Category: Creative nonfiction

Time Tunnel Fitness

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AtHomeGym_April2020

You know me by now. My propensity to slide back and forth in time. I see an object or hear a sound and I find myself suddenly tumbling through space. Perhaps, I’ve fallen for a Irwin-Allen-directed remnant from my childhood: the 1966-1967 TV show, Time Tunnel.

The series begins in 1968. The U.S. government has given a group of scientists–devotees of Project Tic Toc–one final chance. After years of research, a U.S. senator tells them they have a mere twenty-four hours to prove their untested time tunnel works and will allow man to travel safely through time. (Incidentally, it’s located deep beneath the Arizona desert … possibly not far from where my desert rose is poised to bloom in the searing heat.)

In a last ditch effort to save the project, Dr. Tony Newman (dashing James Darren in a tight green turtleneck) and his sincere scientific sidekick Dr. Doug Phillips (tall, dark and handsome Robert Colbert) spin from one time period to another.

Their colleagues beneath the ground at mission control work breathlessly to “get a fix” on their location and beam them back home. This becomes the team’s quest after Tony’s attempt to salvage their time tunnel goes terribly wrong. He lands on the deck of the Titanic in April 1912, just before it hits an infamous iceberg.

As you may have guessed, Doug travels back in time to rescue Tony.  He succeeds and they escape before the ship sinks. But each week we stay tuned because they are destined to be catapulted into another time frequency fraught with disaster and drama.

This lengthy backstory is my way of telling you I’ve felt myself spinning through time (albeit above ground in Arizona) over the past six weeks during this pandemic.

To help alleviate our anxiety and keep our bodies and minds in shape, Tom and I have fashioned a primitive, throw-back, 60s-style home gym.

Our hand weights, yoga mats and basketball might as well be at-home props–a chair, a broomstick, a couple of cans of green beans–which Jack LaLanne (the original modern fitness and nutrition guru) might have suggested my mother use at home in 1960 if she didn’t have the right equipment.

At any rate, in 1960 three-year-old me sat cross-legged, sucking my thumb and transfixed. The organ music on The Jack LaLanne Show blared. Jack smiled, twisted and shouted wearing his zip-up, one-piece jumpsuit and ballet slippers. Inhale, exhale.

My thirty-seven-year-old mother leaned back to the floor in her pedal pushers and began kicking her heels up and down toward our suburban St. Louis ceiling. She was following Jack’s lead. A bicycle to the sky. Peddling from a tripod position.

Sixty years later, I imagine Jack would be proud of us all. Though our beloved gyms and fitness centers are closed, we’ve cobbled together stay-at-home fitness tools to keep some semblance of our pre-COVID-19 physiques. The ones that have expanded a little in the middle due to sumptuous meals consumed at safe distances behind closed doors.

Oh well. If the gyms stay closed for too much longer and the girth of our bodies gets out of control, there’s an easy solution. All we have to do is keep walking and continue our yoga practice on the sun room floor. Inhale, exhale … Namaste.

If that doesn’t work, I’ll channel Tony and Doug. “Get a fix” on 2019. Step into the time tunnel. Prepare for a trip back to the world we once knew … gainful employment, physical closeness, dining out with friends, life without masks … far away from the trauma of 2020 and the mind-numbing news that keeps us spinning through time.

 

 

Ninety-eight, Ninety-nine …

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At 4:00 p.m. on April 25, thousands of area Phoenicians, including one blogging enthusiast (me), wait with breathless anticipation. For the first time in 2020, we are about to cross over into the often-visited land of oven-like temperatures in the Valley of the Sun … the one-hundred-degree mark.

This is no sweat. It’s a dry heat. An annual, excessive-heat-warning rite of passage we desert rats are accustomed to. However, when we see the mercury climb above 110 degrees … probably sometime in June … that will be a different story.

As the thermometer rests at a chilly ninety-nine degrees, I have other numerical news. I’m just shy of triple digits in followers. Ninety-eight, to be precise.

When I began this descriptive writing odyssey on May 4, 2018, I wasn’t exactly sure what I would write about or who in the world might be interested in frequenting this destination on a regular basis.

The good news is apparently almost one hundred people (and maybe others who haven’t found this site yet) enjoy creative nonfiction, poetry, storytelling, and silly word play enough to make it habitual. Your interest in coming here makes me as happy as this colorful concrete coyote that adorns a neighbor’s doorstep.

