Back To Bed

"Back to bed" is a phrase I think evokes the idea of giving up. That things are going so wrong there is no point in going on with the day and simply going back to bed would make more sense so one could reset and start over later. There's been a lot during pandemic days where time and purpose became battered to the point of feeling like we should all just go "back to bed."

But I never hear it that way. For me, there are few pleasures in life greater than getting to go back to bed.

When you think you have to get up, or you need do something very early, but then it turns out there's time to crawl back under the covers and steal a little more sleep before your day must begin. I love that.

I have trouble sleeping many nights, and it's usually not until morning that I find it easier to rest, which never seems fair when I have to get up to keep to some kind of schedule. An alarm going off and interrupting real sleep is an unpleasant way to start the day.

But between my children growing up, and the pandemic shutting everything down, I don't think I've set my alarm for the morning more than a couple of times in the past three years. Quinn doesn't need me before school unless her bus doesn't show. The pool where I swim only recently re-opened, but as long as I'm in it by 9:00 I can make it to work on time after swimming. (That's one of the perks of running your own business: Setting the hours. My parents' art gallery didn't open until 11:00 because they were not early-risers either, so my 10:30 start time almost seems ambitious.)

I am not wired to be up before 8:00. I can do it. I did it for decades while raising children and I kept my alarm set for hours that are always still dark, but it's painful. For me, it physically hurts to wake up too early. During the kids' elementary school years I wanted a snow day as much as they ever did. Because sometimes that meant going back to bed!

Back to bed is the best.

One of the things I really love about our new dog, Domino, is that she also likes to go back to bed. The first week we had her, I was concerned because she needed to get up very early for a walk, and then wanted to play in the living room when we got inside again. I started resigning myself to returning to a phase similar to when my kids were small and I would have to be someone who would get up and stay up, but no. After the dog was settled into her new home, she started sleeping in, and then when given the option after her first walk of crawling back under the covers? She jumps at it. Domino has a lot of energy, and when she's wound up she wants to bounce and prance and play, but almost any time that I can crawl back in bed, she'll happily join me. She burrows deep under the covers and snuggles up. It's perfect.

I admire people who can get up early and accomplish a lot before noon. But nobody ever accuses me of not doing enough things, so I don't lament not being an early bird. I do wish I had more opportunity to go back to bed on an average day, though. It's like an unexpected bonus, a surprise gift, a stolen stretch of dazed calm. It's a welcome time-out in a busy day. I've had a few chances to go back to bed over this winter break, and it's made the vacation that much better.

Looking back on 2022 this New Year's Eve, "back to bed" is a good summary to me. There were parts that were frustrating or disappointing because that's life, but overall? There were more unexpected bonuses and moments of joy than anyone deserves. I got to go to Venice with my mom. I got a new dog that loves me. I got to improve our house with a new deck. I got to spend time with my husband and kids. I got to make music. I got to put instruments I made in the hands of people who were excited to play them. I made new friends. I had time with family at the cottage. I put out an ABC book. My back problem appears to be gone. Stitch Fix finally sent me some decent concert clothes. I feel more calm.

The pandemic damaged my sense of time in that 2020 was a slow blur, 2021 was disjointed, but 2022 unfolded in a way that felt more welcome and familiar. Like going back to bed.

I'm looking forward to 2023. I hope you are, too.

Catching up and making plans (and random thoughts I want to get out)

You know what's exciting about 2021 so far? PLANS! There are plans again.

I used to feel somewhat constrained by endless plans, but now I understand they are necessary anchors on the calendar and in our memories. It's hard to recall anything in any order in 2020 because after things shut down in March, everything was the same, and there was nothing to look forward to. My daughter and I were trying to remember anything about last summer, and the best we could come up with was it got warmer for a while, and then it wasn't. We had to go out of our way to make Easter look different from the days around it. I don't know if we even noticed 4th of July. No Halloween. (No costumes.) I think we did Thanksgiving twice for some reason. I made a special effort on each of the kids' birthdays, but that took all of my creative energy. I was fortunate to have taken a couple of trips to the cottage (which was a safe and isolated place to go), but there were no family trips. The year was mostly a sad blur.

But what a difference vaccinations make.

There are things happening! With the promise of more things happening to come! I just returned from a road trip where I got to visit and hug vaccinated family and friends in several states, and it was wonderful.

I drove both my daughters to NYC where they are staying with my brother and his family for a while. (That will be a whole other post soon, once I download photos.) The three of us got to stay with my aunt and uncle in Ohio in their beautiful new home, I hugged cousins, we ate together and laughed and it all felt like normal again. I hung out in NYC long enough to help get my girls acclimated to life in the city, and then I drove home via Michigan so I could spend a little time with my mom, and have dinner with my (all fully vaccinated) friends. It feels a bit miraculous.

