A what? "A blog". Oh, a blog. Now tell me what a 50 year old woman working outside the home, mired in a daily commute en route to a professional job wants with a blog. Ask her again when the commute is suddenly from her bedroom to her "home office" (aka a corner of the kitchen), and she's deprived of daily distractions that many of us take for granted: coffee gossip with colleagues, window shopping for fashion on a lunch hour, meeting a friend for a glass of wine on a patio after work. What a difference a day (or so) makes!
Now here we all are - if we're lucky that is - working from home, tripping over those who we share a roof with, having strange dreams about "the apocalypse" (that's what Claire called it, at first anyway). And looking inward. And sometimes facing challenges that make the traffic jams of just two months ago, since they always led to a destination, seem utopian. So.. now what? Cry in our cookies? Sure, sometimes. But why not learn something new? A new distraction at least. Embrace the future, etc. Discover some kind of pressure relief valve for all this craziness we find ourselves in. Like for example:
One of the changes brought about by the pandemic is the cancellation of day programs for senior citizens. Which my mother (Oma), an 86-year old Alzheimer sufferer (who stubbornly insists on living in her own home), would go to 6 days a week, transportation there and back being included (except on certain snowy days when, like a recalcitrant toddler, she refused to put on her winter boots, and the driver therefore refused to take her). Of course she complained about it at the time: "The people don't talk much, bingo is boring, the food is bland", you get the picture. I wonder if she now considers those days halcyon by comparison? She certainly doesn't now recall much past her childhood. No more memory of her prime years: the full-time job she had, the macrame creations prolifically displayed in every room of the house, the tennis lessons she religiously went to (and forced me to go to), the full-course, European, hearty meals and baking that once effused from her kitchen and made me a slightly overweight pre-teen. Now, in present time, Claire and I are her only source of companionship and nutritious meals, both of which she regularly disdains, more or less, depending on the day. (Can anyone explain to me why she methodically wipes down her place setting of cutlery whenever she is at my dinner table as if, certainly, it had just been retrieved from the floor?) In any event, a few weeks ago Claire and I were prepping a dinner that we were really looking forward to eating, when we turned towards each other with The Look that could only mean, "OK, time to pick up Oma". So off went Claire, blessed angel that she is (in this respect at least), to fetch my mom and bring her over for an early supper. Text: "um... do you think you could come over and help me? Oma's made a bit of a mess.. her slippers are soiled and her underwear's on the floor....". [Later that evening, a friend would ask me how I was doing. To which I would reply, "Honestly, not great, we had to clean my mother's feces off the floor today right before supper".] So before I walked into Oma's house to help clean up the mess, scents of a delicious something left percolating on my stove still fresh in my mind, Claire said, "hey....just wanted to warn you....don't lose your appetite"!
Love and hugs xo Momy