II. April 2020: Quarantined on a Canadian Island — First False Spring
Friends in Europe have fallen ill. Without a test, now difficult to obtain, they won’t know if it’s Covid or some other malady. There’s so much unknown. Northern Italy has become the Covid epicenter, with hospitals setting up makeshift morgues and coffin makers working overtime. Church bells mark the dead without pause, time not yet providing the adequate quiet to reflect on the virus’ ravaging reverberations, to hear its global echo.
From reading more scientific, less screamy writings, we’re only seeing the beginning of this. There’s talk of loosening the restrictions in the US, ridiculously not in effect nationally because, well, it’s the economy, stupid. Millions are without work. Friends in the restaurant business, already operating on razor-thin margins, are nearing a precipice, the ledge hanging over closures, unemployment, the aftershock felt throughout every other industry. To quote John Muir, “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
After ensuring our supply of whisky, the first thing I ordered was a set of wind chimes from artisans in Nova Scotia, the sound of them immediately grounding me. We got assurances last night from the people who own the house in which we’re staying that we can remain until the year’s end. I’m confident that come a barren Canadian winter, we may be able to remain in spring. My wife worries about her parents, quarantined in their retirement community apartment, frequently speculating what would happen if one of them were to fall ill or die. We discussed that she would not be allowed to see her remaining parent, that they’re in the best place they can be right now. We video conference with her family, her parents drink aperitivi and laugh with their grandkids.
In a clichéd pandemic panic, I mail-ordered bags of beans and lentils. And I loathe lentils, those nasty little pebbles never entirely cleaned from every crevice of the kitchen or my mouth. Combined with the Canadian whiskey I’ve been stockpiling and the farmers we’ve met, I think we can make it through whatever might come. But I’m blanching tired vegetables to freeze for future stocks, treating everything that we have as all we will have for a long while. Any declarations that this will be over by summer are entirely disregarded by me.
Too many people without even a couple hundred bucks to fall back on, and no health insurance are already waiting in food lines. And anti-maskers actually believe the virus is being hyped for political reasons. A few states are already whispering about postponing elections, and there’s even chatter about contesting a re-election loss in November with armed militias. I thought Italy would be our safe haven. But there is no safe, and havens are temporary states.
Snow falls in clumps from a roof that will shelter us until year’s end while I blanch old celery and hope I have enough dope to get through this.
My wife’s battery takes energy from external sources. She’s been burning up the phone lines with work, ideas, connectivity. Her switch is always ON. It’s just how she’s wired. I do hope I’ve had a little bit of a moderating effect on her, but probably not so much. Married for almost ten years, she still makes me laugh and think and feel deep gratitude for our life together. Hugely different, we nevertheless meld in a lovely, albeit co-dependent kind of way, a lesbian vanilla bundt cake with a chocolate swirl. I still can’t believe I found this soul with whom to share my life. But lest I paint too rosy a picture, since the beginning of our relationship, and without fail, I escape for a few days sola every month or six weeks. I go fishing or mushroom foraging or bird watching or antiquing. I do it in silence, and I do it alone. I need quiet to reset, recharge, get inspired. Like mittens pinned to sleeves, we’ve been together every day for months. Except for an occasional walk in the woods, I fear it will be a good long while before I do anything deliciously alone.
It’s still cold here. Can you believe it snowed last night? Only a light flurry, but it feels as though spring is still in the backroom, getting fucked by winter. I picked a few daffodils from the yard, which were forcing their bonnets through the frozen ground. Pictures arrive of wide-eyed, smiling friends from California working in their gardens, picking jasmine and lilac and roses under the warm sun. I envy their appearance of normalcy, their smug, appeased faces. Lengthy phone calls reveal many believe life will ‘return to normal soon.’ What does ‘normal’ mean to people? How is it possible to return to what was? And why would we ever want to ‘go back’ when we have the opportunity to remake how we interact with each other and how we treat our Host?
Scientists studying microfibers from both natural and synthetic clothes find them in the oceans, in our drinking water, in our air. Early research suggests they affect crustaceans’ reproductive systems. It will be science, not religion, that will save humanity.
