Padding the Point

July 28, 2020July 28, 2020Leave a comment

When I was a senior in college, I was chosen for an abbreviated study abroad trip to Egypt for two weeks to study politics. While there, we visited an area of Cairo known as Garbage City, populated primarily by Christians. All of Cairo’s garbage comes to this neighborhood, and the residents recycle something like 98% of it. We went to a factory which employs women to wash cloth, make paper, and sew products. In the gift shop, I bought a box of blank cards made of recycled paper, each decorated with embroidery of daily life. Women carrying bundles on their heads, jumping fish, trees, camels, swooping birds.

I believe I started with a set of 12, and I have 3 left. I gave card to my brother-in-law this year for Father’s Day, as I believed he would appreciate this connection to Christians a world away. I gave a card to my boss one year for Boss Appreciation Day. When he commented that he wished he could use the card again, it was so lovely, I made a note for myself and gave him two cards the next year, one with my thanks for his work as my supervisor and one blank for him to use as he wished. I’m not sure what happened to the others. I remember designs that are no longer in the box and I hope they blessed the person who received them. I kind of wish I’d kept a list.

I do remember the first person I gave one of these cards to. You know when you feel like you should really like a person, but somehow you just don’t? There’s nothing wrong. They’ve never been in any way hurtful to you. Everyone likes them, gets along with them. Even so, something about them doesn’t sit easily with you. Something about their presence, and how you feel in their presence, makes you shy away from instead of embrace their company. I had one such person in college. I didn’t want to be a jerk, so I did my utmost to like them. And sometimes it went fine. And sometimes I felt that all-over itch I couldn’t explain and ghosted for a while.

It was her birthday, and a very good friend of mine was best friends with this person, so my friend roped me into a joint birthday gift. She had the ideas and most of the execution, so I only had to offer polite opinions and pay for half. Then we went back to my apartment to wrap it. But we needed a card (or maybe just I did). I didn’t have any on hand, so I ran to my bedroom and found this box from Egypt, still wrapped in it’s crinkly clear plastic bag. I picked out a card of two women walking with bundles on their heads. It was one I liked, one I felt she would like. Still, this card was precious to me, and the first one I’d give away, so I felt a morsel of ungenerous unease at parting with it to her.

I gave it anyway. I knew that morsel didn’t have a point, or a reason. This card might have even been an attempt to make up for the feelings I didn’t have for her, but felt certain I should.

I filled the card with the story of its creation, since that was largely why the card was precious. However, I also didn’t want it to look like I didn’t know what to say to her other than Happy Birthday, not to her and not to her best friend sitting on the other side of the coffee table from me.

Happy Birthday was all I knew to say. That was the point. But it needed padding. And I really did want her to have a good day. And, as I remember, she really did. And she was so effusive about the card that I became more generous with opening my hand to give them away.

I’ve been thinking about times when I haven’t known what to say, or how. Last week I drove to work numbering my points for an email I’d have to send when I arrived. I replayed an old conversation in my head while working in the yard, trying to come up with a better outcome. Lately, I’ve been talking myself through a conversation I’ve yet to have, wondering if it’s really best to have it at all. I’m wondering if there’s a good way it can go, wondering how I can keep to my convictions if the other person reacts badly.

I don’t think a pretty card and a story will help in this case. But my point definitely needs padding.

Comets

July 23, 2020Leave a comment

For a couple more nights, the comet NEOWISE will be visible in the hours just after sunset, near the horizon to the northwest. This comet with only discovered in March, and won’t cross paths with the earth again for something like 6500 years. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity for sure.

The last comet this bright to pass by the earth was the Halle-Bop comet in 1997. I remember it. I learned about it in school, and I loved astronomy. I asked my mom if she could wake me up that night so I could see it. She wasn’t happy about it. But she did it.

I don’t remember her waking me. I remember stuffing my pajamas bottoms into my boots, pulling on a sweater, and following my mom out the side door and into the back yard. I don’t know if we carried a flashlight. We didn’t need one. The moon was bright, the ground was grey, and the sky was milky. I shivered as she brought me to the place where the tall trees along the embankment parted and we looked up at the fuzzy grey ball that I’d never seen before. I couldn’t see a tail. It looked a lot like a smudge on a photograph.

I spent a lot of time stargazing in those days. Not that late at night, of course. But in the summers, my dad would take my brother and I out in our 12’ aluminum john boat to watch the phosphorus jump in our wake and to zoom under the stars. Those were some of my favorite times of my childhood. I’d tilt my head back and count the stars, teach myself their patterns even when I couldn’t figure out how to apply the constellation maps I’d looked up to what I was seeing. Orion was my friend, and my means of orienting myself to every other constellation I could manage. And this grey smudge was unlike anything I’d seen. It was unique. It was bright. It was a little disappointing. No bright tail, and smaller than I’d expected. And I was only going to see it once, maybe just this once in my whole life.