It's like we're living a fourth act of "Our Town," where after discovering that it is the mundane that is extraordinary, and the most basic connections between people that matter most, we don't have to stay dead, but can instead return to life again with renewed appreciation. I wonder how long after masks and social distancing are a distant memory we will retain that.

School updates:

Quinn went back to in-person school a couple of weeks ago. Kids still had the option of staying virtual, and at first Quinn thought he'd stick with that for safety reasons, but he's graduating from 8th grade. He's been at Fernwood Montessori for a decade, and in the fall he heads off to high school, and he wanted the chance to walk around his school again, and see his friends and teachers. We decided a good compromise was to not have him take the bus. (It turns out he preferred having us drive him anyway, he just didn't want to inconvenience us.) He's in school four days a week (Wednesdays are still virtual), we drive him there, he walks himself home, and it's going well. Everyone wears masks, the kids eat at their desks (with dividers between them at that time since their masks are off), the number of kids per room is limited so they have a system that rotates different kids out into the hall on different days, and they do Covid testing on groups periodically. He's glad to be back. He says he pushes himself to do more when he's physically in school. I'm happy he gets to have a more conclusive end to his time at Fernwood. (Unlike Aden who is still somewhat traumatized by having her senior year of high school simply end unceremoniously.)

Mona is finished with her junior year, having done all of it virtually. In fact, she took the few finals she didn't exempt on her laptop in NYC. Virtual school worked out fine for her in many ways. She's been able to manage her pain issues better from home, so her work didn't suffer. Her grades are fine. She's even on track to graduate early since she took classes ahead each summer. It was certainly not ideal, but I would say Mona is among those for whom online school during the pandemic worked out okay.

Aden wound up deferring both semesters of her first year at UW Stout, but is on track to start for real, in person, in a dorm, this fall. (Finally.) I won't lie and say it hasn't been nice having her around an extra year, but I think we're both ready for her to head off to college in a few months. Last year at this time she was anxious about leaving home. But now she's had a whole lot more of home than anyone bargained for, and after a truly boring gap year, she's excited for the next step. Her lineup of art classes sound wonderful, and I think she'll have a great freshman year. I'm glad she opted out of a first year of college that would have been all quarantine and virtual classes. 

Vaccines: Ian, Aden and I, all got Moderna shots. Ian and Aden felt a bit icky for a day after the second shot, but I had no reaction at all. Mona got Pfizer shots, also with no reaction. Quinn got his first Pfizer shot the day it was approved for teens, and still has his second shot coming up. Nurses at the vaccination centers remarked on how fun it was to give shots to people who were actually excited about it.

Work: We are starting to plan ahead for opening up the violin store to people again. We've been lucky to still have steady work all through the pandemic, but it's been different. The teaching studio closed last March, but will finally have students in it again starting in a couple of weeks. Sales were down for a while, but are back to normal. Repairs never stopped. Rentals stayed the same. I've discovered it's much easier to organize my time with appointments rather than open hours, so I think we'll keep that. Starting in the fall we'll have open hours two days a week, but otherwise be by appointment. I need more time in my shop at home. I need longer stretches to get work done without interruption. In the meantime, we are cleaning and organizing, and getting ready to let people step inside our door. That will feel weird after so much quiet.

Rehearsals and Performances: I was lucky to have been able to play a few orchestra concerts this past season. I'm glad we had a virtual option for the audience, and hope we keep that going forward. (I loved that my out of town family members could watch us play.) I'm excited about the upcoming season. I've also missed playing with the mandolin orchestra, and look forward to making music with that group again. I've gotten used to playing in a mask. I've gotten used to not having a stand partner or sharing music.

Latin: Who knows? Latin lessons with Quinn was one of the early casualties of the pandemic for us. He'd like to go back, but he feels (okay, WE feel) that we've forgotten so much by now, that starting up again could be painful. I told him we'd wait until he gets into a rhythm of things in high school and then see how much extra time he actually has.

Star Trek: At the beginning of the lock down, we (like many) were looking for things to watch, and Aden agreed to binge a Star Trek series with me. I decided if we were only going to watch one, then Deep Space Nine was a good choice, since it has a story line that wraps up cleanly, and I knew she'd like the characters.

We got through it faster than expected, so then moved on (back) to Next Generation. But I started toward the end of season two, because as much nostalgia as many of us have for Picard and his crew, lots of TNG does not hold up well. Some of the early episodes are downright unwatchable. Most episodes don't even pass a basic Bechdel Test. (For those of you unaware, the Bechdel Test wants you to ask: 1. Is there more than one woman in the story? 2. Do the women talk to each other? 3. If they talk to each other, is it about something other than a man? It is deeply sad how few things pass this meager test.)

