THIS IS IN OUR (VERY CLEAN) HANDS

There’s nothing like a period of ‘sheltering in place’ to reveal just how ‘sheltered’ a person’s life already is.  As far as I can tell zero things have changed for us.  We’re retired and live out on a farm.  Our closest neighbor is a mile away; that’s a lot of social distance.  I go to town for groceries – just like I always do – well, except that the store is out of things I need.  It’s not the store’s fault.  People are crazy. 

Remember, a million years ago when we started hearing about this new virus China was having a problem with?  Remember how amazed we were with the news that they slapped up a 1000 bed hospital in less than a week, but it was the speed that impressed us, not the need.

Next, it became a story about people stranded on cruise ships because of this virus – the ships not allowed to dock, the people not allowed to disembark? Still, this was happening on the other side of the planet – it was interesting and only a little worrying if we knew folks who were traveling.

Then, at what should have been no surprise to any of us, the novel corona virus made landfall on North American shores.  By this time it had a name – COVID-19 – and the scientist’s voices were starting to get loud enough for us to begin to pay attention.  Daily, incrementally, the public service announcements stepped up their urgency, the warnings probably being dispensed in stages so as not to cause panic.  The voices of the announcers and political leaders are steady and measured but there are dark rings under their eyes and they look like they aren’t getting a whole lot of sleep.

All of a sudden the school year was over, hockey season was over, baseball will not be starting, the Olympics are off for 2020.

And here we are: sheltering place.

There’s that question you hear from time to time:  If you could have a conversation with anyone, who would you choose?

As of this week I am intrigued with how the people of 1918 weathered the Spanish Influenza.  Oh sure, I can read all sorts of history about where it came from, how it spread, how many people died, and how it resurfaced in 1920 for a second round, but that information doesn’t cover how the everyday people coped with the fear, the rumors, and the disease itself.  Humans being humans and deadly disease being deadly disease, likely we have a lot in common with our great grandparents.  What could they teach us about what the coming year will be like if we could only talk to them?

Without the wisdom of people who actually lived through a pandemic such as we are facing now I guess our only choice is to cope on our own. 

The word ‘humanity’ is generally used when we are describing virtues such as generosity, altruism, and selflessness – the good side of being human.  But Webster’s Dictionary defines ‘humanity’ merely as ‘the quality or state of being human’; not necessarily the same thing at all.  Humans can be very frail things when they feel their lives are in jeopardy.  For some it brings out the best in them, for a few it uncovers the worst.  Both are very human.

From what I’ve come to learn about this virus, we are in it for the long haul.  No amount of dissatisfaction with being cooped up inside, no disappointment of no school or sports or socializing with friends is going to change the fact that if we don’t obey the stay home orders, the quarantine will only have to go on longer.  Neither does our frustration at having our lives on hold make the slightest bit of difference to a virus.  As long as we spread it around it will continue to infect and kill people.

The bottom line is that we humans are the key.  We can be kind to each other and take care of each other.  We can learn from this experience so to be better prepared for the next time.  And most important and immediate of all, we can stop the spread in its tracks.  The virus can go nowhere without us to carry it.

So, shelter in place – and while you’re at it, write a diary of how you feel and what you did with your days of isolation.  Someone will want to read them some day.

 

THE LIFE YOU SAVE ....

I’ve seen lots of memes on Facebook where the person posting them had never realized how inactive their social life was until they were put into this new reality of self isolation and found that almost nothing changed.  I have to confess, I am one of those.

We are supposed to curtail all congregating in groups – pretty easy for people who are lucky to manage a card game with neighbours once a year and haven’t been to a movie for six or seven years.  Our most common restaurant meal is a takeout pizza.  The most social thing I do is belong to the local Tourism Board and we meet once a month – except on the months that we don’t need to.  The only difference this COVID quarantine has made for me is that now I’m living my usual life for a purpose.

I don’t mean to make light of this.  This is serious stuff.  It is an actual life or death situation, and regardless of your age and pre-existing health conditions, with as many deaths as are being reported when we have barely set foot into what is going to be an prolonged period of catastrophe, the deceased are not all elderly with heart conditions.  There are doctors and nurses gone in the prime of their lives, there are children gasping for air in hospital beds.  There are just plain, regular people who couldn’t fight off a viral pneumonia.  Listen to what the medical and scientific experts are telling you – the life you save may be your own.

