk, I count to six not by relationships, but by distance. I don’t want to “reach out and touch somebody.” No way! I want people six feet—or more—away from me. Today, give me “Six Feet of Separation.” The coronavirus has me jumping, keeping a street-width away from other walkers. My glasses fog as I re-breathe my mask-recirculated air. Because who knows? That less-than-six-feet-away stroller may have been around another less-than-six-feet-away walker, who may have been around another long-distance violator! Hang the formerly vaunted “six degrees of separation” theory! Spare us from those relationships six deep. And wide. And far. Keep me away! I’m all about “six feet of separation.”

It’s simple math.

One day, Mr. Coronavirus will turn us loose, and we might recognize life as we once knew it. When our gloves come off—literally—we’ll likely return to forging new “six degree of separation” relationships, which are just out of reach at the moment. And, yes, perhaps we’ll talk without needing to shout across the street.

Until then, we can be grateful, summing up both what we now have, and what we will then have.

It’s simple math.

Virus Diaries: Finding Fingal

(front row, first on left—with all ten brothers and sisters and parents)

This week, I’ve enjoyed spending time with my 140-year old grandfather. He immigrated to this country in 1891, when he was 29. Swedish-accented Fingal quickly hopscotched to Alaska in his quest for gold. And find it he did—mining enough gold to become a very wealthy Swedish immigrant.

Aged 140, I paused to let my grandfather gather himself for his story’s next chapter.

Fingal invested his new-found riches in Washington’s blossoming Yakima Valley. He bought up every small business that was available: grocery, hardware, dry cleaners, all the essential businesses, and hundreds of acres of prime land, ready for soon-arriving irrigation. And so, Fingal’s wealth grew.⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀

Until, that is, his unscrupulous, cheating small business managers realized Fingal had no business acumen. They overwhelmed his unsophisticated Swedish education, reducing his burgeoning empire to a fiscal nightmare. He salvaged some farming acreage, his lone investment left standing. He planted apple orchards, retreating to the lone farm house where he raised his family, including my mother, Dagmar.

Actually, I never met my grandfather. He died on August 16, 1945, just three months after my parents married on the front porch of the farm house. He arose from his bed for the last time for their wedding vows, six years before my birth. So the time spent with my 140-year old Grandfather this week has been virtual, with the help of ancestry.com.

During days of seclusion, there are stories surrounding us, closer than ever. We may be housed or virtually connected with family and friends whose stories we have never heard. It could be the perfect time to refresh ourselves with their life stories.

Tomorrow, during these homebound virus-afflicted days, I will return to my family archival photo and slide-scanning project, a project which I have conducted for many months. There, through pictures, I will again virtually meet up with Grandfather Fingal, the grandfather I never met.

Virus Diaries: The Toilet

During these global virus days, we are captives within our abodes. I have never asked myself, “Given the plague, where would I prefer to hole up?” We have already answered this question. We are holed up where we are holed up.⠀⠀

I am fortunate, protecting myself in the 1,600 square foot home that I share with my wife. Now that my field of vision is suddenly reduced, all around me in this household are curiosities that, in a larger world, might go unnoticed.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Take our toilet—no, don’t take our toilet! Were our world larger, proportioned as it used to be, I would need to anticipate my toileting needs away from the house. At Lowes Hardware—ah, yes, down the corridor at the back, on the left. Three urinals and four stalls await me. Our grocery store has one modest toileting compartment per gender, semi-hidden near the back, as if preserving it for employees only, nonetheless it is adequate enough for the task, or tasks, at hand.⠀⠀

My homebound toileting needs are now conveniently served just down the hallway; I have no need for an outside substitute in this giant virus-infested world. I enter the chamber, and the 12-volt motion-activated light invites me to safely stand or sit, as my needs may require. Regardless, I am welcomed by a non-judgmental porcelain creation of exquisite industrial design, hanging, as if perched, mounted directly on the toilet wall, defying gravity, for no part of this appliance touches the polished tile floor beneath. It’s a thing of cleanable genius, a World’s Fair-worthy sculpted beauty that I admire several times each day. Enlarged to gigantic proportions, it would make a wondrous waterslide.

Its other toileting convenience places it above a modest “Ford-level” appliance: the dual-sized wall-mounted push buttons release either minor or high-volume torrents depending upon the demand. But make no mistake, my ceramic friend is no competition for a “Bugatti-level” bidet-enhanced instrument whose performance flushes away all contenders.