Anyway, now we are on Voyager, and I am surprised at how much better it is than I remembered. I think I was influenced by a bunch of the whining from fans around it when it came out that was probably rooted in misogynistic nonsense. The show is great. It's funny, it can get quite dark, the characters are interesting and likable, and it's often challenging. Nearly all the time in TNG, and a lot of the time in DS9, Aden would guess the outcome of an episode in the first few minutes. Voyager? She seldom knows what's coming, and that's rare and delightful. Nearly every episode easily passes the Bechdel Test, and the captain is still distinctly in command while managing to be personable in a way none of the other captains ever were. And the overall feel is far more "Trek" than almost anything, since there is no Federation red tape or politics. They are actually trekking across the galaxy and exploring all new things.

But the most startling Voyager moment for us recently was the episode in the Void, where the ship is essentially set to stay on autopilot for years, there are no stars outside the windows, and there is nothing to do. They are just making their way across the Void and biding their time, which has the captain depressed, people eating at odd times, and everyone feeling like they should be enjoying the "vacation" but instead it has everyone on edge and feeling off. Aden looked at me and said, "Oh, this is the pandemic." And she was right. That episode was far more relatable now than the first time I saw it.

In any case, for me a minor joy of pandemic life, has been curling up with my oldest child almost every night (often with a bowl of popcorn between us) and watching Star Trek. That part I will always look back on fondly.

The binge show of choice for me and Quinn has been The Amazing Race. We started back on season one (about twenty years old at this point) and are somewhere in season fifteen now. Quinn has excellent knowledge of geography, so for him I think it's mostly interesting to see so many places around the world, but the game itself is entertaining. I'm flattered that my kids think Ian and I would do well on the race if we were in it. (I think we do have good complementary skill sets, but I don't run, and there is a lot of running on that show.) We've even adopted a new family phrase based on a moment in season one: There was a mother daughter team--Emily and her mom--and the mom was really steady and nice. Early on, all the teams are challenged to zip line across a really deep drop somewhere in South America, and one of the strong young men gets really scared, but the mother daughter team did it just fine. This causes the girlfriend of the nervous man to complain, "Emily's MOM did it!" So now that's what we say when any of us hesitates about doing something we're nervous about.

My house is the messiest it's ever been. Three teenagers locked in a house for a year is a bad idea in terms of housekeeping. At some point I'll have to do something about it, but not yet.

I finished my fourth novel over a year ago, but have been mired in the complications of querying agents. One asked to see the manuscript back in September, but I still haven't heard back. Other writers I know say that's not that unusual, especially during the pandemic. I may self-publish again out of sheer impatience soon. But it's a fun book that should appeal to a large audience, so for now I will keep trying. (I'm looking forward to sharing it! You'll like it.)

We still miss our dog. My brother on the other side of Wisconsin recently lost his dog, too. It's been a bad year for pets.

Although our bird remains wildly entertaining. Keiko only hears us talk about Keiko, so the only thing he tells us is, "Adorable Keiko bird, such a cute bird" etc. I had no idea a pet bird could be so interesting and funny.

Aden got to do a trip to the cottage with a friend earlier this month where I left them on their own for about a week. That felt sort of wild to have a kid be that grown up. Along the same lines, Mona wants to get better at driving, and she did a big chunk of driving across both Indiana and Pennsylvania on our recent trip. It is surreal to have your child in the driver's seat.

We're planning a trip up the East Coast this summer. That was supposed to happen in 2020, but you know... 2020. I'm looking forward to it.

Our family finally watched Hamilton not long ago. I was surprised and pleased to discover it deserved all the hype and acclaim it's gotten. It's a truly remarkable achievement. I found out as I was leaving NY that Lin-Manuel Miranda lives in my brother's building in Washington Heights, so I didn't get a chance to tell him so directly. Next time! (My kids are still in NY, so I told them to tell Mr Miranda I said "Hi" if they bump into him.)

I finally figured out the way for me to use my phone is to put it in a wallet, so I keep track of where it is. I'm also learning that texting is useful when your kids aren't living with you. Still not crazy about having a phone, though.

I think that's enough updating for the night. If you came this far, thanks for joining me on a rambling exercise in marking this place in time! It never looks worthwhile until years go by and I forget everything. (That's the true value of a blog.)

The Moments Where Everything Gels

Whatever you celebrate during these shortened days of December, I hope it brought you peace this year.

Our family, with its secular Christmas, had a truly lovely day yesterday. (And you can't exactly see it in this photo, but our tree was twisted in such a way that we couldn't make it not lean. We decided it was a very 2020 tree.)

Christmas Eve was a little harder, where I put in very long hours at work trying to get instruments off my bench in time for people to use them over the holiday weekend, and the brakes on one of our cars died. I was exhausted and worn out when I got home, and found myself curled up alone in the back room of the house watching the beginning of It's A Wonderful Life.

