Column

Many years ago, the husband and I took personality tests that were supposed to tell us about ourselves and each other. Under the category measuring how social we were, I ranked in the 98th percentile and he ranked in the 2^nd percentile.

I always thought those test results were skewed, as the husband can be quite talkative and is often the life of the party. But the stay-at-home mandate we are under has me wondering if the test might not have been spot on.

The new restrictions are not the least troubling to him. He is perfectly content sitting on the sofa with his computer, working on projects, hours at a time.

This is a man who, in pre social-distancing days (even though retired), worked out every other day at the gym, scoured second-hand stores for treasures, played ball with the grandkids and was busy working around the yard or the house, often until after the sun set.

I ask if it bothers him to be so suddenly sedentary. He smiles and says not at all, that he enjoys staying home and is “in his zone.”

I point out that his zone appears limited to one sofa cushion and that he may be creating a permanent indentation.

He moves to the middle sofa cushion.

He ranks in the 100^th percentile for accommodating.

A neighbor from around the corner says he also enjoys the mandate to stay home. He is thrilled he no longer needs to make excuses for not wanting to go out. In fact, he is toying with the idea of continuing to stay home even after the mandate is lifted.

I, on the other hand, am among those occasionally challenged by the restrictions and may have left scratch marks in the wood, clawing my way down the front door. The nose prints on the window glass belong to me, too.

I routinely find myself pacing when I take phone calls. I walk fast like I’m in a hurry to get somewhere, but the only place I get is from room to room. Thank goodness we live in a house with a circle floor plan.

The husband, without looking up from his computer, claims I am wearing a path in the hardwoods.

Very funny, coming from someone who can sit perfectly still for more than an hour. Sometimes I walk by and hold my finger under his nose to make sure he’s still breathing.

I’m in the group that could score a 98 for restlessness some days. I was born to move. We were all born to move—extroverts, introverts, couch sitters, floor walkers and all the in between—but not all at the same speed. Learning to accommodate speed differences may be the secret to happiness.

Personally, I am thankful that with 98 and a 2, we make a full brain.

A parade of trucks and heavy equipment arrived down at the corner an hour after sunrise. A jackhammer pounds with ear-splitting force and metal keeps scraping concrete. Even the most grating sounds of life are welcome these days.

A bird outside my window just chirped in agreement.

It is a Carolina wren, a small noisy bird sporting a dazzling array of rich, earthy browns.

A lethargic cloud cover finally pushed on a few days ago. People leaned out of windows, flung open their doors, pumped their fists in the air and wildly cheered the arrival of the sun. Not really, but we should have. Sun therapy. We could all use a session—warmer rays, bluer skies, brighter colors, renewed hope.

The pandemic continues, yet the magnolias have remained resolute and undaunted, once again gracing the earth with saucer-size blooms radiating pink.

Snap peas have been tucked into the soil in neat rows. I check on them every day. I’d have time to pull up a chair and watch for them to sprout if I wanted to.

Surely there will once again be small hands pulling pods off the vines and popping peas directly into their mouths. Eating peas directly off the vine is a communal affair here. No pea has ever been eaten alone. Small consolation that is to the peas.

The raspberry bushes show new green growth, a good sign since they were recently transplanted. I move plants like other women move furniture. The raspberries are in a new bed with a big plastic owl standing guard. A robin has taken to perching on the owl’s head and a squirrel frequently swings by to take a few swipes at the new starts.

We would fire the owl, but there are already far too many out of work.

Peonies are breaking ground, eager to unfurl. Giant red, white and pink ruffled flowers will bust out the end of May. Hopefully, we will all have busted out by then.

I have saved the best for last—eight ivory duck eggs with just a hint of green and tiny brown flecks. One of our girls and her daughters discovered them nestled beneath their lilac bush.

Naturally, their first question was, “Can you eat duck eggs?”

The answer is yes, they have larger yolks and denser nutrients than a chicken egg and are very popular with the paleo crowd.

The second question was, “How do you know there’s an egg inside and not a baby duck?”

“You’d have to break one open and have a look!” Screams and squeals on the other end splintered my phone. The duck eggs are safe, as I knew they would be, and will rest undisturbed.

I have requested, after the eggs have hatched and the ducklings are ready to leave their mother, that they map out the route to our house and point a few in our direction.

The peas are lonely and long for company.

The peas speak for all of us.

