Sunday Morning ~ Warnings

Tinkanena anatsira m’si izi. ~ The river “We told you” goes over into the river called “Now you see.”.

~ Chewa proverb

March 29, 2020

Hi Everyone,

I just watched Bill Gates’s 2015 TED talk describing the danger of a novo virus and predicting the world’s current situation. It’s eerily accurate, almost as if he planned it. He wasn’t the only one. In 2015 we were beginning to prepare. I don’t know if his talk has anything to do with that. We were warned by smart people. People who care about humanity. Was it Nassim Taleb who said, “You don’t put on a seatbelt in the middle of a crash”? When asked what scared him most as president, President Obama said, “A pandemic.” He thought that was scarier than a world war. A pandemic could kill more people and we were less prepared. Starting the Global Health Security unit in 2015, responsible for pandemic preparedness, was a way to address the possibility (inevitability?). The unit was disbanded in 2018 by the current administration. What dystopia. I thought we were in crisis before this virus appeared on the stage; this is straight out of a medical nightmare. 

In women’s health we deal with problems or deviations from normal on a regular basis. This includes communicable disease. For instance, we screen every pregnant woman for immunity to Rubella, a virus that can cause severe birth defects. There is a very effective vaccine for this virus, and if she is non immune, pregnant women get immunized right after delivery because that’s a time when we know she is NOT pregnant. It’s standard of care. There is no controversy about this. We know what the Rubella virus does to a fetus. We can prevent it. We know what to do. When there is a postpartum hemorrhage, we have steps we take to address the problem; it’s ingrained in our brains and we automatically flip into crisis mode and follow the learned responses. But now, for coronavirus, we don’t know what to do or how to keep women safest. This is so incredibly unnerving. I believe one day there will be a vaccine to prevent the disease caused by coronavirus but until then it is terrifying for a medical professional to not know what to do. The only thing we can say for sure is to stay home and keep your distance. Information is coming at us daily, hourly, but nothing consistent. There is no clarity and there won’t be for some time, so when people seek medical advice, they get vague answers and that is frustrating and frightening. We can recommend what we know won’t hurt. Stay home. Keep your distance. But what about women about to deliver a baby? 

I’ve been meeting with midwives in the state once a week to share information, frustration, and support. Recommendations are inconsistent from institution to institution and none of us know which is best. There is a shocking lack of supplies and protective equipment. This is not reassuring. Is it safer for women to deliver at home or risk being exposed in the hospital? We don’t have those answers. Home birth is safe if we have a good back-up plan: good transportation to the hospital if needed, a low risk pregnancy, and reassurance that the midwife coming to help isn’t going to infect the family with a deadly disease, or vice versa. We just don’t know which is safer right now. Do no harm, weigh risks and benefits, consider all options. What if we are doing harm with all good intentions? That’s the scary thing. 

Yesterday I caught my breath when I read the news that some states can’t receive the equipment they need without being extorted. Holy hell. Every time I think this can’t get worse. 

My grandchildren have gone back home and though I miss them, it’s best for them to be together as a family. I’ve got plenty of home projects to work on, and I’m chipping away at those. I’m sewing face masks, as bizarre as the necessity for that cottage industry seems. I’m assessing where my skills will be best utilized. Go to NYC? Stay and wait for the shit to hit the fan here? Probably more sensible to stay as I’d be able to come home and be isolated. This useless feeling is wearing me down. 

I feel better when my feet land on spongy earth covered with pine needles. I can feel the ground melting every day. I spend part of each day in the woods and come home feeling a little less anxious. Crocuses are popping up and I’m trying to focus on something positive every day. Laughing feels good and I appreciate the creativity shared by isolated bored funny people. I think about silver linings: This might finally jolt our health care system into something more just. Might even make for a more just economy when it eventually rebounds. Could make for significant environmental changes… if we heed the warnings. 

Love to all,

Linda

Sunday Morning ~ Breathing

Kwa aja agona kunsi ku mwala, mdi aona mwala kupuma. ~ Only those who sleep under the rock are able to see the rock breathing.

~ Chewa proverb

March 22, 2020

Hi Everyone,

I’ve had a hard time this week figuring out what I am most anxious about. It’s not dying of this virus, though, maybe that is buried somewhere in my psyche.  My kids dying? Yeah, probably worried about that.

I thought it might be having the election canceled, but then researched that and learned that without an election the orange man would be out of office for sure on inauguration day. That was a relief. Whether he actually leaves or not is an anxiety for another day. 