I got overwhelmed by thoughts of how unfair it was this year that when I already miss people who have died, that I now have to miss the ones who are still here. In 2020 I've seen my mom, and one brother. Both masked. Both socially distanced so hugs were not possible. Everyone else I haven't seen in a year or more.

Plus, when you're upset, you tend to pile on and focus on the negative in general. Our old dog has gone blind and bumbles into everything, and gets caught in odd corners in the house where he either whimpers for help or gives up and just stands. Our house is giant mess. I'm tired of my back hurting. I'm behind on everything.

On top of it all, it didn't feel like Christmas. No snow. Most of our lights were dead when we pulled them out of the basement and it didn't seem worth the effort or money to replace them. I was feeling bad about presents since most of the boxes under the tree were cereal, and literally wads of bubble wrap with nothing in them but more bubble wrap. Normally I hand make my kids little mini versions of their Halloween costumes to add to a box, and it's something personal, but no costumes this year, so no minis to sew.

But then I got my best present of the year. One of my teens, who has tended toward the aloof and surly in recent months, discovered me crying alone in the back room. They asked if I was okay. I said I would be, but this Christmas was hard. They asked if I wanted them to sit with me. I said, "Do whatever you want," which is normally the response I get when I make any suggestions to them lately. 

Cribbage, Anyone?

I love games, and my most reliable partner for games in our house is my son, Quinn. He's 13, which means he's most often inclined to be off in some corner of the house doing his own thing, but almost anytime I ask when I'm home from work, he'll agree to a game.

If we can convince anyone else to join us, we'll usually play Settlers of Catan, Sorry, Uno, Spite and Malice, or Code Names. If it's just the two of us? It cycles among Backgammon, Rummy, Abalone, Boggle, and Cribbage. During isolation, it's been pretty much all just Boggle or Cribbage.

But our Cribbage board was annoying. It's the type where you have to move your pegs around your track twice to finish, and on evenings when we're fading a little, we can honestly forget which round we're on and suddenly have no idea who is actually winning. We decided it would be better to have a board with one, long winding track from start to finish.

So why not make our own board? Looked easy enough, and I can make things.

Of course it didn't go quite as planned, but I like the final result anyway. Behold our new Cribbage board!

Pretty, huh?

Now let me explain what a goofy adventure this turned out to be.

At least as a violin maker I knew I could find a nice piece of wood lying around to work with. I happen to have a small pile of odds and ends that were given to me by a nice wood supplier in Washington state when I was out West for a VSA convention many years ago. Wood that was too thin or didn't have its book-matched partner, etc. I dug around in that pile and found a piece of maple that was never going to be a violin, and made it into a shape and thickness I could use.

For pegs in the board we went to American Science and Surplus and found matching rods of brass, and "music wire" (whatever that might be--didn't come up in music school), and I sawed them into little pieces and polished the ends smooth. (Quinn has barely been out of the house since the pandemic shut everything down back in March. It was strange to wander around one of our favorite stores while wearing masks, but it was also nice to get out and do something purely fun for a change.)

Once I knew the thickness of the pegs we'd be playing with, we decided how we wanted the layout of the track to go. We penciled in spots for drilling, and I hit my drill press. This is where my general lack of patience decided to teach me a lesson. There are 120 holes per player on the board. (Plus a few extra for a tally of how many games each person has won.) The smart thing would have been to poke a hole to mark each spot before trying to drill them, but ugh, that seemed like a lot to do. I thought, eh, how hard could drilling holes in straight lines be?

Ha! After the second hole I just started laughing. The flame in the wood was guiding my drill bit into odd places, and it was beyond my control. After about half a dozen holes I realized I was either going to have to start completely over, or just deal with the bizarre mess I was creating. I decided to plunge ahead with my Cribbage board that with each new hole was looking more and more like the drill press version of a failed test for drunks at a traffic checkpoint. I showed it to Ian and Aden when I came up from the basement, and they both asked what happened. I told them at least no one would ever ask where we bought our new Cribbage board from.

So I pondered the wonky holes for a day and decided that an artistic solution was the way to go. I got out a nice pen and went to work between projects on my bench one day. I created the vine design, and now it looks maybe like it's all on purpose. Quinn looked pleased anyway, when I showed him the finished board. That's all that really matters to me.

I used an old box from a rosin I bought at a violin convention in 2004 (from which the rosin has long ago been used up) to store the scoring pegs. Maybe someday I'll make a case to keep the whole thing together along with the necessary deck of cards, but not now.

Not exactly the kind of project I was hoping to complete during all of our unexpected free time, but still fun. It always feels good to make something. Strangely, of late, I feel busier than ever. Which I don't understand since so many activities were wiped from our calendar. But somehow I'm having even more trouble making time for the things I most want to do.