Meanwhile, this is my one-hundred-and-fifty-third blog post. Over the past several months, I’ve been weaving together what I consider to be the best ones (along with other state-forty-eight tales that haven’t appeared here) into a book of true Arizona stories and Sonoran Desert fantasies.

My goal is to publish it … book number four … by the end of 2020. Stay tuned!

 

 

 

 

From a Distance

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We can still see each other if we squint. You teetering on the mountain top looking west. Me gazing east from the other side of the valley. Absorbing a few morning rays of sun before the heat rolls in. Shielding ourselves from the most harmful elements that lurk out of our control.

Coexisting from a distance is what we do now. Not knowing what will come next. Wondering when we may be close again.  If only we could fly away together. Begin a new life as unencumbered mockingbirds or desert wrens. No longer afraid. Nesting in the saguaros. Dancing in the sky.

The Incredible Shrinking Man

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In the middle of April … at what may be the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States … I feel the psychological toll. Though I am fine physically—and so is Tom—there are only so many reports of confirmed Coronavirus cases, death projections, presidential posturing, curve flattening, and social distancing I can tolerate. Oh, by the way, I turned off the news long ago.

As it has for millions of Americans, the anxiety of buying groceries … surrounding oneself with a slow stream of catatonic shoppers in surgical masks … has infected something I once enjoyed. More than that, it’s sucked the joy from it.

For nearly a month, “going to market”—as my grandfather the North Carolina farmer would have described it—has become a dystopian quest for toilet paper, eggs and hand sanitizer … followed by a postmortem play-by-play with neighbors, walking by at safe distances, assessing the relative viability of nearby stores.

“The shelves at Fry’s are virtually empty … but we bought frozen vegetables.”

“We had luck at Target on Tuesday … found paper products and disinfectant.”

“Sprouts has a good selection of meat and chicken … eggs, too, if you shop early.”

“Albertson’s has plenty of produce … and they installed protective dividers at each register.”

Worse are the missed human connections—casualties of social distancing, such as a month of in-person choral rehearsals, gym workouts, impromptu dinners out, films at our favorite cinemas, and—most important—informal gatherings with friends. When I last checked, weren’t these the types of things that made life rich and rewarding?

One by one, we’ve replaced these face-to-face interactions with poor substitutes, slapped together with Zoom technology. (I’m sorry, though I value the online connections I’ve made with friends and bloggers around the world, nothing online comes close to true human contact for this sixty-two-year-old. Yes, I know, it’s all we have.)

It feels as if a mysterious mist has washed over me, as it did for Scott Carey (played by Grant Williams) in the 1957 science fiction classic The Incredible Shrinking Man. Each day, his size diminished. Thanks to the effects of social distancing, I’m watching my personal dimensions and influence—and that of every other desperate person around me—shrink.

I understand and accept the medical rationale … to flatten the curve and keep the heads of our medical community above water … but social distancing is pulling us away from the lives we’ve carefully constructed or, at the very least, become familiar with or fallen into.

No matter the number of COVID-19 illnesses and deaths on a chart, it may be years before we learn what the psychological price is for the loss of human contact we’re currently experiencing.

Like many of you, I’m angry. With the virus. With the media. Mostly, with the president. Now, left with the harsh realities of social distancing, I’m asking myself “What can I do to keep myself from becoming Scott Carey and shrinking away from the person I am?”

I don’t have revolutionary answers. Unless it’s to keep doing what I’m already doing. Writing, loving my husband and sons, praying for friends and neighbors, tending to my garden, solving puzzles, baking delectable cookies, taking long walks in a warm climate far enough away from those who stroll by, and enduring every Zoom encounter.

In the meantime, like Scott Carey, the best I can do is to rummage through my metaphorical over-sized basement. To search for tools to give me strength. To outrun the spiders that chase me in the night: a global plague; a bombastic, heartless president; an uncertain future.

What we need is a little reassurance that one day, when it no longer threatens our existence, we’ll be able to manage our way through an ordinary household situation … like inviting a friend over for a drink or a cup of coffee.

Ah, if only we could have our loved ones socially near, and our current president long gone and far away where he could no longer hurt anyone.

Ghost Town

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Most of America is shuttered on April 13. Like a scene from The Last Picture Show, Peter Bogdanavich’s dusty black-and-white film classic, an abandoned movie marquee and cinematic tumbleweed rolling down Main Street are the only props missing from this windswept western ghost town … a normally thriving Old Town Scottsdale retail district.

