A Quarantine Thursday - Non-Essential

I have little motivational sayings posted all over the walls of my workroom.  On my desk.   Stuck to the front of my computer. 

I have a Pinterest board full of little motivational sayings.

Sometimes, I copy, paste, crop, and shrink them, then print them off and cut them apart and put them into highly-decorated recycled Altoids tins to give to other women I think just might need a tinfull of little motivational sayings.  Like this one: 

It's a good motivational saying.  Especially for people like me who are basically moms with side jobs.  I think on it often.  

But I haven't been feeling it lately. 

Because I'm non-essential.  

I'm not medical, or media.  I don't work at Wal-mart or a gun shop.  I'm not a teacher, a policeperson, firefighter or electrical linewoman. (I am, however, inclusive.)

But today I was called in to work at the food pantry, a place I've volunteered at for years but have been a little frightened to work at for the past month.  The last few times I worked, we hustled to bag hundreds of bags of groceries for hundreds of families, and members of local service organizations delivered them.  

After the last time I worked, I woke up every night for two weeks with a panic attack, afraid that I had come in contact with the Rona.  Was it on the bags, on the food, carried by the beautiful people standing beside me bagging food, singing along to my carefully curated Spotify Food Pantry playlist?    

But as is the case with many things during this pandemic - social services, opinions on mask-wearing, hospital visits, snack selections - it changed.  Customers are again coming to the pantry, but just not like they used to. 

Everything was different.

Everything was safe.

Customers came to the door with no close interaction, no complex paperwork.  Just give me your name and we'll give you some food.  

It was a good day.  We did good work. 

I feel a tiny bit more essential.  

Peace.  

A Quarantine Wednesday - Rest

It is ok to rest. 
It is ok to rest in the middle of the day. 
It is ok to rest in the middle of the day in the middle (middle?) of a pandemic even though there are still lots of things you'd like to accomplish during this quarantine.
  
Specifically, write your novel and clean the basement.

It is ok to rest when you had a panic attack at the grocery store yesterday.

It is ok to rest when you had a panic attack at the grocery store yesterday and are a little embarrassed but no one knew you were having a panic attack because you always shopped the right way down a one-way aisle and you stayed 6 feet away from everyone else and you had your mask on and you looked down at your phone pretending to be puzzled by your list all the while naming the 5 things you could see, 4 things you could feel, 3 things you could hear, 2 things you could smell and 1 thing you could taste even though you switched out 4 and 2 because you were afraid to touch anything other than your phone and you could smell chicken frying and bread because you were in the bread aisle.  And you were doing pretty well calming yourself until you realized that more than half of the people in the grocery did not have a mask on and one tall idiot without a mask seemed to be laughing at you so you put your right hand into your cardigan pocket and flipped him off. 

It is ok to rest. 

A Quarantine Tuesday Poem - Upon Thinking of Going to The Grocery Store

At 6

All I wanted was a pocketbook.
Grandma said I had a pocketbook,
The white patent leather, gold ball-snap
Purse with gold chain that I carried
Over my wrist
On Easter that held three kleenexes and
a red-stripe peppermint.
I wanted
a real pocketbook.
A big pocketbook to fill
With important things like 
Lipstick.
Floral-printed handkerchiefs stained with lip prints.
Assorted coins.
A small sewing kit. 
A wallet with money and a social security card
And a library card
And a license for driving a car.
I could go to the IGA with that pocketbook
And buy ice cream in little cups
With little wooden paddle spoons glued to the lids
And sour cream and onion potato chips
And foot-long hot dogs and foot-long buns.

At 13

Mom sewed me a purse out of the top
Of a pair of dad's overalls
To carry Kotex. 
To junior high. 
Such a cool purse, lined
With pink stripe fabric leftover 
From a pair of baby doll pajamas 
She had sewn for me that summer.
Wendy Calvin told my 
Social Studies class it was too bad
My mom couldn't afford buy me a real
Purse at JC Penney
So I stopped carrying it to school
And bled right through a pair of white pants
In the lunchroom.

At 35

Why is my damn purse so damn heavy?

At 57

Oldest daughter:  Mama, hand me your purse.  
I'll clean it out for you.
What's this? 
This chapstick is ancient.
Do you really need 11 pens?
You have so many coins in the bottom of your purse
It could be a door stop.
Or a lethal weapon, swung just right.  
Line up your bills according to value
Like dad does.
All the guys facing forward. 
Toss these old receipts.  
The newer ones are behind the bills.