 

 

Picture-perfect celebrations frequently fade into oblivion. The celebrations that are somehow off are the ones we never forget.

There was the Halloween in Chicago with unbelievably brutal winds. Trick-or-treating was cut short. Our son and daughter-in-law scooped the little ones into their arms and we protected ourselves from the cutting cold by plastering our bodies up against store fronts every few feet on the walk home.

Our oldest daughter’s 25th birthday was unforgettable. She had open heart surgery at a heart hospital. She was the youngest patient they operated on that day. We rarely talk about that birthday, but we sure remember it.

When our youngest was still in college, she hosted a Thanksgiving celebration at our house and invited friends from campus. The international student bringing the turkey had never cooked a turkey before.

He arrived late, removed the foil tent, and revealed a beautifully roasted turkey surrounded by brilliant orange, yellow, turquoise and purple hard-boiled eggs alongside colorful vegetables nestled beneath the turkey, beside the turkey and protruding from the orifices. Best. Turkey. Ever.

Every one of those days are etched in memory because they were out of the ordinary. They were off—in unexpected and unforgettable ways.

What hasn’t been off lately? In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, life has been turned inside out and upside down. We’ve seen live-streamed funerals, weddings in parking lots, bar and bat mitzvahs without the parties and attend church online.

A 7-year-old grand sent a picture of the calendar she keeps. Every square for the month was blank except for one where she’d written, “milk expires.” There are moments when that feels about the sum of it.

Yet these odd times are a perfect fit for Easter. That first Resurrection Sunday was preceded by terrifying uncertainty. Followers of Christ watched their loved friend and teacher, beaten and bloody, hang from a cross, cry out and breathe his last.

They were engulfed in emotions familiar to many today—anxiety, grief and fear of the unknown. They thought it was over. Everything. Then the women went to the tomb on the third day and found the body gone. Talk about a surprise ending. You think a story is going to end one way and then it ends another. God does that.

Christians believe Christ broke the curse of death and was raised from the dead. The message of Easter is a proclamation of greatness, a spine-chilling chorus of trumpets declaring that God is greater than—greater than our sin, greater than our fear, greater than our grief, greater than our weakness, greater than our pain, greater than our loneliness, greater than the chains of death.

Easter does not offer a panacea for pain and suffering. Far from it. Christ was called a Man of Sorrows. Easter celebrates that in all life brings our way, from the beginning of life, until the very end, in every joy and heartache, in every moment of wonder and in every moment of angst, we need not walk alone.

Easter is a message of good news coming once again at a good time.

Some of our grands are so young they will not remember this time of social distancing and isolation amid a global pandemic. Others are old enough that they will remember schools closing, playgrounds off limits, no visits with their friends, cousins or grandparents.

My father-in-law, Hub, had a phenomenal memory. He often told of the time his family home was quarantined. What struck me every time he told the story was the detail about the teddy bear and how that was permanently seared into his memory.

He was 5 at the time. His older sister, Alice, was 8 and his oldest sister, Mabel, was 12. Alice got sick and the doctor diagnosed it as scarlet fever. Outbreaks of scarlet fever in the early 1900s were often deadly or left children with lifelong disabilities. It was also highly contagious.

The doctor said Hub and Mabel had to stay away until Alice got better and the house had been fumigated.

Later in life, Hub put his memories to paper filling one yellow legal pad after another. He wrote, “There was no place to go except to Grandpa and Grandma’s, just down the road. We were packed up and sent off to their house. I had a little coaster wagon that we put our clothes in, and a few of my toys, and we walked down the road.

“On the way, my little teddy bear fell off, and when we discovered the loss, we went back to look for it. A man who was working with a crew paving the road found it and gave it back to me.”

He recalled days spent waiting out in the front yard, watching the men work on the highway and waiting for his sister Mabel to return from school.

His dad often brought them food, cereal, fruit and milk for the grandparents to feed them.

“My grandparents were old and poor and didn’t have very many pieces of good furniture. The mattresses were muslin bags filled with corn shucks. They weren’t too happy about having us there. They talked in German between themselves, most of the time, and we surmised they were conversing about us. Whether this actually happened or not, we do not know for sure, but we thought so.”

They stayed with their grandparents three or four weeks. “It was a happy day when Dad came down and told us we could go home.”

What will be our memories of this time in history?

