Monsters Among Us

Monsters are real,” Stephen King wrote, “and sometimes they win.”

I’m not young enough or naive enough to still believe that good always overcomes evil. I think that the very best we can hope for – but not count on – is that it will mostly even out. And that’s only on days when I can manage to convince myself that hope itself is not one massive illusion. Those days are becoming fewer and farther between.

In some places around the world, the plague has been beaten back or kept at bay but in my own country, it’s winning. We denied it and downplayed it and offered it a firm grasp, not bothering to put up any resistance until it was too late. We provided a handful of masks and a fraction of the testing required and declared we’d won. And only now with the death tolls at staggering levels and the infection rates sky rocketing like a California wildfire, do we realize that we’re losing. Greed and profit matter more than lives. Ignorance combined with arrogance is the most deadly sin and it will be our undoing. No matter how this ends, if it ever does, life is never, ever going to be the same. The resulting economic crash was inevitable as was the mendacity that pushed for the reckless and fatal re-openings of states. Politicians and a selfish, lawless citizenry pushed for re-openings and are now paying the price. I have searched my soul and cannot find a single shred of sympathy for Texas or Florida. Small wonder that the virus has the upper hand – we invited the damn thing in.

Meanwhile, black lives are still being sacrificed in the cause of law and order. An illiterate, incoherent, lying, too stupid to live white supremacist sits in the White House and is protected and shielded by a cadre of bought and paid for congressmen and a cult of supporters too racist and willfully blind to see what’s happening. God and guns and fuck you, I got mine is the rule of the land. We have elected a cruel and delusional fool and chosen a path that can only lead to self destruction.

It’s remarkable how little time and effort it took to get to the “Just let’em die and be done with it” stage.

Fish Food

Ruthie and I had spent more hours than we could count collecting shells and starfish and driftwood, sometimes we would find an old coin tangled in the kelp but until the tide carried in the severed hand, our adventures had been harmless and mostly uneventful. The hand changed everything.

Ruthie saw it first and let out a high pitched scream, scaring me out of a year’s growth and making me drop my entire lapful of sea glass. It was ragged at the wrist, shriveled and badly discolored, missing two fingers and the joint of the thumb. When Ruthie poked it with a stick, I gagged and thought for a moment that I would lose my lunch.

“Leave it alone!” I wailed desperately.

“Jeesum crow,” she whispered, “Somebody’s fish food!” She leaned in a little closer and prodded it again. My stomach lurched dangerously.

“Let’s just go home,” I pleaded with her but Ruthie was as fascinated as she was stubborn. She managed to separate the vile thing from the kelp with the stick and push it out of the way of the tide.

“What can we put it in?” she asked.

“PUT IT IN?” I screeched and realized I was beginning to feel light headed, “”Put it back in the water! Let the fish finish it!” A feeling very much like panic had begun a slow but steady climb from my gut and I was positive if it reached my throat I would puke or pass out or both but Ruthie was being maddening reasonable.

“No,” she said calmly, “We have to tell somebody. Sparrow or Long John maybe.” She looked thoughtful for a moment and then grinned. “Better yet, we’ll take it to Doc! He’ll know what to do.”

The thought of handling it was the last straw. The bile reached my throat and I suddenly tasted acid indigestion and began dry heaving. I ran blindly for the edge of the woods, fell to my knees and threw up breakfast and lunch and everything in between. It was humiliating and awful but Ruthie helped me up, had me rinse my mouth with a handful of salt water, then gave me a cherry lifesaver and a reassuring hug.

“We can wrap it in kelp and put the kelp in the sandwich box,” she said practically, “Don’t worry, you won’t have to touch it.”

So that’s what we did. She tied her bandana to the stick and then the sandwich box to the bandana and we set off. I kept well away from the wretched thing but Ruthie just slung the stick over one shoulder and began to whistle. Headed down the well worn path from the cove to the road, I imagined we looked all the world like a couple of Norman Rockwell kids off on a fishing trip.

We found Doc comfortably settled in a rocking chair on his porch, smoking his pipe, frowning over a crossword puzzle and drinking buttermilk. The old gray tomcat who had kept company with every doctor we’d ever had was asleep at his feet and Miz Flora was in the kitchen, frying sausages and potatoes. Without a flicker of disbelief or condescension, Doc listened gravely as Ruthie explained what the tide had carried in. When she was done, he adjusted his spectacles and nodded for her to open the lunchbox.

“Well,” he said neutrally, “Let’s have a look at it.”