In any case, one day when we look back on our pandemic days, we'll have a pretty cribbage board made from violin maple to show for it. I love game time with Quinn. That will be part of this whole mess I will be able to remember with nothing but fondness.

Update from Our Corner of the Pandemic

The short version, if you have no time to read, is we're doing fine. We're healthy, and we're adapting.

The longer version, as with everything in these strange times, is a bit more complicated.

I keep thinking back to my birthday. My birthday was March 14th, same as Einstein and Telemann and Billy Crystal. It was a matter of weeks ago, but feels like ages. It was a Saturday. I was at work for most of it. Saturdays are usually my busiest day at the violin store, and this particular one last month was probably typical, but now in my memory it feels almost frantic.

There were people in my store--actual other people who do not live in my house. I kept them spaced apart using appointment times, and I washed my hands before and after each visit, and I required everyone wash their hands the minute they arrived. One family was in masks. I broke social distancing rules for them so I could fit the kids for rental instruments, but I did it as quickly and efficiently as I was able. It was nerve-wracking. I was honestly relieved when the official lock down order came the following week, and I didn't feel as if I needed to let people inside my store anymore.

I spent a quiet couple of weeks in lock down doing shop tasks. I sharpened my tools. I got to work on the non-pressing, time-intensive projects that most violin shops have lurking in their corners. I passed along a couple of those projects to my assistant down in Chicago so she could still clock in hours from home if she wants to.

Then the calls started to come. I knew they would, because music is definitely something many people stuck at home want to do, and with all music lessons being taught at a distance, there were bound to be broken strings as people with no experience started trying to tune violins. Then there was a rash of fingerboards coming off instruments for some reason. And violins getting dropped. So I had to develop new protocols for doing work out of my shop.

Currently the way we operate is this: We are by appointment only. No one is allowed inside the store. Simple things like changing a string, I can do out on the front steps while wearing a mask as people wait more than six feet away, and I wash my hands thoroughly before and after. More involved repairs sit in a quarantine line. There is no way for me to disinfect a violin or bow currently, other than with time. (And I've already heard of parents who have taken a Clorox wipe to their kid's instrument and were shocked the varnish came right off. My post-pandemic work load will not be pretty.) Violins sit in a row on the floor, tagged with dates, until they are safe for me to handle. (I recommend people also let the instruments sit at their end when they get them back, but I can't control what other people ultimately do.) Any work I can't figure out how to do safely (such as soundpost adjustments where I need the player in the same space and we have to pass the instrument back and forth between us several times) I have to turn away.

Business is certainly way down compared to normal, but I am far from bored. I'm maintaining a similar work schedule. I actually kind of like the built-in "stop switch" that comes with the quarantine lineup. Normally I am compelled to keep working until everything is off my bench, which means I often put in late nights. Now? Well, there is work to do, but I can't touch all of it. I have to stop and go home at some point. Which is good. I like the extra time with my family.

Which brings me to the first and most important way in which I am lucky during this pandemic so far, beyond not being sick: I really like the people I'm in lock down with. I like our home, I love my husband and kids.... And we're a whole group of introverts who get along fine. Especially on cold, rainy weekends, we're doing exactly what we'd normally be doing. We're each doing our own projects kind of near each other, and then gathering together periodically to watch a movie or play a game or eat a meal.

Our house is just big enough there is space for any of us to retreat from the group if we want to be alone. We have a treadmill that we moved into the room with the TV. I set up a card table in the living room with a jigsaw puzzle people can work on when they feel like it. I've been reading aloud to the kids in the evenings sometimes. (We finished The Hobbit recently, and just started Sophie's World.) We have movies, books, recipes to try....

My head is still not in a good space for creative work yet. I need the house to be less cluttered for that to happen, and two adults and three teenagers inside all the time is making that difficult. But I'm not stressing about it. I am making it a goal to get into my workshop in the next couple of weeks, and I may just dive into an early edit of my next novel, even though the one I released this year didn't even get a real launch.

The issues with contemporary fiction writing are funny right now. I was originally concerned that my next novel got locked into 2019, and that that would feel out of date by the time it was released in 2021. Now it's fine, because I don't have to include the pandemic in the story line. I recently heard an interview with Stephen King, where he said his current story had a plot point where a couple of characters go on a cruise in 2020. He had to bump it back to 2019 for it not to ring false for readers. A lot of writers are debating if we integrate these weird circumstances into our fiction or not. Most seem to agree that unless it's integral to the plot, we should ignore the pandemic. It will certainly date the stories the same way the Blitz would.

Which brings me to my kids, because I've been thinking a lot about how this will be a defining period for them that they will be asked to describe for children in the future. The same way 9/11 is something my children only know from history books, but it's a vivid memory for me. I hope regardless of what is happening in the world at large I am helping guide them through this time in a way that is healthy in all senses of that word.