I hope we remember family, friends and neighbors checking on one another, caring for one another. I hope we remember the exhausted medical personnel and first responders risking their own health, the truck drivers, food service workers, and all the clerks and cashiers who kept grocery stores open. Never forget the garbage collectors—and that the mail kept coming.

I hope we remember private industry retrofitting plants for the manufacture of facemasks and ventilators, scientists, researchers and pharmaceuticals racing to find therapeutic treatments and a vaccine.

I hope we remember how fear cast a long shadow. May we also remember renewed soul searching, fervent prayers and leaning hard on God.

We are writing history. May we write it well.

The hardest part of social distancing during a pandemic has been ignoring the little table and chairs in the living room that periodically heave deep sighs of loneliness.

Then there is the basket of children’s books I step over each morning when I raise the shades. They’ve grown surly. Some days “The Hungry Caterpillar” nips at my legs.

On Sunday, I texted a list of my accomplishments to the daughters, just to let them know things are happening at a breakneck pace here, despite the isolation:

Got up early

Answered emails

Hyperventilated while reading headlines

Did workout on YouTube while casting Ina Garten on Food Network to TV

Went to church online

Filled old nail holes in family room with Dap

How about you?

The first and only answer I received in response:

Slept in

Ate breakfast

Showered

Broke up fighting

Threatened kids

Separated kids

Started laundry

Made kids read in separate rooms

Church

Heating up lunch

Many of the grands have been doing a great deal of travel despite staying at home and attempting to drive their parents batty. Last week all 11 of them had ballet lessons with the Cleveland Ballet from 2 to 3 in the afternoon, followed by a tour of the Cincinnati Zoo at 4. Normally you couldn’t make it from Cleveland to Cincy that fast, but Facebook works wonders.

Some popped in at the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, Minnesota for an update on bald eagles that follow the Mississippi River.

After that they dropped in for a tour of impressionism paintings at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.

There have been music lessons with Zoom and even a jam session for strings.

We shrank the distance between us and the Chicago brood with FaceTime the other night. It was good to see them—up their nostrils, into their eyeballs, close-ups of their tonsils, the ceiling fan, the floor, the ceiling fan, the side of someone’s face smashed against the phone and back to the ceiling fan and overhead lights. It wasn’t the first time a virtual visit caused motion sickness.

The occasional shared video, having some cyberspace family time and “coffee with friends” via cellphone all help to fill the void.

For now, the best way to love one another is to stay away from one another. It is a small thing to do if it helps break the chain of transmission and lessens the suffering and death.

The little table and chairs are sighing again.

“Hang in there,” I whisper to them. “One day, one day soon.”

I recently read “Things Successful People Do Before 8 a.m.” It was 9:30 a.m. at the time. Successful people were already ahead of me by an hour and a half.

Successful people get up early, work out, eat a healthy breakfast, survey the morning headlines, overview what needs to be done for the day and make To Do lists.

If success were measured by To Do lists, I’d be at the top of the mountain. My life is a never-ending trail of sticky notes. A million things to do scribbled on little pink and yellow squares: project deadlines, appointments to keep, calls to return, errands to run, meals to plan, people to see, things to fix.

So many things to do, so little time in which to do them.

I so relish crossing things off a To Do list that I sometimes add things I’ve already done to a list just for the joy of crossing them off. It creates the illusion of productivity.

See there—a big black line through “Fill the bird feeders.”

A friend floated the idea of keeping To Be lists instead of To Do lists. Scratching through those would not be an exercise in speed.

At the top of my To Be? A better listener, a person who doesn’t just hear, and is quick with solutions, but one who truly listens with understanding.

Recently, I was digging through my purse for a pen when a woman stopped me to say something very kind. I made eye contact, but it wasn’t until she finished that I realized I kept digging for a pen the entire time she spoke. What’s the matter with me? Please don’t answer and, if you do, hold it to 10,000 words or less.

To Be? A person who knows that time is not a commodity, but a gift—a gift given to us and a gift we give others.

To Be? Generous. To freely share all that I have. No strings attached, no thank you expected, simply to give because giving is good.

To Be? Attentive. I know the clerks and cashiers and the produce people at the grocery where I shop by their faces, smiles and voices, but not their names. I see many of them weekly. Common courtesy says I ought to pay attention to their names.

At the end of the day, I nearly always wish I had been more in the moment.

