Written 20 April, 2020.
In the morning, Pink House Dy texts, asking us to flip the switch on his solar power, hidden in a box on the back of his house- but he warns we’d have to step over cuttings. Otherwise he won’t have power, not for a sunny day or two after he arrives. Faster if he has a generator- but I fear his friend left with it.
My trouble is, he hasn’t left a key like most people do here in case they have to ask someone for help, and he’s chopped vast mounds of lantana, piled up to the windows, all round his house. We scramble up the steep bush behind his house and spy the box with the switch. I try squeezing between a huge louder and his back wall to get to it, I try crawling under his cobwebby house on its foundations made of bits of fibre, but there’s no foundations at the back for the land meets the floor- he’s going to be so cold in winter- I try scrambling over his roof, but the solar panels are in my path. In this first attempt to help him, I fail.
We come back defeated, and to K bright and loving and wanting to talk. She’s very sorry for last night- she got caught up. She thought we’d just leave the shopping on the floor and she could put it away anytime. She’ll never do it again. She says she wants this new life, hanging around with her parents, learning new skills. It’s a silver lining for her and for us.
And then, in the afternoon, we try to make the video again. This time I have a whisky before, two in fact, and find that I’m not drunk, I’m just normal me .
Now all there’s left to do is to load it to dropbox for ANU, and to You Tube. All. Funny how things seem simple till you get up close.
At night, I do a tango exercise class, first time by zoom, with my tango teacher, Uma. There were 6 other students that I’m too incompetent to see until the end. I need his classes for balance, agility and strength. K fusses because I do it in the big house in the big room- it’s got the only good floor – and she fears the students I can’t see will see her. She goes to bed late and cranky, even though I try to tell her that this new life needs a woman to be well-balanced, agile and strong, as she’s never been before..
Shelley writes overnight from New York:
The irony of me saying to you yesterday morning that we need a reprieve from focusing on Trump is that yesterday evening it became impossible.
Yesterday, while death counts from COVID19 remained at their obscene levels in New York and New Jersey, Trump tweeted the following:
“LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” Trump tweeted. “LIBERATE MINNESOTA,” he continued. “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”
And lots of frustrated, out-of-work and paycheckless people crowded together on the steps of Minnesota and Michigan’s Capitol buildings. They demand an end to all this social distancing as nonsense or not worth the price to pay for trying to eradicate this disease. some sport guns in their pants. What a great recipe for losing the hard earned progress so many states are making because we have adhered to social distancing, masks, et al.
The Washington Post responded to Trump’s tweeting, “The president is fomenting domestic rebellion and spreading lies even while his own administration says the virus is real and is deadly and that we have a long way to go before restrictions can be lifted,” said Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D). A protest against his stay-at-home order, which lifts May 5, is scheduled in Olympia this weekend.“
Meanwhile in Florida, hundreds flock to that state’s just reopened beaches as if there was no COVID19. Simultaneously, Florida sees its infection numbers spike.
I fear that many states of These United States are losing their minds and courting death to bring to us all.
Panic rushes through me. I am almost 66 and I think maybe my country will be so foolhardy that many of us will die. To be over 60 is to be 20% more vulnerable to COVID and 100% more vulnerable to the ageism fomented by the COVID myth that does not kill people younger than 60.
Many people under 60 blame the government for caring too much for seniors and not enough for everybody else. They are understandably desperate for a paycheck.
Trump’s economic advisor ominously said, concerning health of the people and the health of the economy, ”there have to be some trade offs.”
I believe as desperation for food and money spreads, we elders might well be sacrificed in that trade off.
I am thinking of my sister, 78 and a sufferer of Parkinson’s disease. As I write this, a text comes on my screen that the ambulance is taking her to the hospital. Her Parkinson’s is likely the cause. She has become increasingly incoherant over the last few days, then last night her oxygen levels dropped into the low 20s-that is when the doctors said she could not risk avoiding hospitalization any longer.
The trade off of staying at home with her family around her but maybe worsening without medical support —or going to the hospital, where in the time of COVID, all patients, infected or not, must suffer alone. My sister can’t have her daughter or her husband there to hold her hand, to tell her she will be alright again, to feed her, soothe her. In addition, just being in a hospital in her vulnerable conditions increases her chance of catching COVID19.
It is unspeakable to have to make these choices that my sister’s daughter and her husband of of 64 years made tonight. I am programmed to think of hospitals as healing places, not dangerous ones. I know now is different, but the in-your-face blow of that difference for my sister sends me down the rabbit hole.