After many conversations (we’re lesbians, after all), we decided to vacate our cottage in Berkeley and sell our business in Napa, a vacation rental that has provided income for many years. As ‘fire season’ lengthens, now coinciding with Napa Valley’s grape harvest, the rental season has contracted. People are clamoring to leave San Francisco, and we’re fortunate we have something to sell. A determined real estate agent quickly lined up several offers. The chores of moving virtually take a village of patient hands. Our few worldly goods, treasures chosen sparingly over a lifetime, are now packed and stacked into a container Italia-bound.
It’s been heartening to watch the governors of both California and New York step in to fill the leadership void left empty by the federal government, but surreal to watch the unraveling of the U.S. Poly-sci-fi worst-case scenarios have come true. We are grateful to be in Canada, in a rural area, surrounded by farms and the good people we’ve encountered. But my antennae are up. People get wired and weird when shit happens. Fear takes over, which explains why I’m writing this from frozen Canada.
My wife was not feeling well yesterday but has since perked up. A case of Listerine for gargling arrived on the doorstep, along with a feed bucket of Vitamin C. I’ve become my grandmother. My menopausal grandmother. Why are we not told what a fucking nightmare menopause is?
Moving our lives has left us fried. Everyone is fried. There are days I longingly eye the bottles of whisky arranged on the windowsill, the afternoon sun reflecting through the liquor creating amber rainbows on the kitchen wall. Day-drinking is a lover I left behind many years ago, abandoned inside a wine spit bucket. Menopause pumps the breaks on any thought of overindulging, guaranteeing night sweats, nightmares, and lying awake at 4am, projecting dire outcomes for the future.
Meditation and dope help to calm and ground me. Peaceful resistance to a mad new world starts with locating courage from within our limitless reservoir of soul and giving voice to what is found there. My new favorite word is ataraxia, meaning tranquility, calmness, a state of freedom from emotional disturbance and anxiety. Act as if. Namaste.
Oy vey.
How does one even wrap a mind around the suffering? People are dying alone, some trapped at home with abuse, and others without work, food, health care. So much suffering is inflicted by small men with tiny ideas and huge holes in their souls. Covid has crossed borders and upended assumptions, provoking new ideas and international collaboration. Will we use it as a map post-Covid to come together to solve our dire environmental issues? Our quarantines have made the air and water cleaner, and animals have reclaimed territory long absconded by our activities. How do we incorporate what we are now learning on a meta-level, so perhaps the ‘trickle-down theory’ could finally be of service to the whole of mankind?
Absorbed with securing the first (food, water, shelter) and second (security, safety) levels of Maslow’s theory, I realize how my own notion of security has been upended. Even considering the word, I don’t think I’ve felt safe or secure for some time. The prevalence of an armed, angry population and the unleashing of hate leaves me literally gun shy. The country’s unresolved racism eats away at our unity, our humanity, our collective soul. The growing chasm between rich and poor swallows whole the neediest and most fragile among us.
We read about rulers turning against their populations in faraway places, history books rife with examples. But it is now the corporations dictating policy and law, often to the detriment of the health and longevity of every living being on this planet. We were taught we wore the white hats, our passports and way of life, indeed, coveted. We exported our special brand of American-ness, other nations clamoring for our sheen, our broad smiles, our facility. Industrialization gave rise to the standard of living, and our art, music and written words have touched people of every age on every continent. Our great thinkers and scientists changed the course of history. And while the notion of exceptionalism is hugely fraught with cynicism, who was it that said democracy is the worst form of government — except for all the others. But we vomit our consumerism and poor food choices, justify our military budgets by fighting needless wars, and shit our garbage all over the globe.
We’ve been sold a bill of goods, the pitch relentless: fulfillment means owning a home chock-a-block with stuff and two, shiny gasoline guzzlers in the garage; college is the only meaningful form of higher education; pharma cures all ills; industrially-produced foods feed us; markets are free and fair, and banks friendly; the playing field is level, religion owns morality, it’s either us or them, and all efforts undertaken are on behalf of the common man.