 I realize that we are extremely lucky to live where we live ... seven miles from town and a mile from our nearest neighbour.  Not that the virus couldn’t make it here – I do have to go buy groceries and I have family responsibilities that can’t be put off.  Plus, I had absolutely no idea of how many times I touched my face or rubbed my eyes until it became a forbidden practice.  I have tried to change my ways, and there’s a whole lot more washing going on around here these days.

There is also a whole lot more news watching going on as well.  It’s hard to find a balance between making ourselves aware of what we need to know and scaring the heck out of us just before bedtime.  Luckily I am accustomed to spending the hours between 1:45 and 4:47 solving the world’s problems, anyway.  I wish I could say it was refreshing to have a new one to deal with, but no, I still have lots of work to do on climate change ...

I am beyond thankful that the weather is supposed to warm up this week.  I will be getting out and walking again.  The dog (although he is unaware at this time how his walking fortunes are about to improve) is going to be overjoyed.  Heck, we might make it four miles instead of two!  I’ve got nothing but time!

And, as spring is actually here I will be shifting into gardening mode too ... outside time, fresh air, something to do.  All these things I look forward to every year but 2020 has upped the ante by about 500%.  I can’t imagine families living in city apartments. With the space and seclusion we enjoy out here in the boonies I feel like I’m the richest woman on the planet right now.

I also fear being nothing but a Facebook meme cliché by the time we emerge from this viral war.  You know the meme I’m talking about: the one where you start out slim, trim, and fit and end up a rolling butterball turkey?  Well, I made five pies and four dozen butter tarts today.

Better make that a six mile walk every day, Turbo!

HERE’S HOPING THIS WILL ALL BE FUNNY SOMEDAY

I confess: I do buy my toilet paper in the biggest package that Costco offers.  That would be a case of 24 rolls.  The last time I was there – I think it was in November- I did indeed make such a purchase.  Amid all this toilet paper madness I just went and checked our supply; we still half of that left.  I guess two people don’t use all that much toilet paper.  I will probably need to buy more – like, in July.

I hear that there are people – well, scalpers, really – selling bottles of hand sanitizer for over $100.00 a bottle.  Maybe I should get in on that and sell the little purse sized bottles I’ve got kicking around the place for $50.00?  I hate the stuff.  I would rather wash my hands with soap and water any day. 

Another commodity in demand, I hear, is canned beans.  Okay, I understand.  We all consider this to be a staple food; a nutritious emergency meal needing only a can opener and a spoon to access it, and it can be enjoyed both hot and cold.  Is it the ‘emergency’ feature of beans that has people buying whole cases?  Do they think that the coronavirus is going to infect our power grid too?  That we won’t be able to cook anything?  That their chances of getting sick of beans isn’t every bit as high contracting COVID-19 ?  It really made me smile to hear that the bags of dry beans were also disappearing from store shelves.  Really?  How many people actually know how to turn those little pellets into food, anyway? 

“May you live in interesting times.”

This is said to be a Chinese curse – not the disease and resulting worldwide pandemic, but the actual saying  ‘may you live in interesting times’.  Oh the irony of it all!  These very interesting times are compliments of a virus that first showed up in China: just one more interesting fact to ponder as the days go by and we continually check for news updates.

It’s not like we haven’t been warned repeatedly that we were due a significant infection.  Scientists have been predicting and preparing for this exact scenario for decades, and have had test runs with SARS and MERS and H1N1.  They’ve seen how some diseases are more lethal and some are more infectious.  I remember reading that the most serious problem to deal with is the ease and speed of infection that a disease can manage, the worst case scenario being when a person is infectious before he or she knows they are sick.  That is COVID-19’s secret power; that is why its rate of spread is so alarming.

Its other super power has been that our human response to it has been underwhelming until this past week. 

At the global level the World Health Organization has been holding regular press conferences to alert governments of the disease’s progress. 

At the individual country level there have been differing attitudes as to how seriously to take the threat – some have fared better than others.  Italy is in real trouble and many others are only a week behind. 

At the ordinary people level we have the good ones who are self isolating without even being asked, and the ridiculous ones who are hoarding more toilet paper than they will ever use.