Ruthie opened the box, lifting the lid carefully and exposing the hand in a bed of kelp. I more than halfway expected it would begin crawling out on its own accord and was fully prepared to run when Doc reached for it - thought better of it and called for Miz Flora to bring him a pair of gloves, pulled them on and reached again - and laid it on the concrete. Flora went white and let out a gasp and the cat suddenly woke, wrinkled its nose and ran off in a huff. Smart cat, I thought dismally.

Doc frowned and looked closer. “My, my” he said and there was just a touch of surprise in his voice, “That certainly is a hand. How interesting.” He had Ruthie re-tell about how and where we had found it, asked if we’d seen anything else in the way of body parts (that made my gut clench again and I swallowed fiercely hard and prayed not to throw up) and then had Flora fetch a plastic bag and carefully slid it over the thing. “Reckon we’ll let the law have a look,” he told us reassuringly, “You were right to bring it.”

Ruthie flashed me a smug, told-you-so kind of smile and I had a sudden urge to punch her but I was too glad to be rid of the hand to stay mad. Doc took it to the RCMP but we never did find out whose it was or what had happened. Nova Scotia was a maritime province and the Atlantic storms took many an unsuspecting fisherman. It was painful and heartbreaking but not uncommon for a fishing boat to drift home alone and the body never be recovered.

“Comes with the territory,” Sparrow often said, “The ocean, she keeps her secrets.”

Alligators

There are few things more endearing than a tribe of hollering, dirt smeared urchins in ragged clothes descending on an unsuspecting drugstore while their scrawny, scantily clad, chin to ankle tattooed, meth addled mother tries to make sense of her change to pay for her smokeless tobacco. She swats absent mindedly at the children, cursing under her breath and yelling for them to behave. Most are running wild, pulling items off the shelves and chasing each other through the aisles. The one in the stroller begins to wail. Not a single child or their mother is wearing a mask and one older child is busy trying to rip the social distancing markings off the floor. Distracted drugstore staff are trying to pretend none of it is happening while management has done their well practiced disappearing act. It’s chaos at its best.

“Alligators,” I tell the cashier, making no effort to be discreet, “They eat their young.”

“Sound practice,” she tells me and smiles over her mask.

I pay for my cigarettes and make my escape.

Walgreen's Rules

I should have known better.

They have to call for a supervisor to come to the photo desk and as I watch her shuffle her sullen and obese self toward me, I remind myself not to judge a book by its cover. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t smile, doesn’t show any interest. I take a deep breath.

“Hi!” I say brightly, determined to give her the benefit of the doubt, “I need a print made from a negative.”

“Have to send it out.” she says flatly.

“Ok.” I say and try to smile.

“Might take 3-4 weeks,” she adds with a hostile glare.

“Ok.” I say and try harder.

“Maybe longer,” she says defiantly.

I don’t have to have a house fall on me. I slowly take back the negative and put it away, pick up my keys and sling my purse over my shoulder.

“Tell you what,” I say loudly, “Next time you can’t be bothered to help a customer, try saying so upfront. It’ll save you both time and trouble. Go back to your stall and strap on your feedbag.”

The last was harsh and I shouldn’t have said it but I’m done with slovenly, shiftless, rude and indifferent customer service and the troglodytes who provide it without consequences. The girls who cashier for minimum wage at the front of the store are unfailingly polite and pleasant and helpful. They know me and what brand of cigarettes I smoke, which candy I buy and that I’m likely to forget my keys if I’m frazzled. The rules for management are far less civil. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why this is such a hard lesson to learn.

Time Warped

As if life in the time of plague wasn’t challenging enough, the grocery stores have now instituted one way aisles. In this city, it’s all we can do manage one way downtown streets or 4 way stops and they think we can handle (or will obey) red arrows in floor diagrams. Many of the store’s employees and most of the shoppers are mask-less and seem to be wandering aimlessly. Some are outright lost, hypnotized by the barren shelves where the paper goods used to be. I have the feeling I am trapped in some kind of post-apocalyptic underground film, that the very next turn I take could lead straight into a nest of the undead. The other thing I notice is that it’s almost eerily quiet, no piped in elevator music is playing and the only sounds are the stops and starts of the shopping cart wheels. The shelf stockers move slowly and silently, as if in a daze and the cashiers are pale and glassy eyed, moving woodenly and seeming to look straight through me. The automatic doors whoosh open and a bag boy stumbles in, pushing a line of carts and looking bewildered. He doesn’t navigate the turn well and the first cart crashes into a display of bakery goods, sending containers of brownies and eclairs and freshly baked pies in all directions. It’s enough for me. I hand over a hundred dollar bill for $97 worth of groceries, tell the cashier to keep the change and make a run for it, swerving wildly to avoid the wreckage of the collision at the front doors and escaping to the parking lot. I was fully prepared to run right over anyone who got in my way.