Maybe it’s sadistic, but I want to remember Scottsdale, Arizona, this way for a day. Minus the turquoise jewelry shoppers and bachelorette revelers. Absent the beer-bellied Cactus League fans peddling by on segways and scooters. Economic casualties, who left blue-sky baseball begrudgingly for at-home quarantines and early-spring Midwestern snowstorms.

There is comfort in this cataclysmic quiet. Imagining how it might feel to be the last man on earth in a 2020 episode of The Twilight Zone. Strolling down the center of the street past empty restaurants and boutiques. Modeling a mask on an otherwise stunning seventy-six-degree April afternoon. Wondering where it all went wrong.

Missing Baseball? It’s in the Cards

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At the end of March, midway through a check-in call to see how we were fairing in our respective shelter-in-place homes, my sister posed this question from her Illinois domicile: “Are you missing your sports?”

At first, I thought she was referring to my interrupted gym routine … the one I so painstakingly established in the fall of 2017 during my cardiac rehab. But she went on to explain her question was really about my reaction to the loss of professional sports due to the global pandemic.

I don’t know for sure, but she may have been conjuring a memory of me as a frantic twelve-year-old baseball fanatic with a crew cut. Glued to my tattered transistor radio. Tuning out the world as I tuned into every pitch of every St. Louis Cardinals baseball game and Jack Buck’s color commentary on KMOX of Lou Brock’s base-stealing escapades.

At any rate, I told her I wasn’t sure Major League Baseball mattered as much to me anymore. But that was late March. The next day a few cravings surfaced. I dug out the official 2011 World Series film (a two-disc DVD stored in a plastic tray under our guest room bed here in Arizona) and watched my comeback Cardinals (down to their last strike twice in Game 6) defeat the Texas Rangers in seven games.

That primer led me to peel back another layer of the baseball onion. I began reading a book, which Tom … a life-long Chicago Cubs fan … gave me for Christmas: 100 Things Cardinals Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, revised and updated by author Derrick Goold in 2019.

Times being what they are, I figured I’d better read this book pronto. (Incidentally, for lovers of the national pastime, my books Tales of a Rollercoaster Operator and An Unobstructed View include nostalgic stories about baseball that I think you’ll enjoy.)

Now we’re a week into April. This is about the time the first pitch on opening day of the new baseball season would have been thrown fifty years ago. Since I’m spending more time inside anyway, yesterday I reached to the top shelf of our guest room closet and pulled down a three-ring binder filled with my cherished Topps baseball cards from 1965 to 1971.

At that point, I was bitten by the baseball bug. Smiling ear to ear. Rifling through my collection of several hundred cards. Remembering the Major League Baseball all-stars and also-rans of my youth. Flipping over their cards to read their vital statistics and baseball anecdotes.

I’ve selected the following fourteen from 1970 to share with you … seven from the National League; seven from the American League … with snippets of information (in quotes) pulled from the back of each card. I’ve added my recollections too.

If you’re a baseball fan like me, no matter your favorite team, perhaps this will help rekindle the hope that one day (possibly sometime this summer) we will again hear a nameless umpire shout these two words:

“Play Ball!”

***

Matty Alou, Outfield, Pittsburgh Pirates: “Spray hitting Matty led majors in hits in 1969, also led Bucs with 22 stolen bases.” … I remember Matty as a tough out. In reference to his contact approach to batting, Dad would have called him a “Punch and Judy” hitter.

Don Kessinger, Shortstop, Chicago Cubs: “Don was the NL All-star shortstop for the 2nd consecutive year in 1969 … Led NL shortstops in assists in 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, and in double plays in 1968 and 1969.” … As a kid, I saw Don play numerous times. He was a slick fielder and Cardinals nemesis for years.

Tim McCarver, Catcher, Philadelphia Phillies: “A three-sport star in school, Tim joins the Phillies in 1970. Two-time NL All-Star.” … McCarver was a hard-nosed receiver and long-time Cardinal before joining the Phillies. After retiring from baseball on the field, he moved to the broadcast booth.

Steve Renko, Pitcher, Montreal Expos: “Steve was a quarterback at Kansas University and was drafted by the Oakland Raiders in the 15th round in 1966 … he turned to pitching in 1967.” … Renko was a rangy right-handed starting pitcher. His team, the Expos, were part of major league expansion in 1969. Years later, they moved and became the Washington Nationals.