The first few weeks of lock down and social distancing were unsettling. We all had adjustments to make, and things to give up. There were moments of stress that caused everyone to break down in tears at different times. Things have turned around, and at this stage we're all faring better.

I was most concerned for my oldest, because she's the most social of all of my kids, and to have her senior year come to an unceremonious halt was rough. But she's found ways to do Dungeons and Dragons online with friends. She meets someone down the street for a socially distanced Pokemon battle about once a week. She's learning guitar. And when I reminded her that we have the violin store building to safely retreat to for a change of scenery, and that there was an empty Airbnb just sitting there, she devised a schedule for coming out with me to work three days a week. She has the little apartment above the store set up as an art studio. She's been improving her painting skills, getting better at drawing hands, and enjoying a break from her siblings. Real time alone to both relax and be productive has greatly helped her mood.

It's also helped that she finally came to a conclusion about college. That was a lot of stress even without a pandemic looming all around us. Aden was accepted everywhere she applied, and was offered some impressive scholarships, but nothing felt quite right. So a week before all the deadlines were coming due to commit to a school, we did a Google search, and found a new one that checked all the boxes. We got the acceptance letter from UW-Stout a couple of days ago, and Aden is actually excited now about the prospect of college. We still don't know if she'll be able to attend physically in the fall, or what kinds of changes the school will have to make to accommodate college life in the midst of a pandemic, but it's fun to see my daughter looking forward to the next step of her education. We all feel good about it, even if certain elements remain unclear. However it pans out, Aden's not alone. The class of 2020 will be forever bonded through these strange rites of passage.

My middle child is simply enjoying being at home. She misses her friends and her teachers, but the chronic pain she suffers (still undiagnosed, but there's an appointment lined up with a neurologist in a month) makes life in the noisy school hard. It's helping that she can sleep when she needs to, or take medication without a hassle if her headaches get too bad. She's been diligently doing some online classwork every day, even though the district already declared everyone Pass/Fail for the term. If they ever convert that into real grades, the work she's doing now can be used toward improving them. Early on in the lock down, Mona was doing a bit of sewing and made me this adorable fish:

She'd like to sew more, but is awaiting inspiration. She's doing well with this overall, and I'm glad.

My youngest simply takes things in stride. He seldom understands why anyone makes a fuss about anything in general. He's been doing mandatory online school for about a week. It took the district some time to make sure every student who needed a laptop had one, and now that there is a modicum of equity, classes have begun again. We set him up in a little room off the kitchen that we call "the nook" and he gets himself up in the morning and sequesters himself in there with his computer and his lap-desk until noon.

Quinn's cast is off, so I don't need to be his other hand in piano anymore. Which is too bad, actually. I liked having time with him at the keyboard, laughing as we tried to coordinate our efforts into a coherent piece of music. The trip to the clinic to remove the cast was an adventure. I figured the last place I'd want to take my kid right now was to the hospital, but Children's made it about as safe as you could ask. They sent us to a satellite clinic for non-covid-19 patients only. We were pre-screened on the phone, screened again at the door by a man in full PPE, I was given a mask since I have a cough from an unrelated issue. We never saw another patient once inside the building. The people at reception were in masks and behind plastic sheeting. We never shared a room with more than one medical person at a time, and they did as much as they could at a distance as possible. It was far less nerve-wracking than the grocery store.

In any case, being 13 meant my son spent a lot of time in his room with the door closed anyway. I don't know how much quarantine has changed things, other than his friends from down the street can't join him on the trampoline now. He's made using the treadmill part of his daily routine, and he's always willing to accompany me on a walk with the dog if I invite him. He has Minecraft, and a dry erase board to doodle on. If he's suffering in any way, we can't see it. He's about as nice a person to be cooped up with as one could ask for.

My husband remains the person who keeps things working and I'm grateful for that every day. The biggest recent project was when the dryer stopped working. That's the kind of thing if I were on my own with the kids (like during the deployments) would have put me over the edge. But Ian simply consulted YouTube, took the dryer apart, and fixed it. He's amazing.

Ian's also been sweet about indulging my scavenger hunt obsession. Our little corner of the south side of Milwaukee is called Bay View, and I really appreciate the kind of caring, creative place this neighborhood is. A local record store put together a scavenger hunt all over Bay View to provide people with something to do when out for socially distanced walks. It's based on a box of 64 crayons, and those crayons are in shop windows and on display outside of historic locations. It's great, because it directs people toward local businesses that could use support. (Last week I picked up pie from one of the locations when we went to collect the information we needed off their crayon. Without the scavenger hunt, I wouldn't have realized they were even still open and offering curbside service right now.) Anyway, I've learned a lot about my community in the past few weeks of solving clues and hunting down crayons. And every time I have a hunch, Ian's happy to go with me there, by foot or bike or car.

