A Glum Day



(I started this post last Friday and couldn't finish it then but I am going to keep working on it until it is finished)

After holding up in what I thought were pretty good spirits most of the week I woke up today (Friday) to this depressing rainstorm and realized that all of the events of the week had finally left me deflated, mainly of course because all of the things to dread about it have not actually happened yet. In New Hampshire we are still going to school, for now (as of Monday, the high school is closed, but my younger children's Montessori school is still open, for the time being), and work, and most businesses are still open, and my oldest son is still going out tomorrow to work on his Eagle Scout project, which he has about 2 months left to finish. Bigger events certainly are being canceled, but for now we are not under lockdown yet. I just got a new phone, because I had dropped my old one on the ground and broken it, and even though I still wish smartphones had never been invented I do need to have some kind of telephone, so I decided to try to cheer myself up by taking the first pictures on it as we were going to school.

I work in a hospital, and while everything there was carrying on pretty much as usual up until last Friday, which assuaged much of the anxiety I was picking up on in the outside world, things were starting to amp up when I came back today, though we still do not have any cases of the Covid-19 that I am aware of. Due to my recent heart attack I am there quite a bit at other times for rehab and follow up appointments. I went to my cardiac rehab class this morning as usual, though I suspect this will be canceled before the next one, which is a shame, as I only had one session left to attend and I was looking forward, for some reason, perhaps because I have not graduated from anything since leaving college, to get my little diploma of completion. I will be pleased if I can continue working through this, not only so that I can keep getting paid, but I have been there for over 20 years I am used to it, it is part of my routine, and I do not like the idea of my routine being taken away, especially if it is to be substituted by my being confined to the house for an extended period of time (or serious illness/death)

A number of people on the internet have been reminiscing about their favorite plague literature and relating it to the present moment. Camus's The Plague is a popular choice, and while it is a fine book and is about modern man's diseased soul, a topic dear to many commentators, the book I have been thinking of the most in this vein is Manzoni's Betrothed, which I just read last summer. It of course takes place in Lombardy (about 400 years ago) which makes for an obvious comparison, but it is also about characters who are, like actual people, either laid low in the midst of actively living or, for those that survive, have to go forward into the future, whereas my memory of the Camus is that any idea of the future is rather blank and that the characters were not leading especially passionate or meaningful lives in the present. There was also a long plague sequence in Forever Amber that was not as profound in meaning but was described in considerable detail.

This picture is of the playground at my children's Montessori school. This is our twelfth year having children there, since our oldest was in first grade. I am hoping this is not the last year, that we will find a way to keep sending the younger children there, as our oldest boy is a senior in high school now and I hope will be going to college. Before this crisis came on, he had gotten into St John's, where his mother and I went. While traditionally it hasn't been especially hard to get accepted there, something I read claimed that the acceptance rate last year was down to 54%, and combined with the possibility that are still people around campus who might remember my undistinguished academic career there, I had some mild doubts about his chances. He doesn't seem especially excited about going, but he doesn't seem especially excited about anything else either, and he certainly doesn't have any more attractive options. Having observed for thirty years the phenomenon in our society of letting boys and young men drift through their teens and twenties--having been to some extent one of those boys--I am not a fan of it, and I do think he would benefit from going to a place like St John's, so unless he comes up with some plan that is equivalent in its potential benefits, I am going to make him try it. (He has not shown himself to be one of these young men who prefers to do things with his hands or other work of a physical nature who is being forced to go to college--he could get something out of academics)   

This crisis has really brought out the people who love to scold and tell everybody else what to do, which I hate, because I am not this kind of person. I am sure there are people out there who can grudgingly appreciate the necessity of the rather extreme measures that are being taken and are also self-reflective, and can have empathy for the various disappointments that this shutdown has laid on some people, but the scolds aren't having any of it. We all must shut up and agree with them on everything one hundred percent. For one thing, there was a lot of bashing of young people who went out to bars and so forth over the weekend or when their college classes were cancelled. For my part I am amazed at how easily this cohort has on the whole fallen into line. When I was in college I thought the three months of summer vacation were interminable. If it had been announced, in any of the years I was there, that the school year was shutting down in March, and I was going to have to go away from my friends, my booze, my girlfriend, or, if I didn't have a girlfriend, the chance to get one in the frenzy at the end of the year ("The Spring Offensive") and be forced to go home and be trapped in my mother's house for three months (or more), devastating does not really describe how that would have affected me. I don't think I ever would have recovered. I had nightmares well into my thirties that I lived with my mother in which I wake up thrashing about and trying to scream with great violence. And anyone who remembers how the young baby boomers, who are now in the forefront of commanding everyone to stay inside, carried on in the 1970s cannot possibly imagine that if this crisis had broken out in 1975 or thereabouts and the elders and middle aged women were ordering everyone into a prolonged lockdown with limited opportunities for partying and sex with people one's own age that the bulk of that cohort would have quickly and soberly complied for the overall good of society. My second son qualified for the New England swimming championships, which of course are canceled. He is disappointed, though as he was not going to be among the contenders for medals, qualifying was probably his main accomplishment, but for many of the teenagers, and their parents, who have spent thousands of dollars and endless hours over the ten years going to practices and meets all over this area building up to this (and don't have five other children), it was really crushing. I know we are in a global health crisis, and everything else is unimportant, but I think it is all right to be sad about something like this, and even to express it. Everything does not, and should not, have to be joylessly correct all the time.

It is now Tuesday. I am feeling more optimistic, probably because nothing terrible happened today, and I took the steps of passing through the to me big psychological barriers of holding my little children out of their school, which has still not closed, and banning everyone from attending what few appointments and meetings that had still not been canceled, which was difficult for me to do. Everybody else in my family is now homebound, though as we live in a fairly sparsely populated area we are allowed to go outside and walk around (I think). I am still going to work, as a result of which I have been quarantined in the empty bedroom in the attic for the duration of the crisis. I even feel pretty healthy. I've lost 20 pounds since my heart attack in December and am down to about 205, which is the lightest I have been since 1997 or 98. I don't expect this sanguine state will last, however.