Corporate interests have long had us hooked, and now the final savagery begins in earnest, blatant and unfettered, and this time from on high. Our work has promptly become about managing the degrees of degradation to our liberties and our planet while remaining sane, finding joy, and experiencing gratitude.
The locals say this bitter cold late spring is an anomaly. Keeping safe now = stuck at home, my wife working in a tiny little bedroom upstairs with windows gazing down on an ancient apple tree. I sit at the kitchen table in a little glass box overlooking the woods, with peeks of the lake between the conifers. As if playing chess against an invisible opponent with a ticking clock, I hunch over a computer in our Airbnb, moving our kings and queens and rooks from California, selling off the saleable pawns, donating the knights. Days are spent changing addresses, setting up new accounts, and reading about visa applications while trying not to look at the news, the headlines blaring the death counts, and the more exhaustive reporting examining the crumbling structures of democracy.
The owners of this little farmhouse are fancy people on an island of farmers. Their home base is several hours away in Toronto, but lockdown has them living in their grand Beaux Arts building downtown, which they usually rent for weddings. They made a significant investment on this island, buying up large pieces of rural land near the lake and stately homes and commercial property in town. He’s an architect with an Irish brogue and an impatient manner as if in a rush to jump into his sports car to be elsewhere. His cultivated, dapper aesthetic is topped with tweed caps and good leather shoes. I can only imagine two elbow patches are lurking underneath his hunting jackets, a soft canvas wrapping around his wallet. She’s a wealth manager for a Canadian bank. Lithe and little, she has a smooth, Connecticut-Wasp-inflected accent, which her rich, now panicking clients must find comforting — very kitten with a whip.
In my heart, our land in Italy is my goal. I feel grateful we have that as an option and something to strive towards and look forward to. In the meantime, my wife has been working with a couple of Canadian companies, so we’re exploring the possibility of securing visas. Our tourist visas, issued when we crossed the border, expire in six months. I’m not imagining traveling to Italy will be much of a possibility before the end of the year.
We’re two of the lucky ones. We were born into families where there was enough food and attention, and education was a priority. We each were able to carve our own paths in life, shying away from the corporate pens many of our friends chose. While we’ve both enjoyed relationships with men, we are married women, our union legally recognized on a path beat by trailblazers.
Much of my life was defined by what I could dream and implement, which I attribute to the great good fortune of being born into the time and place and skin into which I lucked. I’m a fervent believer in the American dream and fully cognizant of the gifts and opportunities bestowed through my citizenship. But it’s become abundantly clear those opportunities are becoming more and more limited for more and more people. And by god, I miss the days I took our comparatively quiet, seemingly functioning democracy for granted, assuming my obligations for citizenship are my votes, my taxes, my donations, and my occasional written advocacy. It appears no longer enough.
Less than four years ago, covered in goosebumps and tears, we joined millions of feet at The Women’s March on Washington, D.C. in January. Initially, I’d tried to convince myself to look away, that the world will continue in its fucked up manner no matter what I do or don’t, that I’ll be dead soon enough and my time is better spent in the garden planting vegetables or reading from the enormous pile of books I compulsively buy or learning how to properly smoke fish and pheasant. And truly, whoever wants to go to DC? And in winter? Are you fucking kidding me? I live in California! And the cherry on this sundae of shite? The airlines and DC hotels jacked up their prices due to high demand, proving once again that gouging is a non-partisan issue. It was cold, and with the impending inauguration, security was a fucking nightmare. I hated expending my time, my bread, my energies, but I felt I had no choice.
Never before had I felt so in sync with others, so attuned to the vibrations of change for the planet’s betterment. I was humbled and grateful for this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Incredulous faces in all shapes, colors, genders, and ages, many toting oddly well-behaved children, walked in a slow shuffle, the streets too packed for a faster pace, a steady reminder that changing course en masse is never rapid. As if in prayer, a weird quiet would settle over our awed mass before giving way to a crescendo of chants and cheers and music from blocks and blocks behind and beyond. It was an exhilarating experience. For the first time since November’s election, I felt hope that life would move forward in a humane, recognizable manner. Following the march, soul refreshed, legs weak, and voice tired, I nursed a bourbon in the tub, a double served with a single block of ice the size of a Rubik’s cube. Through a steamy haze, I convinced myself we had made a difference, made our voices heard in this shadowy town, and that, indeed, this is what democracy looks like.