In fact, last Saturday was the first day in all of this that I felt unabashedly great. Since we're by appointment only at the store, and no one was scheduled after noon, we closed up just to explore some scavenger hunt options. We ordered a sandwich ahead, and walked in the sunshine together, and went through our list of clues. We walked by the lake, found some crayons, split our sandwich, and enjoyed each other's company. The loop we made was about three miles, and then we got some more work done at the store. I loved it. On a normal Saturday I'd never be able to take a break like that. Ironically, because of the lock down, I was not trapped in the store.

I'm starting to become aware of all the ways during normal life that I box myself in, and how too full a schedule can look like a form of quarantine. There are normally days where every hour was spoken for: The alarm would go off at six, I'd prepare breakfast and make sure everyone got off to school, swim my mile, get to the violin store with hair that was still wet and get to work, try to get home in time to see the kids for a few minutes before heading off to a rehearsal, and crawling back in bed where I started sometime after ten. It was all stuff I had chosen and that I enjoyed, but with that kind of schedule I was quarantining myself off from time to create, time to read, time with people I care about. I'm wondering how to restructure my life when the pandemic no longer dictates my options so that I have more true freedom.

I feel right now that we have reached a good place. I know I have. I'm past the grieving and the ennui. I'm excited to get up in the morning and tackle things, which was hard about a month ago. (Not everything, but enough. I'll get there.) Limiting the amount of news I listen to has helped. I acknowledge I am in a privileged position where other than the general isolation, we're not in distress. But I don't think anyone should feel guilt about being happy right now if they can be. I lived through enough of that during the deployments. When Ian was in Iraq, and one of the kids did something adorable, it was bittersweet, because I was always acutely aware that their dad was missing it. And there was an underlying sense of it being inappropriate to have fun while he had to be at war several time zones away.

My heart breaks for people who are enduring great loss at this time. I have concerns and fears about the future. But that's true every day, not just during a pandemic. I can be sad for others while still being proud of my daughter for getting into the school of her choice. I can honor people's sacrifices while still being glad to get to snuggle with my son on the couch during a movie. I don't have to feel guilty when our chattering bird makes me smile. Hardship comes to everyone at some point. No one escapes pain in life. So if you've managed to escape some now, during these peculiar and difficult times, appreciate it. Don't try to mitigate it to balance things out in the world. Take joy when you can get it. Especially now.

End of an Army Era

Today was my husband's last Army drill.

The official retirement date on his orders is the 15th, but today was supposed to be his retirement ceremony. That bit of formal recognition of 21 years of military service was canceled by the current pandemic along with everything else. It was supposed to happen between 11:30 and 12:30 central time, as our handy online calendar notified us this morning.

Plague Break

This is how my daughter has been referring to this unexpected and peculiar time off: Plague Break. It's like Spring Break (which according to our calendar is still approaching) combined with a pandemic. Strange times.

Our family is beyond lucky. As of this moment, the corona virus has not seemed to have touched us, or anyone we know personally. I expect that to change as the year drags forward, but today? Today we are healthy. Today we are fine.

Our state went on official lock down on Wednesday morning, March 25th. There was a flurry of activity in my store right before then, since many people don't view violins and instrument repairs as non-essential. One person even drove up from Chicago to have me set up her soundpost, since Illinois was on lock down already and no shop down there could help her.

Before this week, we'd been by appointment only at the violin store as soon as the public school closures were issued. The protocols we instituted involved lots of hand washing (for both us and our customers), social distancing, and anything people handled and didn't take with them got put into quarantine for several days. It was an odd way to work.

Since the lock down, no one is allowed inside my store. They can leave things on the doorstep that I can bring in after they've backed away. I have been able to deliver certain items. I recently left a violin bow on a porch and found the payment for it in the mailbox. I appreciate more than I can say that I have customers that think to call me first, rather than spend their money online.

Interestingly, we had more rental instruments go out in the past week than come back. People have time to play. I've been carefully asking each person who does return an instrument why they are doing it, because I don't want anyone to feel they can't play violin simply because we're in a peculiar time of financial strain. I would find a way for them to hang onto it for a while, rather than take a violin away from a child at this moment. But so far everyone has assured me their child lost interest, nothing more.

I've been at my store each day, primarily to wait for packages that were already in transit before the lock down order. I've been sharpening tools for work that isn't there. It's very odd to be caught up on repairs.

Very soon I will shift to being completely at home, the way my husband and children have been. I'll join the full-time quarantine, where at least we have each other and there are hugs and a well-enough stocked pantry. (On my last visit to the grocery store at the beginning of the week, I discovered the losing pasta type is Mafalda. Apparently people will take everything else before they will take Mafalda. Who knew?)