Sometimes I kid myself that life is still normal, except for the health precautions we must take. Nothing about this time is normal.
Nothing Nothing Nothing.
I am starting to look forward to the daily 7pm cheering and whooping and pan banging and little dogs barking and kids screeching and church bells ringing and fire siren wailing, all to cheer on our doctors, nurses, and hospital workers. The noise reverberates for blocks in our silenced city.
Ten minutes to go and I will open my window, too, and scream.
Sending my love
S
I spoke to J this morning. Well, WE spoke to J this morning, my parents and I, that is. Hm, It’s just now dawning on me that perhaps, thanks to isolation, my parents and I have morphed into one big familial blob…. or a ‘collective’, yes that sounds far more sophisticated; Mandy, Andy and Sophie, ‘the big collective blob’.
It was strange to see J’s number appear suddenly on-screen in Andy’s car; we were on our way back from an early morning swim (exercise, I assure you) in Byron Bay (I best not shed too much detail on this and turn you green with envy, Sue). The car fell deadly silent, we weren’t expecting a call, it wasn’t a Saturday morning and it wasn’t time to do the Good Weekend Quiz in our weekly family conference call. Andy answered the phone in a very serious tone; in times like these it’s hard to not immediately imagine the worst. J responded in a way that I couldn’t help but resonate with – we have a tendency in my family to clumsily trip over our words and stutter until we might find the right ones, ironic for a family of performers: writers, artists, actors… heck, N even works in radio! My stomach dropped…. well, ‘the big collective blob’s’ stomach dropped; I don’t think J was about to break into good news.
Instantly, my mind spiraled, imagining an infinite amount of horrendous scenarios (the length of this spiral not at all helped by J’s inability to string a cohesive sentence together). ‘J’s wife has the virus’, no, ‘J has the virus’, no, ‘food shortages have gripped their local Trader Joe’s’, NO, ‘J’s apartment has caught fire and now his wife is on fire and now his sleeve is on fire and the dimwittedness of American culture has led J to forget that water is the simple solution to issues such as these…damn those Republicans and their nationalism!’!!!!.
J finally gathered this thoughts:
“…with the next stage of my visa application, (this is not verbatim, but I’m trying), it’s asking for E’s tax report from 2019, but we haven’t finished it yet, so should we just include her report from 2018?”.
The collective blob breathed a sigh of relief. Andy is a very practical and wise man, I quickly understood the grounds for J’s call.
We said farewell quickly as we knew this wouldn’t be the last time we heard J’s voice for the day. 10.55am struck and so did Mandy’s phone alarm, (it’s a truly haunting sound, I might change it when she’s not looking), it was time for J’s next Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets chapter: ‘Aragog’ (that big bloody spider thing that Hagrid got thrown in Azkaban for … well no, I shan’t step on J’s toes, how about I link in J’s Instagram account so you can watch from the river).
I take this opportunity everyday at 11am to take a break from writing; Josh reads and I draw. Since isolation began I’ve been doing a drawing a day (as much as possible), a series I’m calling ‘COVIDART19’. With my mind, lulled to the sound of his voice and the absurd characters he becomes (he does an excellent Neville Longbottom), I drift into an in-between world, not quite here, and not quite there. A place of nothingness, pleasant nothingness, perhaps my favourite place (second to B’s bed on a Sunday morning). What explodes from my pencil and felt tip pen changes every moment until I snap out of my spell and attempt to decipher what the hell is going on on my page! – I’ll attach a link to my Instagram with all my COVIDART19 drawings as well as the one from today’s episode…or should I say chapter…
By my side, faithfully, without fail, drawing too, is Mandy. She’s ready to go at 10.55am before I am, finding herself a nice sunny spot on a chair overlooking the ocean. J has a rule, he doesn’t start reading until at least two people have jumped on his live feed, or else why bother? I get it. Occasionally, I’ll be in a class or busy elsewhere and miss the 11am start, but one thing is for certain, Mandy will always be there, listening to J’s rich voice fill the living room, her phone in her hand and a hot cup of tea in the other; her love accounting for 50% of his daily quota.
J’s Instagram for Harry Potter: https://www.instagram.com/joshbromfielddavis/
And a link to mine (I post pictures of my daily drawings on my story which disappears after 24 hours, all my ‘COVIDART19’ drawings are saved in a folder under the same title)
https://www.instagram.com/sophiedavis95/