Dates, counts, degrees -- I see before me a sea of figures.
It is June 1st. Did you know that much of the world celebrates children on this day? I had a Zoom call with my Polish friends this afternoon. Two of the ten were late -- they had a grandchild, or two, or three to celebrate.
It's not a holiday I incorporated into my family life and my own grandkids have no idea that the first day of June should be anything more than the first day of June.
Well, good enough. It's June. But what a tough beginning to a beautiful month! Ed and I are in our 80th day of total isolation (except for our cocooning with the young family and one inconsequential visit to the dentist). 100 days of this is around the corner. Will it be then 100 more?
A few days ago, I wrote about parallel tracks -- that was when the virus was running its crazy unpredictable course and the season ran its separate rebirth-of-all-growing-things course and one was horrific and the other beautiful. Well now we have a third going and not surprisingly it is a violent one and people are hurting and it is hard to imagine a month starting on more anguished and challenging footing.
But, there is June. For Ed, for me, the routines remain the same: we stay home, see no one outside of family. We tend to the garden. We watch it grow. We cannot change course, we will not change course.
The first of the month is blowing in some pretty mild temperatures. I had hoped for a rain during the night, or even day (all those planted seeds!), but none came. Just winds and a climbing thermometer.
(Columbine: the mid spring belle or is it bell of the garden...)
(Clematis, starting its climb up the trellis... or chicken wire if you don't have a trellis.)
(The first peony!)
(a shaded iris, moving with the wind...)
Breakfast.
The kids arrive early and it is lovely to see them walking up the path.
Their Monday energy levels are always high. No less today.
We have a perfect balance (which is rare): he and I read while she plays, then she and I read while he plays. If things were this easy every day in every family, we'd be an overpopulated globe indeed. True, I am hoarse from reading, but it is a pleasant hoarseness!
Immediately after the kids leave, I go into my Zoom call.
It really brought home to me the stark differences between there and here. Between their plight and my own. Poland never experienced an out of control surge in infections. Rather, it has had a consistently steady daily rate. It is certainly modest as compared to that in western Europe. No one knows why, though speculations abound. Not surprisingly, many of my friends wonder if a continued loosening of restrictions could bring life closer to a prepandemic normal. Among the nine Poles, all who have kids and grandkids living in Poland have had visits with the kids. Some have been occasionally going into an office for work reasons. Some still continue to sanitize groceries, but about half do not and a growing number are loosening their sanitizing methods. Some have gone away for the weekend. Others have gone to coffee shops, though they tell me they sipped coffee through a straw and sat with social distancing measures in place. Everyone here and there functions under a cloud of uncertainty, but it's more tempting to take risks if your country of some 38 million has had fewer infections than, say the whole state of Colorado, whose population is less than 6 million.
(Here I am on the Zoom call. Iris and stalks of overgrown asparagus are from the garden.)
As the call ends, I return to the great outdoors. Just for a little while. To take in that first day of June. That sometimes fickle, but always generous in its natural beauty month of June.
Dinner? June or no June, it's leftover day today! With home grown asparagus. It's having a wild ride this year!
Somewhere in the course of the late afternoon hours, several things happened: Calico, the littlest kittie once again gets stuck high in a tree. I coax her down halfway, but she would not budge after that. I give up. I'm hoping that by tomorrow she'll finally figure out that going down backwards works for cats.
Then, Ed and I get on his motorbike and scoot over to the tennis courts. We hadn't played for two years! Today was to be our return to high spirited ball chasing!
It is not to be. Another couple was using one of the two court. We didn't want to share. We went home.
Finally, I heard from my younger girl in Chicago, where she has been isolating with her husband and daughter since all hell broke loose. She and her family were to spend next week with us northerners here, in Madison, but they decided to move up their trip a bit. They're coming tomorrow. We spent a good part of the evening figuring out logistics for the next days.
Eventually, Ed and I do bring out the popcorn, but my mind is on the details of the next weeks. In the distance, I can hear the buzz of the robot vacuum machine. Ed had the good sense to turn it on for a spin around the rooms downstairs.
The next days will definitely have a high energy buzz to them. And I'm not thinking of the buzz of the robot that's picking up forgotten dust off the living room floor. It's been a long time since we've had the Chicago bunch around. A way too long time.