Running out of food? I reassured myself that I’ve got enough for a few months at least, though variety wouldn’t exist. And soon I will be picking spring greens and can subsist on those for awhile. Isn’t this the fantasy I’ve harbored for my whole life? Living off the land?

Our local health care system getting overwhelmed? Not enough respirators? Yes, for sure I’m worried about that. I will certainly start working again but am not sure in what capacity. That scenario is evolving. It might be doing home births as more women are afraid to go to the hospital. 

Feeling useless? Yes, that does make me anxious. 

When I agreed to take the grandkids here for two weeks (the projected time for school to be canceled), I thought it would be just that, two weeks. That would give their parents time to get set up for working at home and them a place with room to run while that was happening. Then things changed by the hour. It wasn’t going to be the romantic February vacation we’d just spent: visiting the library, dropping in on friends, nights out at the movies. By the time I’d gotten back here with them last Sunday it was clear we’d be completely isolated and my anxiety mounted. What if I got sick?

My house is familiar to them but they do not want to be alone. Ever. When the sun goes down, they are pretty much attached to me. Yea, so sleeping, or more accurately, not sleeping, was a challenge the first few days. Amelia, who barely moves all night is fine in my bed with me. She reads her book, I read mine. When she’s sleepy enough she rolls over and falls asleep. James, on the other hand, is a nightmare to sleep (or not sleep) with. He flops all over the place, thrusts his elbows into my nose, bangs his head into mine so his long hair is all over my face, and rolls around like he’s possessed. The first night, as I clung to the side of the bed trying not to fall out, I started worrying about what I’d gotten myself into. I could not do two weeks of this. (What if it’s months?) I’d set up a separate bed for James but even though it was next to mine he was scared to be separated. 

I thought of kids locked in cages after being torn from their parents. I can’t bear the thought. I have to shake my head to get rid of it.

I realize I’ve been anxious for over three years.

It took a few nights but we adjusted and James got more comfortable in his own bed. He didn’t like it but he stopped fighting it. I slept better. That brought my anxiety back down to above-normal levels. I started thinking of new normals. We might not like it but we’ll stop fighting it.

I wonder if my mother felt like this during the polio epidemic? I remember standing in line outside our church waiting for our turn to receive the vaccine. I wondered how they notified people to be there? Newspaper? Loudspeaker? Was my mother anxious, worried the hospital would not have enough iron lungs?

Deep breaths are good for anxiety. I’m grateful for each one I take.

Love to all,

Linda

Sunday Morning ~ Lent and Sacrifice

Njala ya mnzako mdi yako yomwe. ~ The hunger of your neighbor is also yours.

~Chewa proverb 

March 15, 2020

Hi Everyone,

Being brought up Catholic in a town where many, if not most, people were Catholic didn’t allow me much insight into our rituals and practices. I just did what was expected of me along with everyone else I knew. We went to mass every week barely interrupting our day. We could get a twenty-five minute mass at 7 a.m. or sit through an hour with good music at nine. There was an eight o’clock tucked in there, as well as a 10:45 and an 11:45. Or we could go at 5 or 7 p.m. on Saturday. We had so many options, remarkable when you think of it now, in our small town. All our friends went to mass so it seemed the norm, like going to school. No one thought a thing about it. We’d stop in at church on Saturday afternoons after football games to go to confession. We’d wait for our friends to finish their prayers at the altar then kick fallen leaves on the sidewalk as we walked home. We’d resume talk of the football game not the ritual we just observed. 

On Ash Wednesday we’d get ashes on our foreheads, have fish for supper, and discuss what we were giving up. Lenten sacrifice wasn’t ever a curiosity, it was a part of spring. The discussion around the supper table wasn’t about why we do this, it was an examination of whether our choice was really a sacrifice. Giving up chocolate for me wasn’t good enough because I didn’t like chocolate that much. We fasted on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. It made Easter Sunday all the more special when this time of sacrifice had ended. In later years as I matured and examined my spiritual self I rejected many Catholic customs, confession being one of them. (Though, done well, this could have been a very rich tradition and opportunity for self reflection once a week. Imagine if it were a counseling session instead of a punitive one. People pay good money for that and our church would’ve been giving it away for free. Marketing. They needed better marketing.) I have, however, kept and valued many of the other traditions, lenten sacrifice being one of them. A friend once told me I was so into denying myself pleasure that lent must be my favorite season. 

