Bubbling Away in Coronaville
It’s Monday morning of the first day of the rest of our lives. I like to say things that are indisputable and I think that ticks the box. It already feels different. I have called all three of my kids in the past twelve hours and checked to see that they and the grandgerms are OK. The initial report is that one had a skirmish with his wife over a family trip to Nashville from which she returned. The subject of the dialogue was “taking the Coronavirus seriously.” I can’t say who the winner or loser of that debate was, but they seem to have settled down to life in quarantine nonetheless. My daughter with the two darling little bundles of germs (a.k.a. My granddaughters) reports that home schooling started at the kitchen table at 9:00am and by 9:40am she remembers why she decided not to be a teacher. Apparently, bright, inquiring minds are hard to take on a sustained basis. She has already sent the family the edict that everyone has to prepare FaceTime lesson plans on subjects of our choosing to start next week on the adult education of our future leaders. The initial text messages were fun and funny, but I think this will quickly become a serious project, which, I, for one, plan to jump into with both feet.
Meanwhile, my son-in-law the mortgage banker is busy from his subterranean lair, talking frantic clients off the ledge. Many want to refinance in this time of extremely low, near-zero rates, and it is his job to do as much worthwhile business as possible while telling many people that refinancing now may not be in their best interest. I am told that it is as busy in the basement as it has ever been for him, so hopefully it translates into good family income for home-cooked groceries. Last night Kim and I watched the Obama-produced documentary on Wells Fargo (my son-in-law’s employer). The Netflix serial called Dirty Money was very interesting (strangely enough, it was wife Kim’s choice for viewing). As a 40+ year banker, I am always up for a documentary about how awful bankers can be. Certainly Wells Fargo’s recent reputation-tarnishing episode with excess sales aggressiveness is a valid concern about the perils of go-go banking. But I found the most telling comment came from the guy who was cloaked in shadow and used a voice-changer to hide from recriminations. He said that the bank he works for now makes Wells Fargo look like Glinda the Good Witch in comparison. The good news is that I know my son-in-laws’ ethics and a truer soul could not be found. He will do right by his clients and worry about the groceries second…as it should be.
And then there is the baby of my brood, who turns twenty-five this year. He works in digital marketing content management for a hip restaurant chain. He lives in Brooklyn, which is the worldwide center for hip. He has been in a committed relationship for four years with a lovely young woman who is a crack material science engineer and innovation consultant. When I asked how he and she were weathering this lockdown storm, he hesitated. A father can always tell so I gently probed further. It seems she didn’t want to stay in her small Manhattan apartment for the siege and chose instead to go to her family home in Connecticut to WFH from the bosom of her family. Her mother is an exercise trainer and her father is an ENT physician. Could you find a better place to hunker down than that during an pandemic sequestering? I don’t think so. It was a very sensible move. But she wanted my son to join her and he balked. He loves her parents (as do we all, I might add) but he wanted to stay in his own home with his own roommates during this difficult time. He has to WFH as well, but could be called in to orchestrate a shoot for new content as well. His family (sister, brother, mother) all live in NYC and he felt it was better for him to stay amongst his familiar surroundings and near all of them (his mother is on her own). He had weathered the 911 crisis in New York and he would weather this one. I understood the logic of this call as well and was glad to hear that she came around to understanding it as well (at least according to him). Young relationships and early careers are tough enough without the burdens of a wholesale change of life as we know it at the hands of a global pandemic.
Meanwhile, we are rearranging the deck chairs out here on our little hilltop, I am in the hot tub bubbling away my concerns despite the darkening skies. Kim is in the house with her trainer, who is suddenly available for in-home visits, getting in a workout to stay fit. Handyman Brad is in the house earning his $20/hour doing for us all the things we cannot or should not try to do ourselves as we settle in on the minutia of a new full-time home. We are keeping our social distance from people, including the trainer and Brad, but we have all collectively decided that life has to go on. Everyone will come to that conclusion at some time and in some way by themselves.
Everyone is thinking about their lives right now, I assure you. Where should they live? With whom should they live? What should they do with the time that nature has allotted them? These are good questions for us all to contemplate at times in life, whether voluntarily or mandated by circumstance. What we should be careful not to do is over-think things. Take last night for instance. After a leisurely day on the sofa, both of us started to wonder if we were coming down with something. I was experiencing itchy eyes and sneezing a bit. I told Kim I was heading for a NyQuil jolt before bed. I thought back for four days to when I arrived from NYC and found my aha moment in the standard incubation math. Then, when I finished my work and my show and headed for bed I felt fine and decided to save the NyQuil for when I really need it. I slept over seven hours and awoke feeling fresh and asymptomatic (a word I love using these days). Kim said she felt a sore throat coming on in the middle of the night and she too awoke feeling fine. In other words, we are over-thinking about our ENT health these days, probably like everyone else. A friend emailed me a CDC graphic flowchart that simply walks you through symptoms to tell if you might be infected versus just getting your annual dose of allergies (it is that time of year) or a simple cold or flu (I am case-hardened by my annual flu shot).
I am the only one using my hot tub these days, so I think my little boiling pot is more healthy for me than not and the best thing it does is bubble away all those Coronavirus concerns and cause me to think less and feel more. Thank you, Jimmy Buffett for your help at this time of need.