It is June 1st. Did you know that much of the world celebrates children on this day? I had a Zoom call with my Polish friends this afternoon. Two of the ten were late -- they had a grandchild, or two, or three to celebrate.
It's not a holiday I incorporated into my family life and my own grandkids have no idea that the first day of June should be anything more than the first day of June.
Well, good enough. It's June. But what a tough beginning to a beautiful month! Ed and I are in our 80th day of total isolation (except for our cocooning with the young family and one inconsequential visit to the dentist). 100 days of this is around the corner. Will it be then 100 more?
A few days ago, I wrote about parallel tracks -- that was when the virus was running its crazy unpredictable course and the season ran its separate rebirth-of-all-growing-things course and one was horrific and the other beautiful. Well now we have a third going and not surprisingly it is a violent one and people are hurting and it is hard to imagine a month starting on more anguished and challenging footing.
But, there is June. For Ed, for me, the routines remain the same: we stay home, see no one outside of family. We tend to the garden. We watch it grow. We cannot change course, we will not change course.
The first of the month is blowing in some pretty mild temperatures. I had hoped for a rain during the night, or even day (all those planted seeds!), but none came. Just winds and a climbing thermometer.
(Columbine: the mid spring belle or is it bell of the garden...)
(Clematis, starting its climb up the trellis... or chicken wire if you don't have a trellis.)
(The first peony!)
(a shaded iris, moving with the wind...)
Breakfast.
The kids arrive early and it is lovely to see them walking up the path.
Their Monday energy levels are always high. No less today.
We have a perfect balance (which is rare): he and I read while she plays, then she and I read while he plays. If things were this easy every day in every family, we'd be an overpopulated globe indeed. True, I am hoarse from reading, but it is a pleasant hoarseness!
Immediately after the kids leave, I go into my Zoom call.
It really brought home to me the stark differences between there and here. Between their plight and my own. Poland never experienced an out of control surge in infections. Rather, it has had a consistently steady daily rate. It is certainly modest as compared to that in western Europe. No one knows why, though speculations abound. Not surprisingly, many of my friends wonder if a continued loosening of restrictions could bring life closer to a prepandemic normal. Among the nine Poles, all who have kids and grandkids living in Poland have had visits with the kids. Some have been occasionally going into an office for work reasons. Some still continue to sanitize groceries, but about half do not and a growing number are loosening their sanitizing methods. Some have gone away for the weekend. Others have gone to coffee shops, though they tell me they sipped coffee through a straw and sat with social distancing measures in place. Everyone here and there functions under a cloud of uncertainty, but it's more tempting to take risks if your country of some 38 million has had fewer infections than, say the whole state of Colorado, whose population is less than 6 million.
(Here I am on the Zoom call. Iris and stalks of overgrown asparagus are from the garden.)
As the call ends, I return to the great outdoors. Just for a little while. To take in that first day of June. That sometimes fickle, but always generous in its natural beauty month of June.
Dinner? June or no June, it's leftover day today! With home grown asparagus. It's having a wild ride this year!
Somewhere in the course of the late afternoon hours, several things happened: Calico, the littlest kittie once again gets stuck high in a tree. I coax her down halfway, but she would not budge after that. I give up. I'm hoping that by tomorrow she'll finally figure out that going down backwards works for cats.
Then, Ed and I get on his motorbike and scoot over to the tennis courts. We hadn't played for two years! Today was to be our return to high spirited ball chasing!
It is not to be. Another couple was using one of the two court. We didn't want to share. We went home.
Finally, I heard from my younger girl in Chicago, where she has been isolating with her husband and daughter since all hell broke loose. She and her family were to spend next week with us northerners here, in Madison, but they decided to move up their trip a bit. They're coming tomorrow. We spent a good part of the evening figuring out logistics for the next days.
Eventually, Ed and I do bring out the popcorn, but my mind is on the details of the next weeks. In the distance, I can hear the buzz of the robot vacuum machine. Ed had the good sense to turn it on for a spin around the rooms downstairs.
The next days will definitely have a high energy buzz to them. And I'm not thinking of the buzz of the robot that's picking up forgotten dust off the living room floor. It's been a long time since we've had the Chicago bunch around. A way too long time.
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