Not seeing me and Julio down by the schoolyard

The past few weeks have been a crazy time for all of us. Both my husband and I are now working from home. My son, who had been studying abroad in Prague, called us in the middle of the night to let us know the school told the students to leave “calmly and but quickly” and we picked him up from JFK at 11 p.m. a day later, 1 hour before customs instituted medical screening for most flights returning from Europe. We are all a bit shell shocked but making the best of it. Being home together as a family is different from being told you have to stay home together and can’t leave the house. We are all grounded and a little bit mad at mom and dad but know we probably deserve it. Some of my observations from this journey so far.

First we need to talk about Corona fashion. Some of us in this household have just given up. My husband has been wearing the same sweatpants and sweatshirt we bought in Maine in 1989 for the past week. I think he also may be wearing it to bed, but I can’t confirm because he left me for the guest room around the same time because he doesn’t want me to infect him and dog stole his spot. I’m not sure he will ever give it up. I on the other hand am overdressed for most occasions, home lockdown being no different. I am thrilled that I have found the perfect time to wear my cashmere sweat suit. I heard the snickers when I bought it two months ago. I think I’ve found the right clothes that look fashionable enough to wave at my neighbors out the window but comfortable enough to pass out on the couch at a moment’s notice.

The toilet paper hoarding is going to bother me for a long time. We need to deconstruct the entire pandemic and find out how and why. As a person who was unluckily low on toilet paper on March 12, I had to venture out to stores 5 times with no luck before a toilet paper fairy dropped some on my front porch. I think the hoarders were buying all the toilet paper up while I was buying out the liquor store. I won’t have to follow the advice being offered so kindly on social media for reusable toilet paper. (Gross) Crisis being temporarily averted, I have bigger fish to fry. Every time I clean the kitchen floor since this domestic bliss started, there are crumbs everywhere almost immediately. It is a bigger mystery to me than the toilet paper whodunit. I never see who is doing it and I know it’s not me or the dog. For the love of God, are they just walking around eating with food falling out of their mouths? I now need to find CCTV cameras for my kitchen in addition to more toilet paper.

People say to take this opportunity to improve yourself and read, learn a language, or exercise. I’ve started an exciting adult learning class for my husband and son called The Basics of Home Economics in the 21st Century. The curriculum is tough, but we are pushing through with classes including:

· The toilet bowl cleaner brush: 20th century decoration or necessary tool. (And yes, that is an old dog in a diaper behind it.)

· Debunking the myth of the dishwasher fairy.

· Signs it’s time to change your clothing 101.

· Short order cook or working-at-home mom, you decide.

· Stockholm syndrome and you.

And then there is this… which has been sitting on my counter for 2 days.

Did someone start eating the apple and then have to run to put out a fire? How come I didn’t know about said fire? Did someone think, “Hey, let me leave this here and I’ll come back to it on Sunday.” There will be penalties for this.

This time of “social isolation” can be a time of discovery. Much of this discovery will be about yourself and your family, and gives us a chance to hit the “reset” button. Constantine Cavafy wrote the poem Ithaka in 1911 about Odysseys and his journey to his home island of Ithaka. It is about life as a journey and accepting the difficulties encountered along the way. The more difficulties, the more opportunities there will be to grow stronger. Enjoying the journey, despite how difficult it might be, is more important than the goal. This is not easy by any means and some of us have lost more than others, but we can try to enjoy what we can of this long strange journey we are now on.

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka

hope the voyage is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.

May there be many a summer morning when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you come into harbors seen for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you are destined for.

But do not hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you are old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you would not have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.