The basement of my childhood home was a like a little supermarket. In fact we used to play “shopping” down there with all the canned food. The first time my husband was in that basement he looked at me and asked, “What’s with all the squirrel-like activity?”  I’d laughed. It was another thing, like lent, I’d never questioned. Whenever my mother needed a can of tomatoes she’d send one of us into the basement to get one. It seemed quite efficient to me. My father did the grocery shopping and we only had one car. She couldn’t run out when she needed something. Later, when we analyzed my father’s mental state, we tried to tie in hoarding of food to his other problems, but now I wonder if it was simply a product of being a child of the depression. He grew up poor and lived though the trauma of a world war. He had then prospered and had the means to protect his family from the deprivation he endured. I was born in the 50’s, white middle class, with professional parents and I lived a life of relative comfort. If we ever dared waste anything we’d listen to my father rant about how we kids didn’t understand how good we had it. How we didn’t understand what it was like to be hungry. He’d yell and point a finger in our faces if we failed to finish eating something on our plates. When we were kids my cousin once asked me, “Wouldn’t you have rather lived through the depression than have parents who did?”  We laughed, but we didn’t understand.

When my kids were growing up we insisted they make a sacrifice during lent. My husband and I had to examine what we valued about this practice before imposing it on them. We looked at it, yes, as a way to be more cognizant of the sacrifices Jesus made, but also as a time of self-reflection, cleansing, spiritual growth. When we were in Peace Corps the whole thing made us open our eyes even more. We would laugh at the idea that people would sacrifice any of the little they had. They already had nothing. But they did make lenten offerings. Not a material sacrifice–– they didn’t have things like candy or even sugar most of the time. It was more prayerful, meditative, taking time to reflect on appreciating what they did have and using it intentionally. 

I think about this a lot, especially now. Although I have incredible privilege and comfort I’ve tried to tell the stories of those who don’t and learn from them. Now, faced with a public health crisis of unknown consequences, confined to our homes, we have an opportunity to think about this on a different level. What do we really need to survive? There is an upside to this. It will make us more aware of what we use and give us the face slap we need to understand that resources are finite. It also makes me nervous about what will happen if it goes on much longer than our larders will sustain. My romanticized version of making do and living off the land will be tested and I am far better off than many. My idea of a well stocked pantry is having at least four cans of anchovies available. Spring (and lent) is a time I want to turn inward, work on projects, drink more water, and be less social so for me this fits right in to where we are now. I feel guilty about not being in a hospital working to care for people fighting this virus, but I’m relieved I can collect my grandchildren today and bring them here so their parents can continue to work without worrying about them. I want to offer to take in other kids and do a little home school, but that defeats the whole purpose of isolating. I’ll focus on my two and keep them safe. We will tap the maple trees, plant the seedlings, talk about lent and mindfulness, what it means to be prepared and sensible, and how we can be helpful right now, all of us, even a six and four year old. 

I know we’ll get though this and the world will go on, but this does seem to be a time of reckoning. I hope we can rise to our best selves with humanity and decency.

Love to all,

Linda

Sunday Morning ~ Women and Brighter Days Coming

Timwenji ife, dzungu ndi mgonera kumodzi. ~ What can we drink, a pumpkin just keeps sleeping on one side.

~Chewa proverb

March 8, 2020

Hi Everyone,

I read a Native American quote somewhere saying, “Only the white man could cut the top off the blanket, sew it to the bottom, and think they have a longer blanket.” This was referring to daylight savings time. Our industrialized, clock-driven society benefits from the time change but for those who live close to the land and live by it, it must seem ridiculous. All I know is I hate going back to standard time. I hate losing that hour. It’s the same day; I don’t know why I feel less normal when we spring forward. I can travel to another time zone and not have any problem with the time change, but when it happens in my own home, it throws me off. Maybe because I like getting up early and going to bed early and when I wake on this day every year I already feel late. I feel cranky and antisocial. I’ll sink into my springtime funk while I wait for my biorhythms to get back in sync. 

The annual girls gathering at my house (aka Hen Party) was Friday night. Having it the weekend of International Women’s Day feels apropos. The party started fourteen years ago as a buck-her-up kind of night after a friend’s husband left her for a younger woman (same old same old). We wanted to take her out somewhere but everything was closed so I suggested coming to my house since my husband had left me for a younger woman (the usual) a few years before and I didn’t have to get rid of a husband for the evening. (So many upsides!) We decided to serve cosmos (the cranberry juice was all the health rage at the time), chocolate (a good crisis food), and some real nourishment as, like many of us, she had stopped eating (the heartbreak diet is the ultimate weight loss program). Many of us had been through it and she was at the stage when it seemed like life was over and survival seemed impossible. I thank God for my friends who held me up and got me through that stage. My personal collapse was in the summer and it was harder to crawl into bed and hide. My friends took me drinking outside in the park where my kids wouldn’t have to watch me cry. I was just seasonally lucky that way. I wanted to give back.