Now keep it this way, she says. 
And then we laugh and laugh at her
Funny joke. 

At 60

Don't take a purse into the store, they say.
In and out quickly, they say. 
Carry just a card, they say.

But where do I put my keys?
My little pad for writing down interesting things?
Kotex.  Peppermints. 7 pens. 
Too many coins. 
Kleenex.
Hand wipes and Clorox wipes and hand sanitizer and plastic gloves.
And a mask. 

All I wanted was a little cup of ice cream. 
And a little wooden spoon. 

A Quarantine Monday

Today, quarantine is that little piece of nail that chips off on the ring finger of your left hand and you know that you should stop, file it down or get a clipper and round it off, even though you keep your nails short so they don’t gather dirt or tap on the keyboard.  But you don’t stop, and before you know it, the chip is bigger and catching on the yarn you’re knitting with or the t-shirt and stretchy pants you pull on so your neighbors, who you don’t think pay a bit of attention to you -  but you never know -  won’t think you’re a weirdo for spray painting two old rocking chairs in your nightgown.  But you don’t stop to clip or file, and when you pull on gloves to weed the mint patch of those SOB stinging nettles that you should have weeded a week ago, you catch that now-torn fingernail on the inside of the glove, but you don’t stop to clip or file because it looks like rain and those SOB stinging nettles aren’t going to weed themselves.  And then halfway through the mint patch you pull some SOB stinging nettles and discover the entrance to a huge tunnel, probably dug by that cute chubby groundhog who sometimes hangs out in the back yard and you scream a tiny scream because although he looks adorable through the kitchen window, you don’t know what groundhogs are like close up, even though you’ve seen the Puxsutawney spectacle a hundred times and don’t think they are mean or would launch themselves out of that tunnel and toward your carotid artery.  So you back up slowly toward the garage and get out the power washer and blast the moss off of the plant ferris wheel your dad welded together for your grandma 50 years ago and which you inherited after she sold her farm and which you clean up and re-paint every few years.   And when you go to dig your hammer out of your tool box to repair one of the little baskets on the ferris wheel, you catch that nail again and realize that it’s torn farther into the flesh of your finger, and although it’s going to hurt, you’re going to have to rip it off.  But not now – now you’re in the cathartic throes of power washing, and you scavenge your gardens and garage for more things to power wash!  More things to power wash!  You power wash the corona from the grocery store shelves.  You power wash the guns away from those terrorist/protestors in Michigan and Kentucky.  You power wash the smug right off the face of the president.  You power wash the picnic table where you and Anthony Fauci will celebrate the end of the quarantine with expensive wine and delicious cheese and crisp fig crackers and lovely little pastries you learned to make while quarantine-watching The Great British Baking Show then you and Dr. Fauci will make sweet sweet love right there on the picnic table on your back porch and your dear husband won’t even care because it’s Dr. Fauci for pete’s sake and anyway, he’s too busy watching for the groundhog to emerge from the cavern under your porch to notice the bacchanalia and then the power washer stops because you have drug it out too far from the plug.

And your finger hurts.  And you rip off the remnants of your nail. 

And you put on a band-aid and promise yourself never to let a broken fingernail go too far ever again. 

Peace.

To Bloomington on Tuesdays

There are 34 ways to get from my front door to my writing circle.

By interstate or by avoiding the interstate.

Heading west or heading east – really, they both work.

975, 50, 65, 46, 135, 58, 446 – big numbers that bring me to my favorite place for words.  Words and sentences and paragraphs and stanzas that I write and hear, that take me so much further and farther than the numbered roads I just drove in on.

Grant and Lincoln and Washington Streets, where I turn and park and land to laugh and wonder and discuss all sorts of interesting things, from parking to weather to dogs to the current president, who I am certain will never have a street in Bloomington named for him. 

Some mornings I drive over hills and twisty turny highways, across Monroe, across that causeway that scared me so when I was a high school junior, planning to come to IU to study music.  I was scared that the road would suddenly collapse as that station wagon full of high schoolers barreled over the road over the water to gawk at the dorm rooms and classrooms of our future.

Somedays I drive through campus just to watch students, some hurrying, some not, as they head to class.  I remember wanting nothing more than an oxford blouse with my initials embroidered on the pocket, and a button purse with my monogram embroidered on the outside, penny loafers and knee socks, a pile of books in my arms and a boyfriend to walk me to class. 

