quarantine log week 9

This week we eased back into life outside the plantation.  A quick scroll through your social media will confirm that there are as many opinions about how to self-isolate and practice social distancing as there are social media accounts.  You and your family may not feel it’s a good idea to be preparing to end your own “quarantine” and that’s ok.  You should certainly do what you feel is best.  As I respect your right to govern yourself and your family as you see fit, please respect my right to do the same. 

The thing is most of us haven’t really been in quarantine.  As I understand the word technically, a quarantine would not include interacting with take-out restaurants, trips to Walmart, visiting family, leaving the house to exercise, or leaving the house at all really.  So, let’s just own that for a second, can we?  At best we’ve all been social distancing.  At worst we’ve all been hanging out more at home.  Maybe you have been militant about your self-isolation and if so, my hat is off to you.  But whether you’ve had no contact with the world outside your home, little contact, lots of contact, or even if you’ve pretty much ignored all suggestions on social distancing, we’ve still all experienced a very different world for the last few months.  Public places have been closed.  Restaurants have allowed no indoor dining.  Many jobs have been limited to work-from-home tasks.  Schools have been closed and kids have been home.  So even if you’ve had some of your life remain normal, you’ve still had to make some major adjustments.

Last week my kids finished their school year officially by cleaning out their lockers and picking up all their assignments and projects.  We’ve moved into the “summer time” schedule around the house, and the only major difference here now is that G is still home from work every day.  We’re still limited with some of the activities we would normally pursue, but mostly things are starting to feel like they did back in early March. 

We’ve started having family lunches at mom’s again.  More places are opening for business including some restaurant dining rooms.  We’ve tried to support our local restaurants as much as possible over the last several weeks, but we haven’t eaten inside a restaurant since early March.  We got up one day this week and decided we were going to go shopping and eat in a restaurant.  We drove to Greenville and picked up the things on our list.  We also went to Marshall’s and stood in a short line to get inside.  The occupancy rules forced us to wait a bit before going in.  The checkout line in Marshall’s is always long, but with an extra few feet expected between humans, it looped around through the store farther than I’ve ever seen it.  World Market was only open for curbside pickup.  Ross looked like its clothing was practicing social distancing with a couple of feet between each item of clothing on the men’s side.  Apparently there have been some distribution disruptions. 

When we were ready to eat, we decided on BBQ. We drove to one of our favorite BBQ places only to find it was still closed.  Our plan B was a BBQ place we’d never tried before. When we arrived, their indoor dining area was closed. Instead, we sat at an outdoor table in the sun.  It was a beautiful day. We ate beside the big BBQ slow cooker. It smelled amazing.  The food was also good, so no complaints from me.  Still, we failed to eat inside a restaurant.  Maybe next time. 

Many businesses and jobs are preparing to reopen the first week of June.  I’ve noticed some museums and galleries will resume normal hours on June 1.  I’ve heard many voices speaking out against moving back to normal operations too soon.  There’s the warning of a looming rebound of COVID 19 after we all start being normal again.  I suppose this is likely.  Still, I think I may be confused about what people are thinking about this virus.  Maybe our educational videos with the matches lighting one another and the one match moving out of line to stop the spread of the fire has fooled some of us into thinking that social distancing and washing our hands will eradicate this virus from Earth.  Now that this virus is moving among humans, we’re stuck with it.  The flu comes around annually and the strains change.  We wash our hands, avoid the infected and we go about our business.  The flu doesn’t go away, it even has its own season!

So, if you haven’t been exposed, you will be sooner or later.  I understand that our (hopefully) once in a lifetime global shut-down was designed to give our medical friends time to develop strategies to fight the new virus, and to give humans time to build up antibodies.  Maybe we’ve enjoyed the break, and maybe we’ll all be better beings because of it, but the fact remains that we can’t stay shut down forever.  Whatever you think normal will be in the coming months and years, we simply have to start walking in that direction sooner or later. 

I read a couple things recently comparing our self-isolation to a cocoon.  I think that’s a beautiful metaphor for what we’ve been doing.  I’m not saying I buy it, but it’s beautiful, nonetheless.  The thing about a cocoon is that it is a temporary space and time.  The Monarch butterfly is a gloriously beautiful butterfly, but we must remember it did not start out that way.  It entered the cocoon as a wingless, flightless creature. It spent its time inside the cocoon changing.  Wouldn’t it be cool if this time of self-isolation created permanent changes in us that helped us bring more beauty to the world when we emerged? 