Tug McGraw, Pitcher, New York Mets: “Broke into pro ball with a no-hitter on July 3, 1964 … he was an important cog in the Mets” (1969) pennant drive.” … This emotional lefty was a bulldog relief pitcher. Whenever he entered the game, he slammed the door on the competition.

Jim Wynn, Outfield, Houston Astros: “Jim was Houston’s top slugger in 1969. First signed with Cincinnati in 1962.” … I remember the laser beam homers hit by the muscle-bound man known as the “toy cannon”.

Rich Allen, First Base, St. Louis Cardinals: “Rich again led the Phils in all offensive categories in 1969 … he was traded to the Cardinals during the off-season.” … The flashy and controversial Dick Allen (his preferred name) played for the Cardinals for just one year, but earned a place in the All-Star game.

Carl Yastrzemski, Outfield, Boston Red Sox: “Another great season for Carl in 1969, he was among the league’s top five in homers and runs batted in.” … Yaz, who later became a Hall of Famer, was a fierce left-handed power hitter and outstanding defender.

Jim Kaat, Pitcher, Minnesota Twins: “One of the finest fielding pitchers.” … Jim’s twenty-five-year career as a player ultimately spanned four decades. He played for the Cardinals when they won the World Series in 1982. After retiring from the game, he became an outstanding broadcaster.

Carlos May, Outfield, Chicago White Sox: “Carlos made the All-Star team last year (1969) in only his fourth year of pro ball.” … I remember Carlos as a clutch left-handed power hitter, who played first base predominantly.

Mike Hegan, Outfield, Seattle Pilots: “Mike enjoyed a fine year with Seattle in 1969, leading the club in three baggers.” … Though this card identifies Hegan as a Seattle Pilot in 1970, the franchise was sold and the team moved that year. They became the Milwaukee Brewers. Hegan also played for the Yankees and A’s during his major league career.

Gates Brown, Outfield, Detroit Tigers: “Pinch-hitter deluxe … Gates was an excellent high school fullback.” … Gates Brown spent his entire twelve-year, major league career with the Detroit Tigers. He hung up his professional cleats for the last time in 1975.

Gene Michael, Shortstop, Yankees: “Gene is called ‘Stick’ because of his slender appearance.” … After his playing career, Gene managed the New York Yankees and Chicago Cubs. As the Yankees’ general manager, he received accolades for building a team that became a dynasty in the late 1990s.

Sal Bando, Third Base, A’s: “Sal, Reggie Jackson and Rick Monday were all teammates in college at Arizona State University.” … Sal was a key member of the Oakland Athletics dynasty that won three consecutive World Series championships between 1972 and 1974.

***

There is one more card and story I need to share. One of Lou Brock, the perennial all-star left-fielder. Though the 1970s were lean years for the St. Louis Cardinals (a sorbet of sorts between the glory days of two World Series championships in the 1960s and another in 1982), Brock became the all-time major league stolen base leader in August of 1977. That’s when he broke Ty Cobb’s career record of 892 stolen bases. Brock’s record was later surpassed by the phenomenal Rickey Henderson of the Oakland A’s.

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Between 1964 (when the Cubs traded Brock to the Cardinals) and 1979 (when Lou retired), I was fortunate to see Lou patrol the outfield in St. Louis and burn up the base paths in person on dozens of occasions. (Ironically, in October 2015, Lou Brock’s left leg was amputated below the knee due to an infection related to a diabetic condition. But to this date he has survived that and multiple myeloma blood cancer diagnosed in 2017.)

Most important of all, for much of my muggy St. Louis childhood, I sat beside my father on the boards of the left-field bleachers at Busch Memorial Stadium. Together we watched the baseball gods of yesteryear dazzle us on the baseball diamond and break all sorts of records. Dad will forever be my baseball buddy.

Not a bad recollection to pass the time in 2020 as I hold my breath and wait with the world to see what happens next.

 

 

 

Visible Signs

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We can’t deny the numbers, the visible signs of pain. As I write this, there are upwards of 1.2 million documented COVID-19 cases globally (64,580 dead … 246,110 recovered). More than 311,000 cases here in the United States (8,452 dead … 14,471 recovered). Endless stories of inadequate supplies and presidential lies.