The pandemic will not treat us all equally. We have no children to consider, work that can be done remotely, options for living elsewhere, access to good food, a couple of bucks in the bank, and we have each other. But what of others? Donations of time and money only help to stretch the broken canvas so far. The lack of a strong safety net in the US is startling. And given 70% of the economy is based on consumerism, our consumptive habits won’t be curbed by the soft talk of slow weaning but by a pandemic that will shift our practices dramatically, some permanently. More than 4% of the US economy comes from the service industry: arts, entertainment, recreation, accommodations, and food services. There are more than 11 million jobs in the restaurant industry alone. Many of these businesses are literal hand-to-mouth operations. How are they to survive without government assistance? If it’s the right thing to do to bail out big banks, why not small businesses?
We inquired about Canadian health insurance to cover us while we’re here, just in case. In the US, my health insurance costs $965 MONTHLY, with a deductible of $5,000. How can it be that health insurance is only for catastrophe and not for maintenance? Does it not follow the better one cares for oneself, the fewer costs overall? Even being in Canada, with no immediate plans to return to California, I ridiculously weighed whether to continue paying my premium, scared to lose my grandfathered policy that I will never get back. I’m not even sure what that means, but the woman on the other end of the line was quite adamant. They are not health care providers. They’re a giant insurance company with the mandate to squeeze the most juice from the fruit. How are families able to put it together with these costs? This pandemic reveals divides of Grand Canyon proportions, which is the biggest threat to the American experiment. Many of the issues now confronting the country are tied with an Arbor knot to lack of equality: systemic racism and misogyny, crushing debt, underfunded public education. As environmental degradation continues to render parts of the world uninhabitable, sending climate refugees into countries other than their own, we will be forced to learn to share our precious, finite resources and figure out how humanity can learn from and live in harmony with Nature.
A Red-shouldered hawk perched atop a telephone pole
on a rural road wrapping
a steel-gray lake
screeches her readiness
into a wood
of dull conifer with shallow roots,
as if perched atop a barstool on a Friday night
scouting Wall Street bankers.
-
Did you know the male thoughtfully
curls his talons
inwards
while copulating
from above and behind
to avoid spearing his mate?
Projection is poison to peace. So I get lost in the daily chores of life; vacuuming gigantic black ants, planting a cold clime garden, working sporadically, trying to read, making frittatas with foraged nettles and salty sheep’s milk feta made from a nearby herd, keeping a wary eye on my increasing capacity for Canadian whisky.
My faith rests solidly on the Corinthian columns of science, of wisdom prevailing come November and, when humanity eventually emerges from this, of a shared understanding that longevity here is tied to every living thing.
Notice there are only three legs are balancing that heavy tableau of expectation.
An island farmer offered me a massive bag of mâche she’d just harvested.
Mâche. What a fucking nightmare to clean. Who the hell has time for that?
Well, as it turns out…
Mâche (Valerianella locusta), also called corn salad, lamb’s lettuce, nut lettuce, and feldsalat (field salad), has a nutty deliciousness, with the soft texture of large leaf cress without its bite. It’s also referred to as doucette or raiponce (rampion = a species of wildflower formerly cultivated as a vegetable) in France. But my favorite name for mâche is Rapunzel, from Grimm’s fairy tale. The Royal Gardener to King Louis XIV popularized the green, and Jefferson cultivated mâche at Monticello.
Each tiny bunch was trimmed and rinsed (and rinsed and rinsed) until the water ran as clean as a faked drug test. A heel of dark bread was cut into thin slices, toasted to just-this-side of singed and rubbed with last season’s garlic, the yellowing cloves now soft and spicy. The mâche leaves were dressed with green oil, a shave of goat cheese from a firm, withering wheel, and crunchy sel…. or was that grit??