Quarantine Log Week 8

Gratitude and love.  These words were on my mind this week. 

Some foundational information to provide a starting point for this log is necessary.  Our university semester was interrupted harshly by the pandemic, and there was a lot of emotional, mental, and academic stress involved with the changes that interruption brought.  For me personally, those stresses were compounded by two other stressors:  being a dad and being an encourager. 

My kids were banished from their school about the same time the rest of us were.  This meant they were home 24 hours each day, and aside from the basic tasks of making sure they don’t hurt each other or jump off the top of the house on any given day, I also had to be very sensitive to their emotional, mental, and academic stresses.  Doing school at home was not easy on them at all.  One child worked ahead, completing every assignment seconds after they were emailed, and the other child needed to be dragged through their assignments, often kicking and screaming.  Both were very upset to not see their friends.  Heck, we’re lucky enough to have kids who love their school, and they were even missing their teachers.  A couple of weeks into our educational banishment, G was furloughed from the hospital. This meant adding another body and mind to the daily home mix.  It’s one thing to be busy at school during the week and go from 7:00 am until 7:00 pm without talking to your wife or kids.  It’s quite another thing to be busy with school during the week but in the same building as your family, and not talk to them.  So, you try to do everything all at once, and you can imagine how that normally turns out.  On the best days everyone was a little on edge.  The worst days were, well, worse. 

It was easy to see how the switch to online learning was impacting my students.  I could see it on their faces when they were kind enough to turn their cameras on during Blackboard meetings.  I could hear it in their voices when they were kind enough to turn their microphones on instead of typing.  I could read it in their emails and text messages.  I had a need to try to help make the transition and the anticlimactic ending to the semester as enjoyable as possible.  When it was time for class, I closed my studio door and flipped the switch on my personality to be the best version of myself.  I posted silly things to Instagram.  I sent goofy messages.  I checked on people. 

Each day I still carved out quiet time for myself.  Some days I selfishly stayed in my studio after a class had ended just so I could think about the next thing I had to do.  Some days I sat up late at night petting Zeke with my brain in neutral.  Every day I ran and tried to have my coffee in silence, but I quickly learned that the things that were bothering everyone else were also bothering me.  People online were talking about being bored and binge-watching all sorts of things, and I was over here wishing I had several more hours in each day to get all this crap done.  I was tired.  I was withdrawing from my mental account faster than I was depositing. 

But then, some messages arrived.   The first message came through social media and caught me totally off guard.  It was a simple message of gratitude from a student.  Sometimes at the end of a semester a student will be thoughtful enough to email a kind word about enjoying a class or something like that.  Those messages are always appreciated, and they carry much more weight than you can imagine.  There were a couple of those this semester but this one was not from a student in one of my spring classes.  It was just a student who noted something and voiced an appreciation for it.  The next one came just a few days later.  One sentence that probably completely changed how I feel about the entire semester as a teacher.  Gratitude is so powerful.  Gratitude is an expression of love.

I don’t have to teach the way I teach.  The basic task of transferring information from one human to another can certainly be done with less effort.  I teach the way I do because I love my students.  I see them as humans instead of numbers.  I can help them get a degree, but I have a deeper desire to help them become better humans; to be kinder, happier, more fulfilled.  I know this may be idealistic and maybe you think it’s a waste of effort, but I’m stubborn so shut up.  So, I do what I do, the way I do it.  There is, of course, a cost.  I give up time with my family and friends to invest in my students.  I sometimes take a lot of crap from people who think I should teach a different way.  Some days it’s just hard because life is hard, so I do the best I can.  And then you get an email of gratitude and you know it was worth the price.  Just one sentence makes the sacrifice worthwhile.  All the sunflower seeds I plant each year do not germinate.  But the ones that do certainly make the planting worthwhile. 

 Saying “thank you” or saying, “I appreciate you” is just another way of saying “I love you”.  I know my students would run screaming if they thought of it this way.  Most of them would pass out if they even knew I believed in love.  But behind the curtain of sarcasm, self-deprecation, and nonsense, love is the common thread in this story.  I teach because I love my students.  Some students offer that love back to me through gratitude, and it keeps cycling through over and over. 

