Isolation changes everything. The furniture becomes malevolent. Family pictures start to frown at you from the frames, you can hear the clucking tongues, feel the disapproving glares. Clocks are your enemy.
Time takes on a menacing importance, everything has a time. You really begin to understand how time rules life. You really see it as a commodity. It starts to become an infinitely divisible linear continuum. Everything depends on time. You live for the next “time.”
Time for the Today Show. I’ve started to appreciate the dispassionate approach of Savanah and Hoda. I didn’t even know their names until the quarantine. Now, I’m a big fan. But, Covid 19 is the news, all of the news. Everything comes back to the pandemic, everything. It doesn’t take long to start sounding like the same story, at least the same ending, it’s like the Rocky movies. Everything comes back to the virus.
You might be amazed at how many prescription drugs advertise all day. I can tell you almost everybody who shouldn’t be taking almost every new medicine. Plus, I know all of the potential side effects, sometimes they are terrible. Depending on what you malady you have and how painful the death could be you might want to consider it as an option. I don’t always know what disease the prescription is used to combat, it seems like they would spend a little more time talking about that, but marketing was never my gig.
Lunchtime becomes sacred. You have something to talk about, something to do. You get to make lunch, serve lunch and do the dishes. Nobody ever looks forward to doing the dishes. Until they are quarantined. Then you fight over washing the dishes. Bargain over who gets to wash and who gets to dry.
“What do you want for lunch?”
“Whatever you’re making.”
It’s time to bargain. Salad, or chicken strips? Tacos or hamburgers? Everything is a process. The art of reasonable reduction.
“Salad for lunch, tacos for dinner?” My wife asks.
“But, tacos for dinner doesn’t work. We are having enchiladas for dinner. It isn’t the same thing, sure it shares many of the same ingredients, and it is similar, but the sauce makes all the difference. It changes everything.” I tell her. “Probably, considering we are having enchiladas for dinner we should eliminate tacos for consideration.”
“Salad, then?”
No real cooking, but cutting, chopping, dicing, slicing, mixing, tossing. The art of food preparation. I have become much better at cooking. And cleaning, and putting away.
You learn to take your time, enjoy the act of scrubbing, drying, putting them away. You savor each movement, time and purpose become a beautiful partnership. Most of the day you only have time.
Time is the only thing that matters. You watch it with dread, it crawls by. You wait for the next minute, the next chance to do something, anything.
Several months ago we reserved a cabin in the woods of Amish country. They emailed and said it was open. It is miles away from anywhere. We are going, it is the ultimate quarantine, a secluded cabin in gathering middle of the woods. My next post will come from there.
Stay strong, I’m rooting for you, we’re all in this together.
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