Somedays I drive through the IU campus and think about not going there, not getting a music degree.  I did the other stuff, even knee socks, but at my beloved university to the north, where their unofficial and slightly crass chant at the end of “Hail Purdue” is “IU sucks”.  

Tuesdays, I drive and listen to NPR, knowing just where those stretches of road are where I can’t receive either the Louisville or Bloomington stations, and then I turn down the static and think about what the writing circle that day will bring, what I will hear, what I will share, what I saw on the morning’s journey that I want to be sure and jot into my journal, what might become a longer piece of writing, what may lead me to some great enlightenment – the tailgater on 46, the lone kayak on Monroe, the trees a slightly different color than they were the week before, the buzzards finding a possum breakfast, and always bikers preparing for Little 500.  Which didn’t happen this year.

My weekly hour and a half drive isn't happening any more, either.  
I miss my friends, their enthusiastic welcomes, the brief catch ups, the quiet of the circle room, with only the tippy tap on keyboards or the scratch of pen on paper or the whispered “good morning” or the giggle at sitting on a squeaky chair to interrupt the silence until we come together to listen, share, and be filled by women's words. 
Our friends' words.  
Our friends' hearts.

How I miss it.  And even after technological disasters on my end, I am thankful for Zoom circles. 

From my spare bedroom, I’ve found one more way to get to Bloomington.

NaPoWriMo Fail

I wrote an entire one poem for National Poetry Writing Month, April 2020.  I thought I could do better than last year, when I wrote  around 10, but while some would think the pandemic/quarantine/worldwide chaos we are in would make good fodder for writing, it has literally shut me down.  I can't explain it.  This would have been the perfect time to work on my novel(s), but I've written very little - just enough to get me through my writing circle.  

That's embarrassing to admit.  

So here is my one and only sort-of poem.  Our prompt was to describe your life metaphorically along the lines of "life is like a box of chocolates."  I think.  

My Life is Sarah's Birthday Cake

The recipe is old, but good

From the 1959 edition of the Betty Crocker Cookbook, 

Found in an antique store and

Inscribed on the inside cover "to Georgie, from Mom, for her

Wedding shower, September 1982."

I've made it so many times, 

I'm comfortable with changes.  

An extra half teaspoon of vanilla,

One more egg white.

Now, I spray the 2 eight-inch pans with Baker's Joy 

Instead of rubbing them down with butter then 

Tossing around a few teaspoons of flour to coat.

Sift.  Cream. Fold.

Into the pans, into the oven.

Out of the oven, out of the pans.

Let it rest.  Let it cool.  Let it be.

For about an hour.

Then get busy.

The party is soon. 

The party is always soon. 

Beat the shit out of two sticks of butter and a block of cream cheese.

Add vanilla, sift in a half a bag of powdered sugar

And turn the mixer up too high so powdered sugar flies

Into each and every crevice of your kitchen.  

Split the layers in two, because fancy is everything.

Set the first layer on your favorite fancy cake plate,

Spread with buttercream, jam and repeat.  And repeat.  

The slather the whole cake with buttercream,  smoothing and 

Filling in holes and gaps and smoothing and filling. 

Top with a crown of raspberries.

Because fancy. 

Leave room for candles. 

White ones are best, but any combination of 

Colors, scavenged from the back of the silverware drawer

Will do 

As long as there are candles. 

Sing, clap, blow out the little flames.

Eat, laugh.

Wait a year and do it all again. 

In the Company of Women

There are not many places that I would rather be than with a group of women.

Oh, maybe around the dinner table with my entire loud family.

Or on the couch with my husband and good dog, with some knitting in my hands.

Or in a theater seeing or hearing something movingly spectacular.

OK, so the 4th.  The 4th best place I like to be in in the company of women.

Like-minded women.

Women who feel the same way about an old program, or a new plan or current issue as I do.
Women I can speak freely with.
Women who share my passions.
Women who agree that the current national administration is an outrage.
Women who agree that other women who support this administration are a puzzlement.
Women who love the earth and paint and animals and words.
Women who love being together with other women.

Knowing that we're not alone.
Knowing that no matter where we head to when we leave this company of women,
We know we have a home, together, here, to come back to.*

Peace.
Georgie



*women who don't mind if you end your sentences in prepositions.