The party is open and every year we have new faces but the spirit is always the same. We recognize how much we need each other. Our burdens shared are easier to carry. It’s interesting to see the demographic shift but the energy remain constant. Some who’d earlier sent regrets because of travel plans, appeared anyway after border closings threw their lives up in the air. A few canceled at the last minute when colds or flu hit, and though we feel a little safer here in Maine where isolation is more of a lifestyle than public health imposition, there wasn’t panic (yet) about the virus. We’re older and hangovers aren’t funny anymore, so moderation in the cosmos consumption is more the norm now. Which, was a good thing Friday night since the hen bringing the ingredients for the second batch got sick and couldn’t come at the last minute. Luckily I’d prepared for quarantine and had reserves. 

No fresh marital crises this year, but some haven’t given up on finding another man. The risks and benefits of on-line dating was examined. There was much discussion by the fire about whether at this stage of life it’s even worth finding a good man as long as you can afford to pay a plumber. And what is a good man anyway? Hadn’t we thought we’d had one? What is it at this stage we’re looking for anyway? One woman pulled out her phone and showed us the list of eligible men on one site within a 50 mile radius. The list showed exactly zero of them. Some have persisted and found happiness with compatible partners and we reminisced about the early parties when we screamed with laughter hearing someone’s phone sex stories with some guy in Canada. We had been more curious than voyeuristic, “How exactly does that work?”  It was hilarious at the time. Later, we talked politics and lamented women’s losses and the plethora of decks stacked against us. We grieved another brilliant woman kicked to the sideline. There are so many iterations of me-too. The wonderful thing was there was no sense of hopelessness, just resignation and determination. The evening was full of camaraderie, gratitude and respect. We can see progress in some areas, regression in others, but it was understood we’d still get up, dress up, and show up. That’s what we do. That’s what we will continue to do. Thank you hens in my life.

Love to all,

Linda

Sunday Morning ~ Life, Death, and In Between

Pacoka mnzako pali mphata. ~ When your friend is gone, there is a void.

~Chewa proverb

March 1, 2020

Hi Everyone,

This weekend we said goodbye to my Aunt Pierina, who died three months before her 109th birthday. At her funeral mass yesterday the priest said she was the oldest person he’d ever said a funeral mass for and he’s been a priest for forty-five years. She was certainly the oldest person I ever knew. Imagine what changes in the world she saw. 

A few years ago Pierina told me she wasn’t afraid to die but didn’t want to leave her daughter Janice. She said, “Janice needs me.” This past October, the last time I saw her, her tone had changed. She was sharp as ever, though not walking anymore. She said, “I’m ready to die but every morning I wake up!” as if there was some malfunction in the universe. She smiled when she said this but there was a resignation I hadn’t seen before. My cousin took such loving care of her. She said in the eulogy yesterday that everyone credited her with her mother’s longevity but it was her mother that did the giving. At Thanksgiving she was still asking Janice what she could do to help with the meal, never wanting to be a burden. Janice gave her the recipe box to search and sort and Pierina did it with determination, grateful to be useful. 

A week ago I went to be with Janice as she planned the funeral. I learned when my mother died how much goes into planning a traditional funeral. It’s like a wedding with only a week to plan and I wanted to be close to help. So after dropping Amelia back home last week, I continued another three hours to Vermont where I knew there would be a big void but warm loving arms. Janice is an only child born late in her parents’ life. Being one of five children, I worried about her growing up, wondering how she’d survive in our family without siblings. She is two years older than me but we were very close as kids. We only visited a few times each year but we faithfully wrote letters to each other, reliable and devoted pen pals. We’d put a five cent stamp on the envelope, mail it, and wait for a response which always came a few days later. (The mailman was very important back then.) Phone calls were out of the question, an expensive luxury I wouldn’t have dared ask for. We were overcome with anticipation when a visit was imminent and cried each time we parted. My aunt’s passing brought us right back there.

