My family, my immunosuppressed husband (who takes an arthritis drug that lowers his immunity) and my college senior daughter (who didn’t go on her spring break, is mourning the end of her senior year and the fact that she will not have a graduation ceremony, and is stuck with her parents in the house UNABLE TO SEE ANY OF HER FRIENDS, and my (incredibly happy) dog, have been in quarantine for 16 days today. Aside from sacrificial lamb, Ally (the daughter) who has gone to CVS for essentials like prescriptions, nail polish and veggie chips (ADDICTED), we have not stepped foot in any stores. In fact, I’m pretty sure that TJ Maxx’s stock plummeting is my sole responsibility. But with food getting harder and harder to get online, I woke up thinking that I would take the chance and go grocery shopping, you know take one for the team. So, donning some disposable plastic gloves, I headed to the Market Street Cambridge location of Whole Foods.

Sundays are always quieter than weekdays, but there was almost nobody on the road. I pulled into the parking lot and saw a line. I asked a woman if the store was closed, or if it was just a line to get in. She said it was a line, for seniors. I got out and stood in the drizzle. As people came out of the store, people were let in. It was only about five minutes before I was walking through the door greeted by an employee who said, “I’m sorry, I’m going to have to ask you how old you are.” I answered, “I’m 61.” Her eyes opened wide, and she said, “Wow, you look great!” This was already a better experience than I could have hoped for.

It was nice to see the store had lots of room and only a once or twice did I get closer than I would have liked to people. I got flowers. Lots of flowers. The produce section reminded me of the Candyland Board game. Apple Mountain. Avocado Alley. Potato Passageway. I was giddy in the presence of so many fruits and vegetables! I actually filled the cart so high I could barely push it. I felt like an 18-wheeler making a turn at 95 MPH. I thanked every employee I came into contact with. The check-out line was staggered to keep distance. I had about 12 bags, so the fact that they put it in my car for me was a big plus.

I said goodbye to the woman guarding the door (and who blindly complimented me). I told her that I’d been really nervous to come in, that I’d been in the house for 16 days,  and to please pass on what a great job they were doing keeping the numbers down for safety’s sake. Then I started to cry. Yup, I started crying with the poor Whole Foods woman who was hired to let people in the door, not to counsel the pathetic. She was really kind and I feel sure she’d have hugged me if it wasn’t for the fact that we were IN THE MIDDLE OF A PANDEMIC.

SWEET BABY JESUS, I cried at the Whole Foods today.

But as I continued sobbing on my way to the car, I  realized how scared I’d been to go into a store, viewing it as possibly being exposed to something that could kill my husband (as if being in the house with him this long hasn’t made me want to kill him myself). It struck me how completely different everything was now, that this trip to Whole Foods, which I used to do once or twice a week without thinking, was now something I did carefully and nervously. I saw fear in the faces of the other shoppers. They wore masks and gloves and scurried around the store trying to make their trip as short as possible. Shopping has turned into a round of Russian Roulette.

Gratitude goes to those employees who are risking their lives (sounds dramatic, but bizarrely it is not) to keep their own families, but also ours, fed. Stay safe and be grateful to the essential workers and of course, to our incredibly brave medical professionals, and um, if you go, try not to cry in the Whole Foods.

 

It’s funny how the things you feel gratitude for can change from day-to-day. Last year, it was a lux hotel room, an ancient Italian town made of caves, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, truffle pasta. Now I’d be so grateful for a heaping helping of broccoli, a mani/pedi, a massage, a banana (I am craving bananas. What does that mean? Do you crave bananas during times of pandemic?) I’d be particularly grateful for the president to shut his big, stupid mouth (Well, that’s always been on my gratitude list, so I guess some things never change).

COVID-19 has turned our lives into an episode of the Twilight Zone (Ohmygod, I am still, to this day, completely terrified by the one with the monster on the wing of a plane…). This is day 13 of our family quarantine and I feel like I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for not murdering my family. There, I said it. This is not easy. None of us are at our best, including me. We’ve had some laughs, too, but really I’m pretty sure the outside was created so we wouldn’t have to stay inside with our families. 

In my yoga class, when you have to take props to do a pose because of an injury, or chronic issue, the teacher calls it “doing the needful.” That’s what we all need to do right now, the needful. What can make your day better? What can you spy with your little eye that you can feel gratitude for? Do that. I mean, of course, within the boundaries of social distancing, but do that. Sit your hiney down and meditate (I love 10% Happier). Clean something that’s been annoying you. Reach out to your friends and your neighbors and people you don’t even know (I’ve started saying hi to everyone when I’m taking a walk or walking the dog, even though I’m also crossing the street from them at the same time to maintain a six-foot distance). Take a nap. Turn off the news. Listen to the birds chirp, text your friends funny memes until they beg you to stop, notice the buds on the trees and the flowers starting to grow (they’ve never looked better). Take a hot bath, talk a walk, sit on your porch with your eyes open to the sun. Look through old pictures (from when the world was normal–it will be again).