Once outside, I came back to myself, feeling silly and ashamed for letting my imagination have its way. The grocery store was just a grocery store, not a scene from “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. The shoppers were just tired and quarantine-fatigued consumers, the employees no more than harried and overworked clerks. The bag boy was likely sleep deprived or over confident or had simply not been paying attention. It was, after all, just past 7 am on a Saturday morning in the 10^th week of this crisis. We all should still have been in bed.

I unloaded the groceries and dutifully returned the once again ordinary shopping cart to its corral. The morning was sun was warm and the pavement beneath my feet was reassuringly solid and substantial. I found myself thinking how odd it is that we don’t appreciate normal until it’s gone – I miss the unremarkable pre-virus days, the ordinary routines, the self indulgent complaining and complacency we allowed ourselves. Any distraction, even one born of a runaway imagination fueled by too much Stephen King and too little Walt Whitman is welcome. I had no idea that just a few days later, there would be widespread looting and riots with cities set on fire and the national guard patrolling the streets. Sometimes even my imagination can’t keep up.

God and Guns

“What if,” my friend Michael says as much to himself as to me, “This is as good as it’s going to get? What if this is the future and we just don’t know it?”

The same questions have crossed my mind and I have no answers.

“I hate my life. I hate how I live. I hate where I live. I hate this vile house and this low rent poverty town. I hate that I can’t get out. I hate I don’t see it getting any better.” Each sentence is punctuated by a furious jab at his phone. His tone makes the dogs restless, they sense his misery and hopelessness. “One fucking foot in front of the other,” he growls, “For how fucking long? How much are we expected to stand? How are we supposed to survive? What is the fucking point? There isn’t going to be anything left to get back to!”

I could point out that he has a roof over his head. It’s not much of one, but it is there. I could point out that most of our students are still trying to make their payments, that the two or three we’ve lost weren’t that committed to start with. I could remind him his dogs aren’t going hungry, that the lights are still on, that the emergency loans could still come through, that he’s drawing a very respectable unemployment benefit. He can still afford his Coke and cigarettes and cell phone and cable. It’s all more than hundreds, maybe thousands, have. He can still afford his health insurance, his car still runs, and the man who tends the lawn still comes every couple of weeks. I could say all that and a lot more but I don’t. I don’t have the will or energy to argue with him and besides by tomorrow he’ll think differently. Life with Michael is a series of ups and downs, highs and lows, peaks and valleys. He can go from suicidal despair to violent optimism in 60 seconds flat and it can be exhausting for us both. Today he is ready to take all the dogs to the shelter, set fire to the house and drive his Mercedes into a brick wall. Tomorrow, when the unemployment benefit comes, he will remember that he’s been through hard times before and he’ll persevere. It’s not the life he once had – certainly not the one he imagined or planned for – but hope is a tricky thing. It dances just beyond our reach, disappears without a trace, then returns with sly smile. Personally, I am not persuaded that we deserve it. Personally, I think there is no hope for healing and recovery while the current president maintains his power. His determination to keep the country divided is relentless and his corruption and cruelty know no bounds. He is a petty, jealous and vindictive little man with a pathological need to be center stage. Personally, I believe if he were to contract the coronavirus and die, the entire world would be a better, safer place. I say so to Michael and he gives me a resigned smile.

“Remember who would be in charge then,” he says grimly, “You really think we’d be better off?”

The prospect of a country made up of God and Guns gives me the chills but it wouldn’t be for very long, I remind him, and then maybe we could get back to sanity. He looks doubtful and I suspect if I had a mirror, so would I.

Dear Tricia

Dear Tricia,

I hardly know where to start. It’s mid May and the magnolias are in bloom everywhere you look. Your front yard flowers are out in force – I stopped one day last week to take pictures of them and thought how pleased you would be.

