Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Praying To Sister Mary Elephant

With apologies to both Cheech and Chong:
"Okay. The first day on my isolation, what I did on my isolation, the first day on my vacation, I woke up. Then, I went to the living room to look for something to do. Then I hung out on the couch. The second day on my isolation, I woke up, then I went to the living room to look for something to do. Then I hung out on the couch. The third day on my isolation, I woke up..."
If you feel compelled to shriek "Shut up!" at the top of your lungs, it's understandable. The essential numbness of the daily routines around here have begun to take their toll. My wife, whose alter ego, America's Friend Polly Polkadot, began with her typically perky approach. She was going to sew a button on a denim jacket she had to mark each day we spent sheltered in place. She had also taken it upon herself to make a broad X through those days on our calendar with a bright orange pen. That pen ran out of ink. Really. And though there are still buttons left in her sewing basket, the sheer weight of the garment she was crafting was becoming ungainly and absurd. This is not a knock on my wife, or Ms. Polkadot. It has simply become more and more difficult to make things cheery.
Which helps to explain why there continues to be protests and demonstrations arguing against the essential job we have all been asked to do: Stay home. When my job became focused on Zoom meetings and working from my desk at the front of my house, I began to reconsider all those times when I pined for the chance to just sit around at my desk at the front of the house. Now I find myself moving from room to room with my laptop in hopes of finding a new venue: one that doesn't feel like the same old place.
Because I am now excruciatingly familiar with most of the nooks and crannies of the home I share with my wife. Familiar enough that I feel comfortable describing them as "nooks and crannies." I have cleaned or cleared out many of them. I have discovered items including, but not limited to, our second wok, a bag of assorted spices, and a post that was a little wobbly at the bottom of our back stairs. I have conversations with my wife that have touched on, but not limited to, the bag of postcards on top of the refrigerator, the placement and overall health of our houseplants, and that wandering wok. 
And then there's the couch. Where I find myself perhaps all too often, even though I have been making a conscious effort to be anyplace else. I believe that it is the gravitational vortex of our little corner of heaven. 
Did I say, "heaven?" 
I'll have to get back to you on that. 

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