Category Archives: Pandemic

Time to Grow

02 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Childhood, Pandemic

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Three weeks.

Twenty-one days, just over 500 hours, which is just over 30,000 minutes.

That’s how long it’s been, and ticking, since our family started sheltering at home, the day our governor urged everyone to do so while this pandemic runs its course.

Time.

We have exactly as much of it as in any other three week period, looking at the numbers.

But when your options have narrowed it gives you a whole new perspective on time.

One day we were running normal errands, taking Baby Girl to the chiropractor then dropping her at AWANA at church. The next day Dear Husband and I have a two hour adventure at the grocery store to buy what should have taken us half that much time, seeing the panic and confusion on every face.

Our clothes and dishes stay washed up. I’ve been slowly doing some spring cleaning (not usually an annual thing at our house!). We’ve binge-watched all kinds of things. Our games have been getting used.

And there is still time to spare.

Baby Girl has been toying with the idea of growing a garden this year. I bring this up because I think it’s a great idea for lots of people to do.

I personally do not have a green thumb. I’ve told you that I love to dig in the dirt so it may be stained brown, but the only thing I grow well and consistently is weeds.

But thinking about it, many people have the time it takes over the next month to start some seeds and remember to water them. To set them in a sunny spot for the day and take them back in for cold nights. To transplant into bigger pots or rig up a mini-greenhouse for a small garden plot with old plastic and wire coat hangers, or whatever you have on hand.

We’re going to the store way less than normal, but I’m betting the seasonal area of our grocery would have a pretty full rack of seed packets, and with a little research we could have some cool weather vegetables out in the ground or pots by the time three more weeks have gone by.

The date I’m hearing to stay mostly at home is now June 1. And I want to give a plug for your friendly local greenhouse growers, because they have acres of plants already growing long before we started hearing about coronavirus.

Thirty-four years ago I was working at one. Growing up one of our family’s closest friends was the owner of a greenhouse and farm, and I spent a lot of time out there as a girl. Once I was married I quit my job as a maid at a hotel and was looking for something less full-time. My mom reminded me of the good times she’d had working at the greenhouse years before, so I called.

That year I spent January to April planting seedlings in flats, then worked the sales floor watering, fertilizing and restocking the plants through summer and fall, and then hefting Christmas trees before having a few weeks off.

The next planting season I ran the table, which involved punching holes in all the flats using a treadle-type machine invented by a man in my town. Then I’d send them down the middle of the planting table where eight women would take out a new flat and plant the seedlings, then put the full boxes onto carts. I got to move the carts around, find the next seedlings, get the picture stakes to put in the cups.

That year I got pregnant with Oldest Son, and after the planting season was done I retired.

It was probably my most fulfilling job ever.

Those plants didn’t make it into my ground, so I didn’t have to keep them alive all summer as they grew bigger. But I still love the day I go out to the greenhouse each spring and make the selections of what I want to grow.

Or at least try to grow.

And this year I intend to do the same.

It will be different than other years, most things are right now. I’ll go earlier in the season than normal to avoid being around many people. I’ll probably make one of my famous lists, and try to stick to it. I’ll need to be deliberate about what I really think we’ll be able to plant over the next few weeks and not spend more than necessary. And unlike other years I won’t be able to make multiple trips to pick up things I forgot.

In addition to vegetables and herbs I’ll also get some flowers for the family graves. Those will definitely wait until after May 15 around here to get planted in the ground, but I can keep them alive for a few weeks. I hope.

The hardest part of the whole thing will be staying six feet away from the people I’ve known and loved that still work there, my friend who took over for his dad as he got older. His family that was young and growing when I worked there so many years ago, now adults with their own kids helping in the family business.

There are lots of things that could be done with my time over the next month. Friends are making masks for health-care workers. Others are checking in with various people, making sure they’re okay and stocked up with supplies. Some are tackling projects like painting and other home improvements. I know someone who has ordered a keyboard and is planning to learn to play it over the next few weeks.

So this is just another idea, in case you don’t like any of the things you are hearing about, or have already done them all and need a new project.

Start with something easy, like leaf lettuce. Buy a packet of seeds, planting medium, an empty flat and cups. Plant them, water them gently and set them in a sunny window and in a couple of weeks you can put them out in the ground or a bigger pot or whatever you have to grow them in.

One of the many benefits of keeping even a small garden is the time you get to spend with your hands in the dirt, weeding and coddling and eventually harvesting.