Though I live in a less populated area of Arizona and have been fortunate (so far) to dodge this global pandemic in a physical sense, the emotional challenge is more problematic.

On a daily basis, I worry about the welfare of my husband, my sons, my friends, my neighbors, myself. I feel my anger, anxiety and sadness abound as the gaps in social distancing widen. All of my churning emotions live close to the surface like the Hole-in-the-Rock buttes that pile upon each other in Papago Park. Trails there are now closed indefinitely. As is the normally crowded outdoor pool in the center of our condo community. That expected, but new, wrinkle in the stay-at-home order from Governor Ducey took effect tonight at 5 p.m.

Though with each passing day our normally vibrant community becomes more desolate and cordoned off, Tom and I realize we’re luckier than most Americans. We live in a warm, wide open space. We’re finding creative ways to communicate, cope and release the negative energy.

Free weights and yoga in our sun room to replace past workouts at the community gym. A jigsaw puzzle of neon hotel signs constructed on a large piece of cardboard on our kitchen table. Daily walks and conversations along the canal or at a nearby Scottsdale park. Endless home-cooked meals. Today, that included a batch of chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies.

So, not all of our visible signs tell stories of death or inactivity (2,000 COVID-19 cases in Arizona so far, including another 250 today). Nature sets the best example. Hawks and ospreys still soar unrestrained high above the rugged Sonoran Desert landscape. Lizards scamper in the afternoon sun. Cactus blooms burst with April color.

A mourning dove nests with her newborn in the crux of a neighbor’s bush. A gaggle of Gambel’s quail skitter down the sidewalk. I wonder what could prompt them to be in such a hurry. Perhaps they’ve discovered a ready supply of masks and ventilators.

It helps calm my nerves to see these signs of nature, these visible truths mixed with my own creative storytelling. Because I know the alternative. What it meant to spend a significant portion of my adult life in my twenties, thirties and early forties … inauthentic and  invisible to the world as a closeted gay man.

Of course, that’s all ancient history now. I’ve been happily living out of the closet for quite some time now. But it helps to remind myself of my truth and the visible signs that got me here.

Like a moment about fifteen years ago here in Arizona. Tom and I were visiting Scottsdale in May. Staying at the Fire Sky resort (which no longer exists). My kind and generous husband reserved a room for us there for several nights because the pool near our condo (the one we usually enjoy and now live near permanently) was closed for repairs.

Magically, it seemed, we found ourselves sipping frilly drinks in lounge chairs by the luxurious Fire Sky pool. Without much notice, two rather gregarious, somewhat attractive and smartly accessorized women with sex in their eyes approached us. One leaned in with her husky Suzanne Pleshette voice and offered this inquiry … “Where are your wives?”

It felt as if I pondered her question for a considerable time. Perhaps fifteen minutes? Eventually, I smiled up at her and replied … “He’s sitting next to me.”

“Oh, you’re a couple,” she acknowledged without judgement. A few moments later, we concluded our brief, yet authentic, conversation. Suzanne and her friend Daphne (not their names) walked away. Perhaps to pursue another possibility or two.

After they left … proud of my May outing … I smiled at my future husband seated at my left. I sipped on the sweet nectar of my Pina Colada, astonished at the words I had blurted more boldly than I could have imagined.

With fire in the sky and love in my heart, I had somehow mustered the courage to set the record straight. There was no doubt. I was most definitely gay. It was a positive visible sign. I hadn’t allowed another inauthentic opportunity to pass uncorrected.

 

I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together

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Photo by Rene Asmussen on Pexels.com

The madness of March is history. What will this stay-at-home April bring? Certainly more meaningful memories.

***

At 9 p.m. Central Time on Monday nights in 1970—fifty years before the contagious COVID-19 stunned and stymied our world—a kooky comedienne with a toothy smile and infectious laugh captured my twelve-year-old heart and creative imagination. Her name was Carol Burnett.

Born April 26, 1933–in the depths of the Great Depression–this legendary actor of stage and screen first tasted success with her Tony-nominated Broadway performance in Once Upon a Mattress in 1959. Soon after she appeared as a regular on The Gary Moore Show.  My exposure to her madcap comedic skills began on September 11, 1967. That’s when The Carol Burnett Show debuted on CBS-TV.