And Mom had woken herself up at something like 3am in order to bring my outside to see it, and that made it brilliant, even if nothing else did. And I remember it.

So thanks, Mom.

I’ve been sneaking looks out the window for NEOWISE for over a week. I’ve been in the yard and the driveway. One night about 10 o’clock, Tyler and I drove all over our neighborhood, looking for a high enough hill, a clear enough angle, where the street and house lights or the distant glow of a town didn’t obscure our view. I’ve been trying to figure out a way, another spot in town, but I haven’t managed to come up with one so far. Not when the comet is this close to the horizon.

I’m going to keep trying, but in case I don’t manage to see this comet, now or ever in my lifetime, I hope that you can.

Possible COVID Exposure

July 15, 2020July 15, 2020Leave a comment

I may have been exposed to COVID-19 on Friday.

The chances are rather low. The person I interacted with showed symptoms over the weekend, but on Monday she tested negative and her husband tested positive. She may not have had enough of the virus in her system yet to register, or the test was a false negative (possible 20% of the time). Or she may not have it. She’s quarantined at home with her husband regardless.

We didn’t get closer than 6 feet. We only talked for a few minutes, but I was in the area of her office for longer. She isn’t allowed to keep her office door shut. I was wearing a mask, but she wasn’t.

(Wear a mask. They are 97% effective at keeping what you have to yourself, even if you don’t feel sick. They are only 30% effective at keeping you from getting what’s in the air. So if you both are wearing masks, you’re both 97% protected.)

Like everyone who knows they might have been exposed, my normal health hiccups are palled by this sinister possibility. Perhaps the allergies that kept me from sleeping well Saturday night, and which have had me periodically sneezing ever since, aren’t allergies. Maybe Tyler’s stomach issues last night aren’t just a one-off incident. Maybe my slightly dry throat is the start of a dry cough. Maybe that headache on Saturday and the one on Monday weren’t just my normal headaches. Maybe they’re the portent of danger multiplying in my lungs.

So far the person who I had contact with has very mild symptoms. Her husband’s are worse, but still mild.

It’s hard waiting for the other shoe to drop—if it drops—when the results are going to be so devastating.

An author I follow on Twitter recently shared the advice of her pediatrician, who said that if your children go back to school in-person, you have to accept that at some point they will come home with it. Not everyone has the option of keeping their kids at home. But this will absolutely contribute to the rapidly increasing numbers of new cases. ICU’s will be overwhelmed. And it will be more dangerous than ever to go out. If everyone—everyone—isn’t wearing a mask at all times.

Though I work at a publishing company, I’m not allowed to work from home while quarantining. To quarantine, I have to take 2 weeks of sick time, and since the person I was exposed to is a coworker, most of the people in the building would have to quarantine to be safe. Which we aren’t allowed to do. And if I take two weeks of sick time now, and don’t have COVID, that’s two weeks of sick time I can’t take the next time I need to quarantine, perhaps when the threat is greater.

It’s hard but necessary not to fixate. I oscillate between wanting to enjoy feeling well and normal in case it doesn’t last, and wanting to treat myself and Tyler with kid gloves, also in case it doesn’t last. I oscillate between not thinking about it at all and being hyperaware of the way my lungs feel, swallowing, an itch on my face I’m trying not to touch. There’s nothing else to do, really. I’ve already canceled our plans to run errands this weekend (before school starts back), and we already wear masks everywhere outside of our home. Either I have it and it’s yet to surface, or I don’t and it isn’t.

I could get tested, and I’m still considering it. However, I’m not considered high risk. I had less contact with my coworker than others in this building. They aren’t showing symptoms and aren’t worried, and my doctor isn’t worried either. Unless I show symptoms that aren’t normal for me (not headaches or possible allergies), I’m to wait.

Perhaps she didn’t get it until after work on Friday. Perhaps she doesn’t have it at all.

I hope she doesn’t, and doesn’t get it.

I hope her husband has an incredibly mild case.

I hope there is no other shoe to drop. (This time.)

2020 Books, Part 1

July 7, 2020July 7, 2020Leave a comment

Well, we’re half-way through 2020 and this year has really sucked. Tyler and I are struggling with not having big things to look forward to, the very slow introduction of our new cat Titus to our current cat Tara, and the weight of disappointment.

We’re only a handful of people who are wearing masks when in public, despite huge jumps in confirmed cases. Protests are being swept under the rug and are still being met with brutality. The president rewarded Russia for putting bounties on US soldiers, and yet he’s still president. Even last week’s waffles turned out pretty badly. We miss our families, especially mine, who we haven’t seen since February.

Looking ahead to the rest of the year, we’re anticipating more likely disappointment. Between the election, my birthday, Thanksgiving, and flu season, November will be especially rough.

One thing that’s been going well for me personally so far this year is my goal to read at least as many books by authors who are diverse in some way as those who are not. I’ve read 66 books so far, and 33 have been by diverse authors.

Here are some of my favorite books from the first half of 2020.