Not too long after you left us, the world we all knew and loved despite its flaws, more or less went to hell. A virus, nearly worthy of a Stephen King novel though I don’t think we knew it at the time, had been born in China and it took over the planet at startling and deadly speed, becoming a pandemic in no time at all. The experts and scientists and doctors who recognized and tried to warn us about the danger were silenced or ignored or simply dismissed and outshouted. We paid no more mind to them in the beginning then we are doing now. And it’s been a heavy price to pay. We went into lockdown at the end of March – schools were closed and all non-essential businesses were shut down. The CDC issued guidelines about what is called “Social distancing” which means staying 6 feet away from everyone, no gatherings of more than 10 people, disinfecting anything and everything you touch, wearing masks and gloves everywhere you do go, but most critically, staying home to try and slow the progress of the virus. It might even have worked if we’d taken it seriously but instead we opted to hoard – can you imagine your old Brookshire’s with empty shelves where toilet paper and paper towels used to be? Or them being completely out of bread? The “I got mine, fuck you” mentality spread like wildfire. Restaurants went to take out only and then to curbside delivery and then to closed. Doctors and hospitals were overwhelmed, the government announced that everyone would receive a “stimulus check”, a one time payment of $1200 and all kinds of programs were set up to loan money. Some had strings, some didn’t but in the best government tradition, the process was rife with corruption and cronyism. Huge hotel and restaurant corporations and republican donors got millions while actual small businesses got nothing. They’re still trying to figure out and fix that. Almost 2 months in from the shutdown and no one seems to quite know where all the money is. State unemployment agencies waived their look for work requirements and said everyone could apply – it took about a day and a half before Louisiana went under water. The last released unemployment figures were at just over 14%.

One of the oddest things was how pleasant the social service people continued to be – inept and unhelpful but relentlessly polite and nice. Newly created and established websites and portals malfunctioned at an astonishing rate and unless you were prepared to be on hold for an average of 2-4 hours, reaching anyone was impossible. There was and still is no way to track a claim of any kind. Uncertainty runs rampant.

Despite the death toll, a staggering number of people still believe it’s a hoax to hurt the president’s chances of re-election in November. Small but vicious and heavily armed mobs are storming state capitals, demanding their rights to get their hair cut or their nails done and threatening the lives of public officials in the name of freedom. And the president, you might ask – what is he doing? After spending months of denying the danger and lying through his teeth, the short answer is …….. nothing. Oh, he has his so called “press briefings” where he gets to brag about how well we’re doing and what a great job he’s done and of course he gets hateful and nasty with reporters unwilling to kiss his ring and storms out if they continue to press him. But every word out of his mouth is a lie – the numbers on testing, the fake cures he’s heard about and promotes, but mostly he wants us to know that none of it is his fault and he still knows best, not the doctors or the scientists or the World Health Organization or the CDC or the infectious disease specialists. His nightly twitter tirades are off the rails and his stupidity is a bottomless pit. I fully anticipate he’ll be re-elected. Neither he nor his republican cult followers give a damn how many will die. On the bright side, all he has is the economy and it’s gone sideways. It’s barely possible it may be enough to get his ass kicked. American lives don’t matter but profit does – he says so publicly and his fellow republicans back him up.

So here are in the middle of May and magnolias and no one is talking about anything except “re-opening”. The medical experts and researchers are warning it’s premature and that it will backfire but no one in power with the exception of a stray governor here or there is listening. The president is leading the charge and anyone who dares disagree is fired or reassigned or accused of disloyalty. In some cases, they’re just targeted for the malicious kind of sarcasm the president does so well. By the time he’s proven wrong, I fear so much damage will have been done and so many more people will have needlessly died or become infected that it will be too late. In many respects and for many people, America will be over,

Of course in the meantime, life goes on. I’m still going in to work for a couple of hours each day although technically the agency closed in March and there hasn’t been any work for weeks. Michael and I are both are both drawing unemployment and the business is relying on various emergency loans to stay afloat. We can’t re-open until the Catholic Center is available for classes and so far they haven’t been able to say when that will be. Some of our people are still managing to make their payments, some are not, one or two have dropped out but most seem to understand that we’re doing the best we can do under the circumstances. We’re planning on make up classes through the summer if the quarantine is lifted and Michael refuses to give up on a December show. Time will tell.

In other news…….Melody found a great home for Lily. I’d have given my right arm to be able to take her but it’d have been a disaster. Rochelle has volunteered to take both my dogs if anything happens to me. I haven’t heard from Lindsey or Kelsey but I know Mel got her unemployment and is doing the best she can. Mothers Day was difficult. We all miss you so very much.

The real estate thing didn’t work out so well for Keith and it may make you smile to know that he is now selling used cars. Henry was hospitalized and died a few a weeks ago – and just last week we lost Dominic to cancer. Those of us still around are muddling through as best we can.

If I told you about how I recently discovered that you can withdraw money with a debit card (and not just use it like a credit card which, as you know, I have never allowed myself to do) you would shake your head and maybe even roll your eyes. I’d give my right arm to have you fuss at me just one more time.