Through the spring of 1971, the network ran the hour-long variety and sketch comedy format opposite two popular programs: NBC’s I Spy; and ABC’s The Big Valley. (Later in the seventies, as the show gained a larger audience and momentum, CBS moved The Carol Burnett Show into its Saturday night lineup following four other prime-time powerhouse comedies: All in the Family, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and The Bob Newhart Show.)

Back in 1970, after I finished my homework on Monday nights, the lights on stage came up around Carol and were transmitted through our Zenith color TV in suburban St. Louis. Long before I first imagined taking flight in my dusty desert time machine, she proceeded to field questions from her studio audience and lead me and thousands of other viewers across the country on a metaphoric and comedic joy ride.

Every week we sat mesmerized. We watched Carol and her creative troop–Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, Lyle Waggoner … and later Tim Conway–perform their magical TV mayhem. Together they represented creative constancy in my life.

At that time, Dad worked the night shift as a custodian for a government agency in St. Louis: sweeping and mopping floors; cleaning toilets and urinals; emptying waste baskets. It was a life of late-night drudgery my father, the ex-salesman and unfulfilled poet, couldn’t stomach and never dreamed of—especially when the rest of the world had Carol and the hilarity of her As the Stomach Turns weekly soap parody at their disposal from the comfort of their living room couches.

But like clockwork, at 9:30, Dad called during a break from his janitorial job. He craved a creative escape too. He wanted my color commentary on Carol’s show. The ringing on our kitchen phone was my cue to fill in the comedic gaps. I stretched the curly cord into the living room and translated Carol’s hour-long variety show into something positive that might sustain him….at least for one night.

To put this in its proper personal perspective, Dad felt he was missing the important moments in life: a traditional schedule of evenings at home with his wife and children watching Carol’s shenanigans. All for the sake of a weekly paycheck and a job that clogged his ego like a stopped-up toilet.

As far as Walter Johnson was concerned, there was nothing else remotely funny about 1970. The Vietnam War was raging. Nixon was president. That was awful enough. Especially for a life-long Democrat.

I’d like to think our phone exchange during his break and my play-by-play of Carol’s comedy sketches and crazy Bob Mackie costumes he missed helped transform his melancholy spirit. Ironically, over the course of Burnett’s career, she frequently reprised the role of a soulful scrub woman, who cleaned up after everyone else went home. It was Burnett’s tattered-but-enduring character, which became her show’s symbol of humor, heart and humanity.

Just like the rotary phone that rang on our kitchen wall, I never imagined the show would one day disappear. But on March 29, 1978, after eleven seasons and 279 episodes (notwithstanding another nine episodes that aired in the fall of 1991) the curtain came down on The Carol Burnett Show.

In the mix, the Vietnam War ended. The troops came home. Nixon resigned in 1974. I graduated from high school and went on to college in 1975. Dad did his best to complete his night-shift janitorial duties.

In August of 1976, at sixty-two-years old—the age I am now—he retired from a job he despised but tolerated to contribute what he could to the well-being of our family. Remarkably, my father lived another seventeen years, despite his struggles with heart disease and depression.

“I’m so glad we had this time together, just to have a laugh or sing a song. Seems we just get started and before you know it, comes the time we have to say so long.”

At the close of each of her shows, Carol Burnett sang this familiar tune, tugged on her left earlobe, and signed off. Evidently, it was a signal to her grandmother to let her know she was doing okay.

I loved it all. Carol’s shenanigans, her show, her sidekicks, her song, her signal, her sentiment. Dad did too. Everything she represented … her physical humor, uproarious laughter and wacky demeanor … sustained us through difficult times.

Fortunately, Carol Burnett lives on at eighty-six. So do the best moments from her comedy sketches on her Carol Burnett and Friends shows that appear in syndication.

Remembering her fearless foolishness and mischief on April Fools Day is helping to lighten my spirit today as I work to make sense of another dark chapter in our world.

Thank you, Carol Burnett … I’m so glad we had this time together.

On the Other Side

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On the other side of the glass,

I see neighbors pass.

We keep our distance,

At the world’s insistence.

To make amends,

I grab my telephoto lens.

The moment is fleeting,

But this one’s worth keeping.

Better get the curve flatter,

Though silhouettes matter.

Especially when left,

By those we love best.

 

 

 

I Was a Child of the Global Pandemic

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In 2008, in the midst of the Great Recession and the subprime mortgage crisis, I found myself reading the handwriting on the wall. My sister Diane and I were seated beside our mother. She had begun to slip mentally.