It remains to be seen how this will play out.  It is possible that cancelling all sports games and music concerts is going over the top.  Maybe shutting down schools is unnecessary.  Maybe travel bans are crazy. 

But, won’t it be nice to sit around with all of our loved ones in five years and laugh about how we over reacted? 

Then again, won’t it be just nice to sit around with all of our loved ones in five years and discuss how much we learned from our fight with COVID-19? 

Some of us still won’t be out of toilet paper.

SIGNS OF SPRING

As I drove to church on March 1st doing my best to navigate through zero visibility as March’s lion roared the first blizzard of the winter into my face, I thought to myself “And here we are!  Canadian spring, in all its unpredictability, has arrived!”

As if I needed further proof, when I arrived at church there were the first two sun-browned faces of recently returned snowbirds to reinforce my ‘spring has sprung’ notion.

Even though this winter hasn’t been too harsh for us prairie dwellers this time around, we are always ready to turn the page into spring by this time.  Technically spring doesn’t get here until the spring equinox on March 21^st but there are a lot of us rebels who look to the beginning of this month with a hunger to speed things up.  The minute that February tips into March we are ready to declare the arrival of this sweet season.  Leap year made us wait that extra day this time around, but we are finally here!

Not that I sat around and just patiently waited.  I’ve spent the past month grasping at straws.

There’s nothing like having enough light in the morning to be able to find the coffee pot without turning on the lights.  Likewise, being able to still see the coyote the dog is barking at till well after supper is reassuring.  The days are lengthening out.  I have long suspected that I am solar powered so this does my batteries all kinds of good.  There have even been a few days that were warm enough to sit out on the deck and just soak up some sun.  I dream of flowers and hummingbirds.  We’ve barbequed twice in the last couple of weeks.

Even on the days that are too cold to actually go outside the sun is strong enough to heat up my greenhouse.  Not that I have anything growing out there yet, but when the sun gets high enough in the sky my remote thermometer shows me that it’s in the high 20s or low 30s out there.  There have been a few days that I have gone out to bask in the warmth, taking in deep breaths of soil and summer.  It’s the tonic that kept me going through February.

I’ve had conversations about fresh asparagus and the potential strawberry crop this year.  I have my vegetable seeds all ready to go and keep finding more flowers I want to start now that we are actually within a sensible greenhouse timeframe.  I may still need to be sedated or have an intervention to keep things real; Spring Fever is a dangerous thing.

The sign of spring that most impresses my dog is that I have begun venturing out on walks again.  He, with his Husky fur coat and four feet on the ground, just can’t understand why my exercise program goes into hibernation once the roads get icy and the temperatures bottom out.  Now that conditions are more human friendly we have clocked almost 20 miles over the last two weeks.  He’s not sure what the difference is but I am watched like a hawk so he doesn’t miss out.  Even now he is laid out right behind my chair.  There is no way I can leave this room without him knowing.

But, there are lots of other signs out there – on one of our walks a flock of Canada Geese flew over heading north, farmers are out touring the back roads because they have ‘the itch’ too, and baby calves are being born.  I’ve even spotted another set of brown-faced snowbirds!

If all goes along the usual track of spring on the Canadian prairies there will be another couple of late blizzards and then we can lay this winter to rest!

 

MY STORAGE EXPANSION PROJECT

There is nothing like kitchen renovations to make you see how complicated we make our lives by owning too much stuff.

And, there’s nothing like owning a kitchen with way more cupboards than usual to make you see how having a ridiculous amount of storage space leads you to storing a likewise ridiculous assortment of such stuff.

Weirdly it was my interest in wanting even more ergonomically friendly storage options that set this renovation in motion.

This means, if all goes according to plan, by the time we are done this adventure I will have even more storage area than I started out with. This is even in spite of my swearing when I emptied out all those cupboards that a significant portion of it was not going back in when the reno job was done.  Knowing my penchant for hoarding totally useless things I’m not quite sure at this time which three items are not liable to make the cut. 

What I’m striving for here is more useful space.  Kitchens have evolved a lot over the past century.  My great grandmother probably didn’t have much for cupboards because she didn’t have much for crockery and her pots and pans were likely seldom not in use and put away.  Besides, that big old cast iron cook stove took up most of the space.  Her daughter inherited her mother’s kitchen and no doubt the dishes and utensils as well, but I don’t think anything else changed.