It’s mental institution-grade crazy right now.  And it’s scary. But you owe to yourself and those around you to keep the ship afloat. Do what you need to do to get through this day with gratitude. Be kind to yourself and others, think about what you’re grateful for as you go through your (endless) day, laugh, and do the needful. Purell hugs and kisses from here.

I have been buried in work. When you are a freelance writer, sometimes you are slow and sometimes you are so busy, you see the alphabet doing Riverdance while you sleep.

The world is pretty crazy right now. The Cornona Virus (I cannot help feeling sorry for the beer because people are actually linking it with the virus and not buying it, which is impossible to believe, but true–are they the same people who support Trump, I wonder), forcing us to cancel a big fun trip at the end of the month, make a part-time job of finding Purell (I went to 11 drugstores so far and only found a tiny travel size, two small natural sprays and two sanitizing hand wipes IN ELEVEN STORES and finally getting price gauged on Amazon in an effort to stay clean), sing Happy Birthday twice while washing my hands 308 times a day (my neighbors are starting to complain because HAVE. YOU. EVER. HEARD. ME. SING?), stock up on non-perishable foods (because who wants to be hungry if you have to self-quarantine, or worse yet, if you actually get sick, NOT ME), and worry about my husband who is immunosuppressed because of an arthritis drug he takes. And of course, there is the shocking Super Tuesday results to ponder, with Biden as Jesus on Easter. Plus my candidate Elizabeth Warren dropping out, despite being the all-around best choice for prez, but um, she has a vagina. Yup. lots of tumult and things to think about.

But, while getting my hair dyed the other day (awe, that’s cute that you thought my hair at age 61 was naturally brown), I went next door to the salon, to one of my favorite places to eat in Brookline, Drive By Pies, (yes, with the dye on my hair, looking like a dementia patient who escaped the stylist’s chair while they were in the bathroom), where the owner Fran, makes not just the best and pie-iest pies, but also the most spectacular chicken salad on the planet earth and about a million other addictive and delectable treats, and is also a tremendously nice person,  I met this amazing woman and she reminded me of all the good out there, despite the fact that the world currently seems like a global Cirque du Soleil.

She had a red one of those wheelie walker things and she was going into Drive By Pies before me and so I held the door open for her, of course. She thanked me as if nobody had ever done that for her before. As I was ordering, she turned her wheelie walker thing into a chair, propping herself in front of the vast array of pastries and muffins in the glass case, like she was watching Wheel of Fortune  (she later told me she just loved the game shows). Meanwhile, Fran said, “Either you dye your hair a lot or I don’t dye mine enough,” because I always go in for lunch when I’m dying, which is every three gosh darn weeks, which made me look over at the adorable woman viewing the pastries and point to my head to let her know she wasn’t hallucinating and yes I did have hair dye on. “I dye every three weeks,” I said to Fran. “And my family has been informed that when I die, they are to make sure to dye my hair before I am going wherever I am going next,” I said, to which the wheelie walker lady said, “You’re not going to die. You’re too young. I’m 92 and going strong.” And she was. This itty bitty gray-haired woman with the bluest eyes and beautiful skin dotted with freckles was totally with it and appeared to be strong as an ox, although she did list all the physical maladies she’s endured over the years with a “who cares” attitude. Fran told me that Elizabeth, which turned out to be the wheelie walker lady’s name,  gave talks to schools and synagogues about living in Germany during the time of Hitler. And then Elizabeth piped in and told me how she lost her whole family during that time. “Oh, yes, I want people to know what happened so it can’t happen again. We’ve got a nut in the white house, you know.” I told her how great she looked and how I impressed I was that she gave these talks and then I told her about Peter’s dad who’s dad escaped from a Camp and brought Peter’s dad here at age 6, where he wound up in a foster home. She listened thoughtfully. She then told me about her husband dying from dementia in his late 70’s and how men just don’t live as long as we do (she whispered this as if we were in a room full of men and she didn’t want them to know this) and how she stays in the game by thinking positive and tells people when they complain about rain to take an umbrella. And then she told me that she thought all the time about all she had to be grateful for! Ah ha! She knew about gratitude. There you have it. And then she told me she was grateful she’d met me! Then she made me laugh a few more times and I told her about this blog and we said we’d hoped we’d see each other again. And I meant it.

Today is International Woman’s Day and this is just one of the hundreds of women who inspire me. I meet new ones all the time–old, young, short, tall, all colors, all denominations. And I am so grateful to take something from them that enriches me, makes me better.

I’m so grateful for the chance encounter that allowed me to meet Elizabeth the Extraordinary. Meeting a woman as engaged as she was, with purpose and a great sense of humor at 92 is kind of rare. I realized that I had met her because she was showing me the way. Me in my hair dye and her with her wheelie walker. I am always on the lookout for people who can inspire my future, let me know that getting old can be ok. That day, it was Elizabeth. Gratitude. Lots and lots of gratitude to that feisty lady (with a side of chicken salad and big slab of pie).