Things on a To Be list won’t be checked off as quickly as those on a To Do list. By the time I get through some of those To Be items, the glue on the back of the sticky notes will be dried and worthless. But slow progress is better than none.

By the way, John is the name of the man who stocks produce in the early mornings.

One To Be down and a thousand more to go.

We have a number of number people in our family. Sadly, I can’t tell you exactly how many because I’m not one of them. As non-number people are prone to do, let’s just round up and say it is a lot.

Number people often obsess with remembering historic dates, record-breaking high and low temperatures, anniversary dates, what the water bill was this month compared to the same month last year and what a haircut cost in 1994. For a number person, a really good time is approximating how many shingles are on the roof.

My father-in-law was a number guy. He worked as an estimator for General Motors, estimating the time various stages of manufacturing would take to complete. He often did computations in his head and was wary of people who used calculators for simple things like figuring compound interest to the fourth decimal point.

He was also vocal about his frustration with younger co-workers who didn’t know what pi was. Hint: It’s not apple, cherry or blueberry.

Sometimes, just for fun, the kids would throw out math problems for him to solve. Occasionally, he picked up a pencil and did a little scratching on the edge of the newspaper. Others thought he was doing the computation, but I’m certain he was writing down names of those who couldn’t keep up with him.

The husband shares a common denominator with his father in that he, also, has excellent recall for numbers. It’s a convenient trait for a spouse to have, although at times it is like being married to an almanac. He can (and will) tell you the anniversary dates of major historical events, birthday anniversaries in the family (both living and deceased), the last time we both went to the dentist and how many days we have been without rain.

We recently discovered the number gene growing exponentially in one of the grands who is 9. She fastidiously tracks the birthdays of all 10 of her cousins, paying keen attention to the youngest in the brood who is 20 months old. She fixates on the youngest because she suspects this tot will be the last addition to the extended family.

So, she marks the date of the month that little one was born on each page of a monthly calendar. When the date arrives, she takes a few moments to lament that the family is one month closer to being completely out of babies. The rest of us lament that the babies in the family are getting older too, but not with such precision or flair for drama.

I only hope that my birthday isn’t on the radar of our number-loving grandchild. I don’t need anyone tracking my age, as though counting down days to the apocalypse. More importantly, if there’s any crying to be done, I’m perfectly capable of doing it myself.

Competition for space in kitchen drawers is fierce these days. That beloved staple, the junk drawer, may soon be crowded out by something called a charging drawer, an empty drawer wired with ports at the back to charge cell phones, iPads, ear buds and assorted electronics.

You can charge a phone in any room in the house, but the only place you can find a 6-year-old lemon-flavored throat lozenge so old it is stuck to the wrapper is in the catchall drawer.

Ditto for hair ties. Sure, you might find some in a bathroom drawer, but the ones with hair still knotted in them will be in the junk drawer. That’s also where you’ll find felt tip markers without lids, ballpoint pens out of ink, dull scissors and pencils with broken leads.

Junk drawers are not just depositories for random things you throw in on the fly, they are family history. Journalists without scruples have sometimes rifled through trash to find out details about people. If you really want to know someone, go through their junk drawer.

The first thing you notice in our drawer is birthday candles. Some are still in the box, others are mixed with pens and paper clips. There are all colors and sizes, in all stages of deterioration. Some are melted to nubs because they’ve been used before. Now you know—we like to party and are so cheap we recycle birthday candles.

We also like to eat, which is why you’ll find chopsticks, a fossilized fortune cookie, dinner mints from restaurants and a takeout menu stuck to the bottom of the drawer.

You’ll also find plastic drinking straws. We’re hanging on to a few before they become obsolete. The two decrepit steak knives with plastic handles aren’t for eating, but for ripping open delivery boxes.

A good junk drawer takes years to build. Amazon does not sell a plastic ruler with pictures of past presidents on it that is cracked in two places. A ruler like that takes years of getting snagged in the back of the drawer. It’s not that useful for drawing a straight line any longer, but it’s been around so long it’s like family. You don’t dump family.

Need felt pad tips for chair legs, so they don’t scratch your hardwoods? An emery board for filing your nails? A neon green miniature flashlight, book matches, AAA batteries? A gauge to check air pressure in your tires? We’ve got it all in the junk drawer. Somewhere. Dig deeper.

Consider this—charging your phone at various outlets around the house, especially ones near the floor, is good for your knees. Those deep bends may be all that’s keeping you flexible.