And less time needed shopping for fresh produce in the stores.

You know, while I’m spring cleaning, I may even find some unusual containers to hold my plants.

That’ll save me time later, when I don’t have to take the containers to Goodwill.

Not a Germophobe

26 Thursday Mar 2020

Posted by in Childhood, Pandemic, Relationships

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I’m not sure if it puts me at a higher risk in these pandemic days, but I’m not a germophobe.

I confess, I haven’t gone over every surface in my house with something meant to kill anything living on them in the past couple of weeks.

I actually have cleaned more than usual for me, but mainly because my husband is now four weeks past his hip replacement and it wouldn’t be a good time for him to pick up an infection of any kind and need to go to the hospital.

There are many places I could lay the blame, if necessary, but the reality is that I just don’t care that much about cleaning things.

I grew up having the most fun playing in dirt piles or sand, fashioning “buildings” out of branches and leaves, stirring up mud puddles and mixing up different things just to see what could happen.

I still love spring, sticking my hands down in the dirt, squeezing the lumps out of to make a smooth path for the roots of the plants I’ll put in my barrels after the 15th of May has passed.

Or pulling out the weeds that I let go the year before as they emerge young and fragile for a few weeks before really digging themselves in. I can spend hours just working through the soil with my hands. It’s very satisfying to me.

And when I finally need to clean up, there is always a nail brush and a sturdy bar of soap to get the job done.

So for me, I don’t get too excited about cleaning things. When I can see the dirt, it’s time.

And I am puzzled by my friends who clean obsessively. Since this pandemic started I’ve seen lots of Facebook posts about how much/often/vigorously people are cleaning.

In my mind I don’t see the need. I’m not saying we shouldn’t wash our hands often and well. But our reality is that we are not out and among other people hardly at all. We have been staying home, and when we do venture out we wash up good when we return.

I will clarify by saying I do know how to clean. And when I do it I do it well. The two and a half years I spent as a maid at a hotel taught me a lot about deep cleaning, so it isn’t lack of knowledge. Just personal preference of how I’d rather spend my time.

I don’t like to clean, but I like making lists about cleaning. I could write lists for a living. I love breaking things down into the component parts. And I can see that in order to get from point A to point B in a project things 1, 2 and 3 probably need to happen. And I can include all those details that will get the job done well.

I actually have wide-eyed hopeful lists of cleaning chores I wrote when I was brand-new married. They are something to see! (Yes, I kept the notebook I wrote them in, it’s somewhere in a box in a closet.)

We had just built our house, it wasn’t quite finished on our wedding day, so everything was fresh and new. I had lists of daily, weekly, semi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual cleaning chores to be done. Even a few five to ten year things like painting.

I sure had my work cut out for me.

It wasn’t until we’d been married ten years that my husband told me something I’d never ever known about myself.

He said I was a perfectionist.

Well. If that were the case, wouldn’t I have been able to complete all the tasks on all those lists?

But the reality was that I hadn’t.

And the context in which Dear Husband shared this truth with me was in talking about the household chores and how we split them up between us.

I thought about this new idea. Was I a perfectionist?

Well, I certainly knew in my mind exactly how I wanted things done. And I could see every step that needed to be taken to get the outcome I envisioned. But I had lived life with other people for so long that I had learned a basic fact.

If there is a way for things to stop your plans from being realized, it will happen. In my case someone else’s needs usually came in the middle of whatever I wanted to accomplish.

It wasn’t that their needs were more important than mine, just that they were important. They needed to be taken care of. So I learned to let the things go that really didn’t matter as much as I thought it did all those years ago when I made those starry-eyed lists.

So I don’t clean like I could, maybe even like I should. It’s more hit and miss than I’d like.

But in these times when things aren’t going the way they normally would, when grocery shopping has become an opportunistic hunt and work is slow coming in, when everyone is home and tempers flare and we all are more needy than normal, I’m okay with it.

I’m fine not being a germophobe. I have more important things on my mind.

Eye Contact

19 Thursday Mar 2020

Posted by in Pandemic, Relationships

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A couple of weeks ago I had never heard of the idea of social distancing.

And give it time, a few years maybe, and we will probably have fading memories of the March when we needed to isolate ourselves from most social situations, put physical distance between us and other people.

For all of our protection.

On the latest trek to the grocery store Baby Girl and I saw it in action.