A physician at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago began to examine Mom to determine the severity of her cognitive impairment. As he proceeded to ask questions, I felt a sense of sadness and impending doom wash over me. I knew we were about to cross the threshold into a personal crisis for our family.

The doctor began. “Helen, tell me about yourself.”

She responded. “I was a child of the Great Depression.”

Those were my eighty-five-year-old mother’s first eight wise-and-weary words. I wasn’t surprised by her commencement. As her mental acuity waned and her short-term memory deteriorated, Helen always described herself as she existed near the beginning of her story.

She was proud to share her hard-working narrative. To explain how her father and mother–people of simple means and honest ambitions– somehow always found ways to put food on the table in the 1930s after the stock market crashed and some folks, overcome by their losses, jumped out of high-rise windows.

But Helen and her family survived the depths of the Great Depression in rural North Carolina. The experience forever shaped the woman she would become. She wore it as a badge of honor. Saving for a rainy day. Taking the surest path. Honing her skills. Consolidating the contents of half-empty ketchup bottles. Pulling the little red wagon up and down the hill to get groceries when the car went kaput and Dad’s heart weakened.

Building a career in Human Resources that often included working on Saturdays. Helping find government jobs for those who were disabled. Chatting about her love of gardening over the fence with neighbors. Trusting in time and patience. Squirreling away money. Parlaying it into smart investments. Turning a little into something that might someday become a lot.

***

Helen wasn’t alone. Her feelings and experiences represented those of an entire generation of Americans. Decades before she and other hearty souls like her–men and women who would also suffer one day from macular degeneration, heart disease, dementia, and more maladies–fought World War II, bought war bonds, rationed meals, moved to the suburbs to live in brick starter homes, lived the American dream, and produced a generation of Baby Boomers.

Helen passed away in 2013. There have been moments over the past few weeks when I’ve been grateful that she’s gone … not wanting her to experience the pain of this global pandemic that is consuming us, swirling over and through us, occupying every waking and nightmare-inducing moment of our lives. In other words, I’ve been thinking about  Helen’s plight from nearly a century ago and that of the young children of today.

How will the fear and anxiety spawned by this pandemic shape their lives? How will it inform their values? How will it determine the choices they make? How will it influence their destinies? How will they describe themselves and define their lives when it becomes their turn to tell their stories to doctors in the year 2100?

Perhaps they will tell these kinds of stories.

***

My name is Anna. I was born on March 22, 2013. I was a child of the Global Pandemic. Before 2020, my mother and father owned and operated a popular restaurant in the Phoenix area. Customers raved about the great food and the lively atmosphere. But after the coronarivus entered our world, my parents were forced to abandon their business.

To survive, Mom ended up starting a business to deliver food to those who were house bound. Dad was handy. A few of the local condo communities hired him to handle day-to-day mechanical problems that came up. My parents didn’t earn much, but it was enough to sustain us in the short term.

I remember the tears and the anguish in our home. Everyone was afraid of contracting the virus. The news reports and the loss of life were devastating … especially to a few of my parents’ friends and restaurant acquaintances in major cities like New York, San Francisco and Chicago.

But Mom and Dad tried to remain strong. If anything, I loved them more during those years of hardship. For my seventh birthday, they insisted we would celebrate, though it felt as if all of us were living under a dark cloud … even here in the Valley of the Sun.

Mom and Dad always referred to me as their little princess … Princess Anna. So, Mom bought a banner with silver curls that seemed to float down from the sky. It was emblazoned with the word “princess” on it … and the three of us sat under a green metal canopy in a park in Scottsdale. They sang Happy Birthday to me and we enjoyed cake and ice cream outside. It felt like the safest place we could be at that time.

That’s a moment in my life I’ll never forget, because it happened at the beginning of all this uncertainty in the world … schools and businesses closing, the stock market bobbing and weaving, an over-worked and broken health care system fully taxed, our political system in disarray, our infrastructure crumbling. It was frightening for everyone, but most of us survived and became stronger.

The next few years were lean ones. But, with time, the economy grew strong again. People put their lives back together. Many years later, I ended up pursuing a career in health care, because I could see how desperate the world was for qualified doctors.

I never imagined I would become an epidemiologist. But it happened. Who knows what my life might have become if the health challenges of our world hadn’t become so apparent to me in 2020?

After all, I was a child of the Global Pandemic.