Women of my mom’s generation had no choice to get more cupboards – they were now into the Age of Tupperware.  Trying to corral all those bowls and lids is not for the faint hearted.  The struggle is real.

The kitchen I’ve operated for the past 37 years has double the cupboards any kitchen should have.  Half of them came with the original tiny kitchen of the original tiny house and the rest were doubled when we doubled the size of the house and the family.  The over abundance of spaces I can hide by closing cupboard doors is phenomenal.  I’ve been married twice, raised four kids, and attended countless Tupperware parties, and I throw nothing away.  My daughters live in terror of the day I die and leave it all to them.

And yet it would seem that it was not enough storage.  I wanted more.

Well, not so much more storage, as better storage.  Somebody (almost surely a woman) has come up with all kinds of smarter storage options.  Things like upright dividers to keep your multiple cookie sheets and pizza pans from avalanching when you’re digging for your muffin tins – speaking as one who has had that whole business land on her toes more than once, I am quite excited about a system that makes gravity work for me, instead of against me.

But so much more than that, I cannot wait for the drawers that are going to replace the deep lower level cupboards that sucked all my favourite bowls to their back, forgotten, hidden places waiting for a day I felt spry enough to hunt them down.  My spry days are getting fewer and farther between all the time.  These drawers are going to deliver my things to me without some kind of hunting expedition.

This is almost surely the last renovation we will do to my kitchen, but I feel that it’s the most important one.  I may have quite a few good cooking years left to me if I don’t have to fight my cupboards for their contents any more.

 A major part of the carpentry part is done and we await the cosmetic application of paint before the doors and hardware are put back on.  This is so exciting!

Meanwhile I’ve been losing sleep as I spend the hours of 12:30 until 3:15 every night deciding where everything is going to go.

Oh yes, and which three things that will go off to a garage sale in the spring.

FEBRUARY INFIRMITY

You would think at my age I would have learned to cope with Spring Fever a little better than I do.  The truth is, though, it gets a little worse every year,

I’ve thought about this a lot (while standing in the sunbeams from my big south-facing picture window) trying to sort out whether this is because the illness strengthens as time goes by, or because I am getting older and more susceptible to its contagion.  I suppose it may be a bit of both.

The main symptom is the longing for anything green and growing.  I have one large-ish house plant that stalwartly refuses to die, and even treats me to the odd new frond from time to time.  It’s green, and growing, and I admire its tenacity, but by mid February it’s just not enough.  The sun spends more time in the sky, the seed catalogues are all here, the potatoes are sprouting in the basement – stuff wants to grow and I want to grow it!

Let me just say that planting seeds in mid February is great if you want spindly, weak-kneed seedlings in a couple weeks.  I know this because I am a repeat offender.  This is too early if you have nowhere but a little table in a south window to put them.  You need a better set up and more space.

So, two years ago my enabler built me a two tier shelf to sit up by that window.  I went hog wild and planted everything I could think of.  The seeds grew and needed to be transplanted into larger containers.  My enabler went out and built me another two tier shelving unit.  The shelves were all full.  The window was all full.  On the one hand things were green and growing and reasonably sturdy; on the other hand it was now only the end of March and still weeks from being safe to put the babies outside in the ground.  Although most of them did survive till their garden debut the shock of moving such large plants to a new environment set them back considerably. 

Like about a month.  Like about the exact amount of time I should have waited to plant them in the first place.

Last year my enabler went out and built me a small greenhouse in the back yard.  I’m not sure of his motivation.  Was it the nuisance of two shelving units over flowing with plants in the living room for three months the year before?  Was it that he just loves going bigger and better?  Was he just bored one day and thought he should build a greenhouse?  Or was it his farmer genetics kicking in; it this how male spring fever manifests itself?

At any rate, in came the two shelving units and the starter soil and the seeds.  Now that I had somewhere to move the seedlings to once a reasonable temperature could be maintained with heaters out in my new playhouse there was no need to hold back.  Well, except for that still-way-too-early thing. 

It’s so hard, in the throes of spring fever, to keep the soil away from the seeds and the sunshine.  One thinks “oh just this one little package won’t hurt anything” and the next thing you know there are several small forests of seedlings.  And in the process of transplanting these many babies to larger containers they lose touch with their name tags so you don’t even know who’s who by the time you move them to the greenhouse.  And it ends up there are way too many of the short things and not enough of the tall ones.  If I learned anything last year when dealing with such abundance it was to WRITE THINGS DOWN.