The Siege of '58

I was still half asleep when the factory whistle blew at seven. Five more minutes, I thought to myself and then I heard the heavy tread of my grandfather’s feet on the stairs and smelled the stale cigar smoke. A moment later, the bathroom door slammed shut and I snatched at my clothes and ran for the stairs, thinking that if I was quick enough, I might make it down to the kitchen and outside before he emerged. I never saw the toy dump truck my brother had left in the doorway to the living room or if I did I stepped over it without seeing the potential hazard.

Nana, still in her housecoat and slippers, was at the stove and I flew by her with the dogs at my heels.

“Breakfast is almost ready!” she called to me, “Don’t go far!”

It couldn’t have been more than five or ten minutes later when I heard the crash – my grandfather had stepped on or tripped over the dump truck and lost his footing – he went down like a ton of bricks, slamming into the doorway, howling in pain and then cursing and hollering like a wounded bull moose.

“SONOFAWHORE!” I heard him bellowing, “ALICE! ALICE! GODDAM IT, ALICE!”

I quickly decided my best option was to make myself as scarce as possible so I grabbed my sneakers, called to the dogs, and headed around the corner and down the front path as fast as I could run barefoot. I kept going til I got to the canteen where I ran headlong into Uncle Bernie with such force that I nearly knocked him down.

“Whoa, girl!” he said sharply once he regained his balance and rescued his spilled morning coffee, “Where’s the fire?”

“He fell!” I managed to say, “He might be dead!”

Uncle Bernie frowned, took hold of my shoulders and gave me a good shake.

“Who fell? Who might be dead?” he demanded but it was all I could do to breathe and the words wouldn’t come. I pointed toward the house and then burst into tears. For a man in his mid-80’s, Uncle Bernie moved with surprising speed, shooing me inside the canteen and telling me to stay put, then setting off for the house at a rapid but irregular jog.

And so began the siege of the summer of ‘58.

Not being a particularly nice human being, it was no surprise that my grandfather did not make a particularly nice patient. In addition to a broken leg, Doc McDonald diagnosed a mild concussion. He sedated the old man, set and splinted the broken bones and left a small bottle of codeine pain pills for my grandmother to administer, helped set up the bedroom off the kitchen as a recovery room and promising to have a bedpan and urinal delivered that afternoon, climbed into his old pick up and went on his way. My grandfather spent his first bedridden day in a narcotic haze and it was the last rest my grandmother got for months. He woke the next morning in pain and in a restless rage, shouting profanity and abuse at the entire world and threatening to whip my brother into the next week. Nothing Nana did or said could calm him and after he had flung the bedpan and urinal and narrowly missed her, she fled and locked the door behind her. Something immediately hit the door with force enough to make it tremble. That was followed by the sound of breaking glass and a stream of obscenity.

“Call the doctor back,” she snapped at my badly shaken mother, “Now! Before he wrecks what’s left of the goddam room!”

Doc had to call in reinforcements – John and Jacob Sullivan were drafted because they were the youngest and the closest – and it took both of them plus the doctor to get my out of control grandfather into restraints and then finally injected with a serious dose of tranquilizers. When he came to later that night, Doc read him the riot act and made it very clear that if he couldn’t adjust and behave, he would find himself incarcerated in Dartmouth for the duration.

“You wouldn’t dare!” my grandfather snarled.

“Your safety and the safety of this household is a responsibility I take very seriously, Charlie,” Doc said calmly, “Try me.”

It was a steel edged threat and surprisingly enough, my grandfather seemed to realize it. Over the course of the next several weeks, he continued to be cantankerous and demanding and tyrannical and the entire household catered to him but there were no more serious temper tantrums. He ran Nana and my mother ragged caring for him (neither my brothers nor I were allowed to see him and I considered us fortunate but kept it to myself) and showed not the slightest appreciation but at least there were no more flying bedpans or shattered mirrors. It appeared that my grandfather, while not brought down, had been reined in enough to be nearly manageable.

When he was able to be up and around in a wheelchair, my grandfather paid one of the younger Sullivan brothers to collect the little dump truck and every other similar toy and smash them to smithereens while my brothers watched.

The siege of the summer of 1958 ended with no one daring to defy him and as often happens in real life, misery winning the day.

Perfect Days

Once the morning chores were done and we’d had lunch, Nana would chase Ruthie and me and often the dogs out into the sunshine with the same parting words, “Mind me! Home by dark or I’ll fetch me a stick!” Not everyone, I’ve since learned, is comfortable with saying “I love you.” My grandmother said it often but never used the exact words.