What I find really striking so far about this momentous shift we've all been asked to make in our lives, is how quickly so much of it has sunk in. It's only been about two weeks since school was canceled and social distancing rules were explained to all of us. Now when I see images in movies or online of crowds of people smashed shoulder to shoulder anywhere I feel something akin to panic. I'm conscious about how I wash my hands in a way I didn't used to be. Every time someone touches their own face I feel a small alarm go off in my brain.

I'm surprised by how exhausting all of this has turned out to be. And how hard it is to be motivated to do the kinds of projects I usually want to do. Seems like a perfect opportunity to write, or organize things, or get some real work done in my home shop. But I haven't really done any of that yet.

Part of it is that in some way, too much time can be a burden. I've often found that when trying to get somewhere on time, that too much time makes me as late as too little. And in terms of projects, I'm reminded of the saying, "If you want something done, give it to a busy person." People often ask how I have time for all the things I do, and the truth is you grab moments when you can get them and use them to the fullest. But if tomorrow is just as empty as today, there's no hurry. So I keep putting things off because I can.

Another part of it is stress and grief. Those things make you tired. I tried to explain that to my oldest the other night when she was getting depressed and wasn't sure why. I told her it's because this looks like a vacation of sorts, but it isn't. It's a crisis. And even though in our own home things are about the same, having choices taken away never feels right. And she has legitimate things to grieve over. She left school believing she'd go back the following Monday. Instead, without any goodbyes, she's simply done. Not exactly the way we imagine finishing our senior year. She's trying to make decisions about college under unusual circumstances. She misses her friends.

The stories about people this pandemic has impacted directly are scary. There's no getting around that no matter how many cookies we bake. The fact that there is no end date is stressful. All of it makes us want to sleep in and tune it out a little longer.

As much as we've had to give up at this time, I am impressed by how many good things we had, if that makes sense. Most of us tend to focus on the negative side of being too busy. When all of it grinds to a halt, we can appreciate anew what we liked about all of those activities.

Because talk about cancel culture! Watching one thing after another go down like dominoes was rather shocking. Two concerts I was supposed to play were called off. My book signing is indefinitely postponed. I doubt my daughter will have a public graduation. My husband, after 21 years of service, was supposed to have his Army retirement ceremony next weekend, but instead, he just stops going to drill with no real recognition. Almost without exception, everything getting canceled was something we were looking forward to. It's sort of astonishing to be forced to step away from it all and realize how good we had it.

Currently the only thing keeping us tethered to the day of the week is the fact that my son has remote piano lessons on Mondays. That's it. Bedtimes don't matter, mealtimes don't matter.... All my kids are teenagers so the schedule has gotten very loose. The funniest part of Quinn's piano lessons is that he broke his wrist in two places on a ski trip right before the school closures. His left arm is in a cast, which means to play his assignments, I am now his left hand. I'm a viola player, so I don't read bass clef, and looking at chords is confusing. I gave his teacher a good laugh at least, last lesson. I will do better next time! And since I'm not taking Quinn anywhere near a hospital until the pandemic is under control, who knows how long he'll be stuck in that cast? I could become better at bass clef than I ever planned to.

I am enjoying reading more. I normally don't have a schedule that allows me to finish a book in a single day, and now I do. I'm reading to the kids as they gather to do projects some evenings at the dining room table. Mona has been sewing some beautiful things. Aden is drawing more. I've made a new friend on social media whom I think of as my "plague buddy," and we can tell each other stories that people in our own homes have already heard too many times. It will be nice to meet him in real life when the world goes back to normal.

I do wonder what normal will look like, though. I imagine a year from now it will look more like what we remember from just a few weeks ago. But the rest of this year I think will be strange and complicated. This is not something that will simply end in a couple of weeks and everything springs back to life as if we flipped a switch. There will be ripple effects, and I expect to feel them for a while.

Yesterday would have been my dad's 91st birthday. I took a walk by the lake for an hour and called one of my brothers, and then my mom. We agreed that Dad would have weathered quarantine just fine. He would have happily clipped articles at his desk and looked forward to whatever Mom made for dinner. We wonder if he would have noticed the plague break much at all, aside from the newspaper articles suddenly being entirely about covid-19. I feel bad my mom doesn't have his company right now as she's stuck by herself at home.

I loved my walk by the lake. I'm going to take advantage of so much time laid suddenly at my feet and try to do that every day that I can. This afternoon my family came out to walk a little with me. Even the dog who (because he is the world's weirdest dog and doesn't want to go for walks) enjoyed it for a little bit. The lake provides perspective you don't get anywhere else. It's always beautiful, always different. It makes our own concerns seem smaller and fleeting.

If we do this together we can be proud of how we looked out for one another at an uncertain time. Take care of each other and try to see the good. There's always good if you look.

I hope you all stay healthy.