I was wide awake at 3 am. The roosters started in at 4. I put one of Mike's old pillows over my head. I still heard the damn things. That high-pitched sound gets on my last nerve.
I finally got up at 8 am. I wanted to do my long morning walk before anything else. Elsa had a different idea. She is so smart. She remembers that I fed her the last time I got up late before the walk. Okay. She was right. I decided I would do some spraying of the backyard before we went on our walk. I spray weeds with vinegar, nothing more toxic.
After I had sprayed two gallons on the weeds and Elsa had finished her breakfast, we did our walk. I called my friend Carol who lives in Maryland. I had tried to call her twice yesterday. When I got through, she told me she was on a phone call. I wondered who she was on the phone with that long. She was on zoom at a virtual cocktail party. She has a group of friends she met through yoga, with whom she and her husband, John, socialize regularly.
To organize the conversation, the organizer proposed people submit pictures. The organizer posted them on her computer, and the person who submitted it shared the background story for the photo. At a typical cocktail party, there might be five or six conversations going on simultaneously. This isn't possible with zoom. Interesting adaptation.
I have been missing Mike something fierce. There was no one I was comfortable with as I was with him. We just hung out together in life. There were some intense conversations and some conflicts and some shared activities, but most of it was that comfortable parallel play. We were just there and not a danger to each other. With my mom, I had to worry about unexpected explosions. With Mike, there were so few of those that I never worried about it. If anything, I was the exploding one. I know that that behavior was challenging for him because of his history. I worked hard to modify my responses. I didn't want to be an unsafe part of his environment.
Many people could come to stay here that I could feel comfortable just hanging out with. Jean and John, Carol and John, Damon, Cylin and August. These are all people with whom I have shared space on vacations over the last thirty years. Obviously, that doesn't apply to Cylin or August, who are have come late to the table. But they're family. Dorothy is also someone I could share space with quietly.
Yvette and I spent some great time together talking. She wanted to do that more often, but I don't want prolonged conversations. I had asked her to come up and just spend time here, meditating, reading, or doing something silently in the same space with me. She said yes, but it has never happened. I think it has come to the point where I need this to happen, and I will push to see if she can find a way to be comfortable with it.
Carol told me that several doctors wrote about the relationship between environments and the risk level of contracting the coronavirus. In open settings, the likelihood of getting enough of a viral load is low. If, on the other hand, if you work in a closed environment, like an office, the possibility of getting high exposure to the virus is increased. As a customer in a grocery store, the ceilings are high enough, and you're there for a short period, that you will probably have low exposure to the virus. However, if you are an employee at that same grocery store, your risk level is elevated because you're exposed to the recycled air over a longer period and more people.
Judy called. She meant to call me yesterday, she said, "But I was too busy doing nothing." For those of us experiencing the shut-down due to the virus, we know what she means. Well, maybe not everyone. Parents working on getting their kids through the academic years or just dealing with their kids every day are probably not experiencing the problem of having too little to do.
She said she read my new Introduction to my book on reading and LOVED it. She said it made her want to read it. This is great! I have sent Dorothy additional material. She hasn't gotten back to me, not even to tell me she has received it. I'm not too worried because I figure one of her kids will contact me if something goes wrong.
I asked Judy if I could have her old Bissell wet/dry if she was determined not to use it. I want it for Yvette assuming that mine will arrive soon. In a spurt of excitement, I checked the tracking information on Amazon. It said that it arrived today and was handed over to the recipient. No! I went out to check. Nothing. How's that for a twist in the pantyhose?
I did some reading and napped. I put off working on the book. I need someone to stand over me and make me work, maybe threatening me with something. When I asked Cylin what made her work on her books, she said, "My editor." I don't have one, at least not one who is willing to bully me. Of course, I wouldn't have anything to do with them if they did bully me.
Elsa and I went for our before-dinner walk. Josh passed us on the way home from work at the Post Office. It made me remember the problem I was having with my package from Amazon. I envisioned calling Amazon and trying to convince them that I didn't get the parcel, especially since it said that it was hand-delivered to a recipient. I heard myself saying that my neighbors are all trustworthy, and one of the members of the household actually worked for the post office. Ah! A light went on. Was it possible that Doug, our usual mailman, gave the package to Josh to bring home? Sure enough, there it was at the front walk. Now, it has to sit for three days in quarantine before I open it.
I have been suffering from the absence of Mike's hugs and kisses. Whenever I needed a hug, all I had to do is say, "Okay,' and I got the greatest hug in the world. Mike and I had good energy together from the first. I meditated when I got home. That helped somewhat. I just sat with the horrible way my body felt. That gave me some relief. I recalled a woman from our church in Princeton who lost her husband. She said her grief was like martyrdom.
I'm concerned that I will miss Mike even more if I'm around people we hung out with together. Will I be even more aware of his absence? Of all the folks Mike and I hung out with for extended periods on vacation, I've only been with Damon, Cylin, and August, and then only for two periods of three days at a time. One occasion was Mike's funeral, and the other was his internment. They were short, jam-packed periods. I don't think I was up to feeling Mike's loss yet. Some say the first year is the worst; some say the second.
I keep worrying if I could have done more for him when he was in the hospital to help him feel less lonely. What I need now is the feel of his touch. I was there, but I don't think I spent a lot of time touching him. It hurts to think that I didn't do all I could have done.
Having finished the artichoke B. gave me yesterday, tonight, my hands were free, so I could continue reading the A Very Short Introduction to Plato. I learned there are two traditions of Platonic thought. One emphasizes his discussion style, which he presents through the voice of Socrates. He always asks questions and never offers his own point of view. The second, which came later, is a systemic analysis of Plato's thoughts and opinions on philosophical and metaphysical issues. As I read about him, I know what religion I was raised in, the church of Plato. Much of what I'm reading about reminds me of our dinner table conversation, as led by my dad.
My father used the Socratic debate method on me from the beginning. That means whatever I said, he questioned my thinking. I was in elementary school, if not younger; I think it was a form of child abuse. He believed, as did Plato, that I knew the truth and had to have the layers of enculturation peeled back. Here's the problem: no preschooler has years of enculturation to be peel back. It left me on shaky ground. Do I think he meant me harm? No. But I do think he was experimenting with me without regard to the effect on me. In those days, they believed children could recover from anything; ergo, it was impossible to do harm. It has only been within my lifetime that we recognize that grave harm can be done to children that have life-long repercussions. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger!
After dinner, I forced myself to sit down and do some work on the book before watching TV. It was satisfying. I made a few changes and went through my original Introduction to see what I want to include in the new one. Ah.
I found a new TV show. I think it is a mini-series, "The Blue Rose." It's pretty good, but it has this one super tough female character who makes me feel like I'm watching some chick flick station. She's a police officer; she's not just tough with the 'bad guys.' She's tough with anyone who gets in the way of what she wants. It verges on the unpleasant.
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