So, how am I doing so far this winter, you ask?

Well, so far only one of my window shelves has made into the house and only a few perennials have been planted.  I have several baby lemon trees doing great and out of curiosity I planted grape seeds to see if they would sprout too.  There are no fast growing annuals anywhere close to dirt at this time.  My restraint impresses even me.  I had even thought maybe I had developed some kind of immunity to Spring Fever’s pathogen.

That was until I was doing laundry this morning.  As I pulled the clothes out of the washing machine and tossed them in the dryer door I happened to glance out that big window that overlooks my backyard.  It wasn’t the greenhouse that caught my eye, it was my clothesline.  Obviously missing green, growing things is only one facet of this disease.

One of the prime indicators of Spring Fever is heavy, wistful sighing.  It’s all downhill from here.

*Sigh* I can’t wait to smell sheets and towels hung outside to dry.

*Sigh* 

 SISTERHOOD

As my ideas for this post began to coalesce in my mind the title of a Willie Nelson/Julio Iglesias song kept popping up – you may remember it, To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before?

I Googled it to refresh my memory of the lyrics.  It really is a pretty song, but the love that they sing of is the romantic kind – not where I’m going with this at all.

While this IS dedicated to all the girls I love it has nothing to do with romantic love.  The love I speak of is much more fundamental.  It is the unspoken sisterhood, the shared experience of being feminine, the mother/daughter/sister/friend role we fill for each other ... whether we have met each other, or not.

I may be wrong but the connection that women feel toward one another is something that probably couldn’t be explained to men even if we gave classes on the subject, but we know it merely by instinct. 

Even in the case of total strangers we offer each other support in times of adversity: imagine a scene in a grocery store - an overwhelmed mom, an uncooperative and angry toddler, defiance and howling in aisle 3.  This is the stuff of despair and loneliness until another woman comes along.  No words need to be spoken, all that happens is that their eyes meet in a been-there-done-that kind of way.  Kindness is shared.  A smile comes to both of them – a virtual fist bump of solidarity.  Some days it’s the difference between serenity and insanity.  We women are good at that.

That’s the broad spectrum ‘we’re all in this together’ way to describe this sisterhood we belong to, but there are as many levels as there are women.

Sisterhood, of course, begins with our flesh and blood sisters if we’re lucky enough to have them.  It’s where we learn shared experiences, empathy, and how strong we can be together.  I was blessed with five sisters but in the past decade have had to say goodbye to two of them.  The remaining three are now all the more precious.

Fate has given me an abundance of sisters-in-law, an extended family of girls with so much in common.  We have watched our children grow up together, laughed and cried our way through what life has thrown at us, and shared some darned good recipes over the years.

This special bond also bridges generations.  My grandmother’s strengths and ideals flowed through my mother and travel on through me to my daughters and granddaughters.  It’s done in subtle, quiet conversations over the years, and also in helpless, gasping, snorting laughter when the mood strikes us. 

And then there are the school sisters we grew up with and our work world sisters and our shared hobby sisters.  There are the ones we’ve known, but not known, all our lives whose importance bubbles up in our sixth decade because this seems to be our time.  And the ones who retreat into the background and then re-emerge over the years for the best kind of reunions you can imagine.

In the bigger picture we don’t even need to know our sisters to be able to recognise them. 

I have one ‘sister’ who lives two provinces away.  I’ve never met her personally and if not for a chance encounter with her mother and son during a monsoon in Beijing not even our Face book paths would have ever crossed.  That’s how heavy the odds were against us, but due to our long and heartfelt conversations on Messenger, I recognize her to be one of my special sisters.  Some day we will meet.  It is meant to be.

And then there is the friend who inspired this whole train of thought.  We only met in our mid thirties and although we worked for the same employer our connection grew from our shared experiences, not close contact.  We are both retired now and still only manage to touch base every once in a while, yet I feel her insights are at times vital to my psyche and I know she feels the same way about me.   Our conversations are like hitting the reset button in our lives.

I look at it as another, more advanced, version of a virtual fist bump, but it serves the same purpose: the difference between serenity and insanity some days.

This is dedicated to all the girls I love – we’re all in this together.