Per the advice given, we had a list and a plan. Start at the pharmacy end, zip straight across to the produce/fresh meat/bakery, then around the edges for staples and down a quick couple of aisles for things we were out of.

As soon as we started across the main aisle we noticed neon-bright tape X’s at intervals down the floor. One at the aisle end of every checkout lane, one at the paypad end.

We soon saw a worker on his knees putting down the tape. I asked if the X’s were 6 feet apart – the distance recommended to stay away from others to avoid contact with anyone’s droplets – and he said yes.

I thanked him, and said I was glad the store was giving us a visual aid to help comply.

The X’s continued down the length of the far side of the aisle, so that when there are long lines like we ran into last week, people can stay a good distance apart while waiting.

Here in Ohio I hear we have a reputation for hoarding toilet paper. If the shelves in the store I usually shop are an indication, that’s the truth. I’m curious for someone to connect why that was the hot item in our state, though it is a convenience people don’t like to be without.

Also in Ohio we are gaining a reputation for a governor who has put forward some very cautious yet radical plans of action. Schools are closed, universities and colleges, day cares will soon follow. Restaurants are take-out only. Large gatherings are not allowed, though churches are deciding on their own. Most are complying and not holding in-person services.

Governor Dewine is being looked at as a template for other states from what I read, and I am glad if he is erring on the side of caution. I don’t mind being inconvenienced for a while to keep more people healthy and lessen the impact this pandemic will likely have on the health-care system.

And as far as social distancing, I’m afraid our modern age has taken care of that in many ways. We can sit in a crowded room and no one is talking to each other. Everyone is busy on their phones, as if there weren’t any real people sharing the space with them, only the games and apps and “social media” that lets everyone isolate while thinking they are still “connected” to their many friends and followers.

As my family is learning to navigate our new normal for each day, we are venturing out in very limited contact with anyone else. Trips to the store are the most exposure and infrequent compared to our previously normal daily stops.

Work has been the biggest adventure. We have a small family business that’s been around for 58 years, and as Dear Husband is healing from his hip replacement, he has been coaching our two youngest through some basic jobs they can handle.

The training had started long before the surgery, but it wasn’t until just a couple months before the date that they started planning this slow return to work for DH. So as the jobs come in, he picks and chooses the ones he thinks the kids are ready to handle.

The plan sounded great three weeks ago, the day of the surgery.

And then the world changed dramatically.

In the 34 years we’ve been married, we’ve seen a lot of change in the world. A lot of change in our business.

The one thing that has never changed is that God has always provided work for our hands, food for our table.

And no matter what is going on in the world, I have no reason to doubt his ability to get us through this pandemic, this game-changer that is reshaping the way we live our daily lives.

So on the days we have a job or two to take care of, I drive, the kids help their dad work in a garage or two, at the most they see one or two other people who stick their head out to check how it’s going, and pile back in the car to head home.

Way less contact with the outside world than they are used to having.

And I sit in the car and knit while they work, or run for supplies, or cancel appointments as they come to mind.

And I watch.

Workmen at a neighboring house, people walking their dogs, moms with kids on a bike or a stroller. Mail carriers, garbage men, homeowners checking for mail.

Almost all walking quickly, purposefully, eyes straight ahead or on the ground, that heartwrenching look of being on the edge of breaking on their faces.

So I’ve decided I’m fine with putting physical distance between me and everyone else. I can try to remember to stay six feet away.

But I will not distance myself emotionally from the fear and confusion I see on almost every face.

I tried it today, with the man picking up the garbage bags next to my car and the one backing the truck into the condo driveway. With the frowning man walking his dog. With everyone else I saw, mostly through the windshield of the car.

I made eye contact. Or tried to.

You see, I have hope. And I believe that I need to be ready to give a reason for the hope that I have. And I can’t begin to give you a reason if I am too scared to look you in the eye.

And I am not too scared.

I want you to see that Jesus is not a liar. When he says he will be with us always, he didn’t mean except for when the world is flying apart at the seams and we can’t make sense of anything.

I think he means that is EXACTLY when he will be most with us.

So if you see me across a store or parking lot, don’t be surprised if I attempt to catch your eye. I can’t touch your hand or hug your neck, but I can let you know that I see you, that you matter, that you are not alone.

It’s one way I WILL try to make human contact while we are encouraged to keep our distance from each other.