We ran up the gravel driveway and across the strawberry field, headed for the Old Road and the open pasture land beyond Uncle Willie’s farm where all you could see was ocean and wildflowers.

It was late June, a perfect day, there was a sweet breeze coming from the cove and the tide was coming in gently. We didn’t know it then but to be a child in a world you love is a precious gift.

We made our way to the breakwater, then all the way down Water Street to what passed as the town square, then up the highway to the church and left and down Lovers Lane to Beautiful Cove. We passed James and Lily working in the newly planted church flower beds, saw Doc McDonald drinking coffee on his side porch, waved to Uncle Bernie bouncing along on his tractor.

All was right with the world

We had all the shells we needed so we worked on collecting driftwood and by noon we had a respectable pile. We went through it carefully, choosing only the smoothest and most bleached pieces to haul home. Some of the villagers – my daddy among them – could transform the wood into lamps. Others created pieces of artwork for the tourist trade and the villagers were more than willing to part with a nickel or a dime if we saved them the trouble of retrieving the wood. Ruthie and I could make a fair amount of pocket change if we chose well. When we were done, we sat in the shade and ate the sandwiches Nana had packed for us then keeping a careful watch, shared a cigarette we had purloined from my mother’s pack of Parliament 1oo’s. We were so young, so innocent, so naive and so happy.

On the way home, Bill Melanson passed us in his hay wagon and waved us aboard. We climbed on and burrowed happily in the sweet smelling straw all the way to The Point, getting home just as the sun was beginning to set across the pastel sky. The bells on the oxen tinkled brightly and Bill sang lustily the whole way, unending choruses of “The Church in the Wildwood”, his rumbling voice slightly off key but sincere and joyful. Supper was on the stove and afterwards we played cribbage on the sun porch and went to bed to dream of the next perfect day.

Choose with Care

“In the end,” Nick Catricala wrote, “We are our choices.”

Somewhere in the space between the darkness and the light, there may be a precious few seconds where you get to choose between hope or despair, flight or flight, yesterday or today.

It’s a good time to honor the moment.

When this plague passes and we are able to resume our lives, what, I wonder, will we have learned and what, if anything, will we be willing to change. Even if the greedy, selfish and stupid among us are substantially decreased, I’ve lived seven decades and I suspect it will be very little of either. Since the 2016 election, I’ve come to realize that we aren’t built to care or consider others or share even a small amount of kindness. We are out for ourselves. From the highest elected office to the lowliest among us, we have become the very essence of “I’ve Got Mine, Fuck You”. It’s running rampant in government, in religion, in medicine, in business, in education. It’s not confined to any class or political party or skin color or socio-economic level.

We may be, as I recently read, all in the same storm but we’re most definitely not in the same boat. Those that have will survive and if the current government has its way, likely thrive. Those that don’t will be sacrificed. Oh, a few of the idle rich may not be able to buy their way out of the virus and a handful of the poor will recover in spite of not having medical care or equal footing, but in the main, ignorance, arrogance racism, and avarice are going to carry the day. It’s cruel, it’s callous, it’s unfair and it’s unforgivable but it’s what we have become and perhaps most shameful of all, we’re proud of it.

After a decent meal and a good night’s sleep, I am able to regroup and re-evaluate and re-locate that tiny spark that might be optimism. Hope isn’t exactly springing eternal and the light at the end of the tunnel could still be an oncoming freight train or flamethrower but the fog of despair has lifted slightly. I search for and find something positive to hold onto – some small sign of sanity and accountability in a world gone mad. I remind myself that there are more good people than bad in the world and though the bad make for better and more attention grabbing headlines, the good do not give up. And sometimes they win.

Peace At Last

Chalk it up to morbid curiosity but every few years I make a small effort to see what’s going on with the people I have left behind. It’s how I learned my second husband and brother were dead, that my other brother’s first born had OD’d on drugs and died, that a precious friend had a grown son who had become a reasonably successful musician, and most recently, that an old lover was in the hospital. Except for the last, I felt no need to do anything, no urge to reach out and re-connect, no desire to make peace or amends. Except for the last, the past is the past and as the popular saying goes, I’m not going that way and will not look back. Except for the last. When you feel you have failed someone you love, there’s no amount of time or distance that can ease the guilt. It retreats and regroups, seduces you into thinking you’ve gotten past it, and then slams back at you when you least expect it. It’’s a nighttime intruder with a lethal weapon and darkness on his side. Too late you realize you left a window open.