Go ahead, empty your junk drawer and turn it into a neat and clean, streamlined charger drawer. But remember this — Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was a good junk drawer.

Explaining you were a mommy before you were a grandma to a young grandchild quickly becomes a who’s who of considerable complexity.

“Grandma, Mommy said that you were her mommy.”

“Yes, and I still am,” I say. “I could ask her to unload the dishwasher right now and she’d probably do it.”

“Really?” the child exclaims, wide-eyed.

“Yes. Before I was a grandma, I was a mommy, and your mommy was my little girl and now my little girl is grown up and is your mommy.”

This is the strangest thing the kid has ever heard. Naturally, I try to help by putting it in context.

“Your mommy was a little girl and I was her mommy a long time ago before you were born.”

Turns out, this is a horrible follow-up. There is no more disturbing statement for young children than to hear there was a time when they didn’t exist.

In an attempt to clarify, I muddle things even more. “Yes, I was your mommy’s mommy and Grandpa was her daddy.”

This is too much. Not only is the child to believe that Grandma was once a mommy, but that grandpa was once a daddy. Hey, the kid has eyes and she’s thinking there’s no way the two of them were ever that young!

The child gives me the once over and slowly says, “So you were a mommy . . . Grandpa was a daddy . . .  and Mommy was one of your kids?”

“Exactly!” I shout.

Silence. The wheels are turning.

“Then, before you were a mom . . . were you a kid, too?”

“Yes!” Wisely, I keep my mouth closed about being a kid so long ago it is what we now call the “last century.” There’s only so much backward time travel small children can comprehend.

“So, Grandma, when you were a kid, did you have other kids in your family?”

“Yes. John was my brother.”

“You mean Big John?”

“Yes, Big John was my little brother.”

“How could he be your little brother when he’s bigger than you and we call him Big John?”

“He wasn’t always bigger. As a matter of fact, I am three years older and for a long time I was bigger than he was and I would boss — oh, it doesn’t matter what Grandma used to do to her little brother, because he grew way bigger and he’s still making me pay for teasing him years ago. The main thing is to be kind to your brothers and sisters no matter who is older or younger or bigger or smaller.”

Satisfied, smiling and with a twinkle in her eye, she dashes off to the front room where her cousins are playing and shouts, “Guess what? Grandma used to be a kid!”

Our son is building a house. As his parents, we are pleased with this accomplishment, but it has also caused us sleepless nights and worry.

Probably because we know our son. Or at least the kid he was growing up. He was the one who assembled things without reading directions, the one who selectively applied himself in high school and splatter painted a pair of shoes in college and tried to convince us it was art.

Yep. That was the look we had, too. You do what you can.

Today he is a registered architect. He’s worked on small projects, big projects and his company jets him all around to check on all sorts of projects.

Why worry? He does modern, that’s why. Sometimes modern is hard to understand.

Yes, those lights from www.neonfilter.com are striking, but there are other elements we don’t quite understand.

His original house design involved using materials like burnt wood and weathered metal.

We asked why he wouldn’t use new materials on a new house. We watch the home design channel; we know those materials are hip, but we asked anyway.

We also worry the roof is flat.

He says it’s not flat, it has a slight incline.

Once it’s finished, we’ll probably drive by after the first heavy snow to see if the snow slid off or is piling on the roof and the roof about to collapse on his wife and kids, and we should evacuate them.

They are building in the middle of the woods and we worry there are trees too close to the house, that the trees will one day be old and brittle and fall on the house.

He cites the species of the trees and says they will live many, many years.

We worry because the house has extremely large windows and we’ve seen the speeds his kids reach and how they ricochet off the walls.

He calmly says the glass is thick and the kids will be fine.

The other night I woke up wondering how expensive an insurance premium might be on a house with wood exterior. I decided to call our insurance company in the morning and ask a few questions. Not wanting anyone to know I was checking up on a grown son, I decided I wouldn’t give my name.

The voice on the other end of the line answered and said, “Hello. Is this Lori?”

Caller ID. So much for remaining anonymous.

An agent fielded my questions and assured me there would be no problem, especially since the location was not far from a fire department.

The husband asked what I found out.

“I found out what we’ve suspected all along-the kid knows what he’s doing.”

“I wondered if that wasn’t the case,” he said.

“No need to mention any of our concerns to him,” I say. “Besides, we’ll probably have a list of new concerns next week.”