I value the tradition of a funeral ritual. I wanted to get to the wake early to see Pierina before they closed the casket. It’s important to me, and when a friend asked me why, I had to stop and think. I find it an act of respect, like not turning away from a person with a handicap. It is witnessing and acknowledging the spirit as separate from the shell. For this, I find the wake important. The gathering of friends and family is important. Paying respect, catching up, acknowledging the good times past, and inevitably lamenting that this is the only time we see each other, is important. I have vivid childhood memories of wakes. “Weddings and Funerals! That’s the only time we get together anymore!” my mother would laughingly say to some distant relative I’d met at the viewing of a deceased loved one I’d barely known. I went to lots of wakes with my mother as a child, probably because her extended family lived closer and we could drive there and home in one day. I have vivid memories of dark wool and crepe de chine clad elders kneeling in a velvety room with an embalmed backdrop. They’d enter and kneel and pray at the casket for a few moments, and I would stare at them, wondering if everyone said the same prayer. No one seemed very sad to me. It was a room that reminded me of gypsy parlors. I felt like we should be getting our palms read behind some curtain. I was dressed in a party dress with either tights or ankle socks depending on the season, and my mother seemed  a fluid, confident, hostess no matter who was laid out. She became a movie star to me, very different from the beaten-down role she played at home. At the wake she wore pearls and stiletto heels, her waist cinched in a belt and she glided around the room talking to people with such grace and confidence. It was always remarkable for me to see this transformation and the gay mood of people visiting. There was laughter and jolly making all around; the deceased lying there holding their rosary beads a silent, motionless guest. I liked wandering through the small dark rooms seeing people at waist level. They’d stoop to pat my head or shake my hand, the wrinkled faces coming into focus, Estée Lauder emanating from the deep creases caked with powder. They were like big old flowers you could smell as you put your face near them. And I still associate Old Spice with close up views of tie clips and cuff links. 

Aunt Pierina was my father’s sister. We didn’t go to wakes on his side of the family when we were little. They lived a three hour drive away and for solemn events we were not included, probably because it meant missing school. We did, however, go to lots of weddings on that side of the family and my Italian aunts would cry, sobbing and sharing tissues in the church while beautiful young women walked down the aisle with flowers and veils. I remember asking my mother, “Why do people laugh when someone dies, but cry when they get married?” I remember her laughing at this question but don’t remember her ever answering.

As I entered the funeral parlor Friday afternoon, I braced myself to see Pierina laid out in the blue jacket she’d worn to her grandson’s wedding after her 100th birthday. I could imagine her saying, “Oh my gaaad! Look at you!” when I walked in. She was always so happy to see me. I knelt and said a Hail Mary, which seemed appropriate. I thought, Wow. She’s really gone. She’d seemed immortal up until now. As people arrived and we exclaimed and hugged and talked and visited, Janice came over and said in my ear, “My mother would have loved this.” The weekend was a reunion. It was the first time I’d been with all my brothers since my mother died nine years ago. I hadn’t seen other cousins since Pierina’s 100th birthday party, also nine years ago. Who’d have thought it would be nine years before we’d gather again? We looked through old photos, laughed at the styles and hairdos, wondered who some of the Brylcreemed boys were. We shared memories of growing up in this immigrant family, reflecting on how difficult life must have been for them as we said goodbye to the last of a generation. We went to dinner in a local restaurant, a big table had been reserved for a big extended family, just like the old days. We, the kids in all those photos, are the oldest generation now. 

On Saturday my brothers and male cousins carried her casket into the church. I cried for the fact that she’s gone, but also for the beauty of the ritual and the bond we all share. She had to die sometime, and 109 years is a good long run, but I was still sad. The sight of her casket brought to mind up all the other losses: my mother, my friends, my friend’s children. It’s like saying goodbye to them all over again. I thought about the next stage of saying goodbye, the solemn mass, the music, the readings, the tissues, the holy water sprinkled on the casket, and thought about the culture of death and finality. There isn’t a right or wrong way, but this is my culture and I’m grateful for it. I know it will change over the next generation as all things do, but I am glad I had this. I looked around the church grateful for everyone there, for the richness of the tradition, and for the acceptance of being who we are.

I visited Pierina as often as I could and had said what I needed to say to her. Every time I saw her I imagined it would be the last. I’d thanked her for loving me, for the great meals, for taking care of us when my mother was in the hospital, for being interested in my life, for sticking up for me when my father was on my case. I loved how she had the upper hand as his older sister. I appreciate her role model. She made a good life despite many hardships and lack of opportunity. She wasted nothing. She considered love and forgiveness as the most important things in life. Godspeed.

Love to all,

Linda