After a nearly lethal stroke, which left him paralyzed on one side, he has spent the last several years in and out of rehab hospitals and psychiatric wards and nursing homes. At one point, he was calling me 4 and 5 times a day, in tears, incoherent and desperate, pleading with me to help him. The calls were agonizing and futile – I had no standing to do anything – and in time to preserve my own sanity, I changed my number. It felt like the worst kind of betrayal but I saw no alternative. I talked often and at length with his daughter, more to assuage my own guilt than anything else, and she assured me she understood and that I shouldn’t feel it was my responsibility. Technically he still had a wife, she reminded me, although they were separated and she would soon be arrested for multiple counts of domestic abuse and assault against him and in the meantime she promised me she was working hard to move him to her state where she could care for him. I allowed myself to be convinced but it never happened and over time I persuaded myself that I’d done the only possible thing and I stopped letting myself think about it.

I tried to remember him in better times – he never lost his British accent and his sense of humor was quick, sharp and desert dry. He loved animals fiercely, thrived on clutter and chaos, drank far more than was good for him, was passionate about a good Indian curry and loved his child beyond words. Despite her severe mental illness and relentless abuse and alcoholism, he never completely abandoned the woman he married and allowed her to dominate him. Loyalty was only one of his his fatal flaws. He never thought he was meant to be happy and was terrified of leaving the frying pan for the fire. I coaxed, pleaded, reasoned, promised and threatened but all to no avail. I finally realized you cannot help someone who is unwilling to give up the things that make him suffer.

He had spent the last few weeks in hospice and his death was not unexpected but even so, it’s a body blow. His presence in my life was a gift. I dearly hope he has found some peace.

Technical Difficulties

Several years ago I had to buy a new refrigerator and Sears kindly gave me an address for a rebate. I wouldn’t ordinarily have bothered but a major appliance is a major appliance and the amount of the rebate was considerable. I thought it would be worth a little time and trouble. Hours and hours later as I was still navigating the forms and trying to find information that they hadn’t given me (and making a number of calls to be told “Wrong department”), I finally realized that the entire process was designed to make you give up. No one was going to part with a dime of precious rebate money unless they were absolutely against a wall. It took hours more time and trouble but out of nothing but sheer stubbornness, I persisted and several months later, I finally received a check and a thank you for my business.

Now, in the age of plague, I understand that this is exactly how government operates. From food stamps to unemployment claims to the Internal Revenue Service and the Small Business Administration loan programs, it’s one long, complicated, convoluted rebate scam, written in doublespeak and meticulously designed to make you throw up your hands in disgust and do without. The portals don’t work, the claim trackers are useless, the websites are a joke and the telephones are not answered. You can’t log on or call in or check status. And if by some divine intervention, you should get on the websites or manage to get into a call queue, you can safely give up the next several hours of your life waiting until the office closes or the website crashes. Either way, you lose. Even a successfully placed claim or application will be challenged if not outright denied (more or less automatically) and the appeal process makes the whole initial application process look like child’s play. It’s all justified by the systems being overwhelmed by the numbers of people needing help or the old stand by, “technical difficulties”. In other words,

call it malice or stupidity or ineptitude or fate, we’re mostly on our own.

I don’t know what we’ll be going back to or whether we’ll have learned anything when this is over. But my gut tells me that no matter what life on the other side of this virus is like, nothing is ever going to be the same again.

Just For This Morning

I am not used to feeling inarticulate but lately, I don’t seem to be able to organize or express my thoughts. I feel weighted down and defenseless with an army of what if’s attacking from every direction. I feel a little anxious, a little sick, a little panicky, and a lot enraged. When I think of all the things I could be accomplishing and am not, I feel guilty, but it takes all my energy and strength just to lay on the love seat and catnap and worry. In spite of what my reason and common sense are telling me, in spite of the fact that I have $3000 in savings, in spite of my knowing absolutely that this will pass, I feel doomed. I have no hope for my country and no faith in humanity, especially the humanity in my part of the country. It’s irrational and unhealthy and morbid but there it is.

I have moments when I think it’s the end of the world and that the current government really is committed to killing us all in the name of greed, profit and reelection. I have moments when the only peace/solace/relief/hope I can find is under the covers with the dogs. I have far too many “What’s the point” moments when I feel sick and suicidal. The world is upside down and coming apart at the seams from stress and uncertainty and isolation and despair. One more story about the lethal shortage of protective equipment or the push for untested drugs or mass graves on Hart’s Island will do me in. One more incoherent and indefensible lie from the president will send me over the edge. One more evangelical extortion ad to send money or burn in hell will make me want to take up arms. In South Louisiana, we have an infamous preacher who is still shouting proud to bus his flock in for Sunday services. I say let them come. Then bar the doors of the church and set it on fire. If their preacher and their God save them, well and good. If not, there’ll be a smidgen less evil and ignorance in the world.