The coolest thing is that you just never know how important it is until you do it.  I’ve had students tell me years after graduation that I said something to them once that changed their life.  Honestly, I was probably clueless.  I was just doing my thing the way I do it and they happened to be there.  I had no idea it would have such an impact on them.  Likewise, a student may decide mid-conversation that they want to say thanks or maybe they’re bored and decide to email. They may have no idea just how close I was to throwing in the towel.  Some of those messages have saved me. 

I wonder how many lives could be made better today if you and I decided to look outside ourselves for a moment and let someone know we see them and appreciate them? 

quarantine log week 6

No one told spring about everything being cancelled. All my flowers are popping and throwing color all over the yard.  We have many flowers here on the plantation.  My mom has given me several bulbs over the years, and G’s grandmother, “Granny Green” was huge on flowers.  She provided us with tons of cool flowers over the years before she passed away.  Bulbs are great for people like me who kind of suck at growing things.  Once you stick a bulb in the ground, you’re done.  You just forget about it for about 50 weeks, and then you get to enjoy it again (and remember where you planted it).

I’m feeling grateful that our quarantine happened in spring instead of winter.  Seeing things burst back to life has helped make this whole staying at home thing easier to bear. 

That’s probably worth explaining.  I am a hermit after all, (see the blog name) and staying at home is not that tough for me.  Each summer I revel in the fact that I spend most weeks rarely leaving my driveway.  I barricade myself in my studios or at least in the yard. I try to be as productive as possible.  But in the summer, I can still choose to interact with other people.  By the time May rolls around I’ve had a lot of student interaction, and my students have probably endured about as much of me as they can stand.  I may choose to have coffee with a friend, or we may have dinner with pals. Our family goes on vacation, and I watch other people from a distance.  It seems the key to my summer hermitage has to do with the regular rise and fall of the social tides.  I minimize social interactions during the summer to recharge for the nonstop interactions throughout the fall.  I get a small break for winter, and then I’m social all spring.  So again, by May, I’m ready for solitude.

But this spring was interrupted before I had my fill.  I don’t want to admit that I miss people.  That just seems like it goes against everything I am.  But here we are.  Confused.  Irritable.  Happy.  Living the spectrum of emotions daily.  One minute I’m in wide eyed wonder at the beauty of my dog’s nose, and the next minute I’m wishing I was hugging graduates as they leave our academic nest.  One minute I’m quietly watching the sun warm the front pasture and the next I’m fussing at my kid for not doing their schoolwork on time.

I want to get in my truck and get out, but then I feel bad about wanting to do that.  I don’t want to expose anyone to anything bad.  I don’t want my kids to touch a shopping cart handle and get sick, but I also don’t want to unknowingly spread any sickness to strangers.  So, we look for ways to get out without having to interact with others. 

As last weekend approached, we were told our governor had allowed the State Parks to reopen to visitors.  I get all my news second-hand for highly opinionated reasons that would be best discussed in-person over coffee.  But this news came from a trusted source who keeps me informed on the latest developments.  I decided we were going to have a mandatory hiking day on Saturday, so we made lunches and loaded the dogs into the truck. We drove to one of our favorite hiking State Parks.  As we neared the park entrance, I had a passing worry that maybe the park would be closed and wondered what my backup plan might be.  I didn’t really have one.  Sure enough, the gates were closed, and a sign was posted indicating the park would reopen in one week.  Ugh. 

A short time later we sat in the parking lot of a Walgreens while I did some quick research.  I found that the Swamp Rabbit Trail was probably open, and we steered in that direction.  This was not the nature walk I had hoped for initially, but we enjoyed it.  We followed the trail for a couple of miles through the town of Travelers Rest.  The kids liked walking through civilization and seeing people and their pets.  The dogs were just happy to be out of the house.  We made it back to the truck, then drove to a cool little ice cream shop nearby.  The shop was open, and no one was inside, so we avoided human contact again.  We picked up dinner to go, and soon we were back in “quarantine” at home.

The semester is ending soon.  Finals are upon us, and we’re all seeking some sort of closure on a weird semester.  We’re probably all hoping that our lives will return to normal, and that we’ll have a real summer.  I know the people in my house are.  Last summer didn’t turn out exactly how everyone planned, and I think we’re all a little nervous about this one being dented by the Corona stuff.  Here’s to hoping for less Zoom meetings and more time on the beach.