This plague will pass, I suppose, and maybe the world will eventually right itself in time for the next one. Or not if the pestilence that currently rules us stays in charge.

The weekend arrives, although it’s almost impossible to tell one day from another, and I’m up early to be at the grocery store for the Elder Shopping Hour. They are out of Country Crock but there’s plenty of Diet Coke in the 6 ounce glass bottles – apart from cigarettes and Ghirardelli Caramel Squares, the only thing I cannot live without – and then I make a quick stop at the bank to deposit my check (remembering to be grateful for still being able to work and be paid) and I’m done. I retreat to the quiet isolation of my small house and distract myself with the laundry and the dusting and the litter boxes. Just for this morning, I will not give in to the urge to hide under the covers and weep.

The Honest Working Man

May Elizabeth Albright was a hulk of a woman, nigh onto 200 pounds and just shy of 6 foot tall in her stocking feet. It was said she could out work, out drink, out shoot and out fight anyone on either of the islands. An early widowhood had left her with precious few options - she had four sons to provide for when her husband was lost at sea during a hurricane – and she became the only female captain in the fishing fleet by necessity. She was, as the old men who gathered at Curt’s store liked to say, “….an imposin’ figure of a woman…” and not one to be trifled with.

After the second hurricane, when she had to bury all four of the boys she had birthed and raised,

the loss was incomprehensible and the entire village went into mourning with her. It was a full six weeks before she emerged from the battered house overlooking the passage. She spent the remainder of the summer repairing and rebuilding the roof and the fences and the barn. She worked mostly alone, a solitary figure in overalls and hip boots turned down to the ankles with only an old hound dog and a yoke of oxen for company. Every few days, Nana would send me to her house with a fresh apple pie or a plate of biscuits and May Elizabeth would nod and thank me but she never stopped whatever work she was doing.

“She needs to be done by Labor Day,” Sparrow said, “Afore the winter gits here and the weather turns.”

“Ayuh,” my grandmother agreed, “If anybody can do it, May Elizabeth can.”

And she did. It took working from dawn to dusk, 7 days a week, through the rain and fog as well as the fine days. The village marveled at her energy and persistence and sheer stubborn spirit. Help was offered but she most always turned it down – she wanted to heal in her own way and her own time.

“Grief,” Sparrow said once, “is a private place. Ain’t no way out ‘cept straight through. And there be times when you got to go alone.”

So when there was a knock on the back door the day before we were to leave for home, nobody was more surprised then we were to see May Elizabeth. She looked tired and there was more gray in her hair than I remembered – also there were flecks of paint here and there in her hair and on her flannel shirt and overalls – but she stood tall and straight and even managed a hesitant half-smile.

“I’m beholden to you, Missus,” she told my grandmother, “You and the little ones been right kind to me these past weeks and it ain’t like I ain’t noticed. I been thinkin’ I might oughta come round and thank you ‘fore you head out. Mebbe see if you needed any help packin’ up or what not.”

It took a lot to render my grandmother speechless and to her credit, she recovered quickly, assuring May Elizabeth that though she appreciated the offer, we were fine and not in need of anything and she declared, where were her manners, would she come in for coffee and a sweet roll. May shook her head immediately, mumbled something about having to finish whitewashing the fence, and then produced a bakery box tied with twine, placed it in the woodbox and before Nana could even open the screen door, was half way down the front path and out of sight.

Opening the bakery box, my grandmother could only laugh. May Elizabeth had packed us a bag of dulse, two Jersey Milk bars, a tin of aspirin, a box of crayons and several coloring books, a book of crossword puzzles, a glass canning jar crammed with beach glass and assorted shells, a pair of dice in a tiny velvet drawstring bag and a slightly ragged stuffed bear wearing a t shirt with “I Love Digby” written on it. Resting on top of this odd collection of gifts was a clearly well worn record album – “Diane Oxner Sings the Helen Creighton Traditional Songs of Nova Scotia”.

Here’s the chorus to one I still remember, “The Honest Working Man”.

Do you want to buy the mitt, the sock, the ganzy frock,
The juniper post, the mussel or the clam,
The blueberry, the foxberry, the huckleberry, the cranberry,
The smelt, the pelt, the forty-foot ladder.
The thousand of brick or the sand.

Some of the best gifts are tied with ribbons of memory.