An email came in from Yelp today telling me they could help me set up my business to make deliveries. Here’s what my business offers:
Live Music
Community gathering
Cultural events
A place for all life events from birth to death
My question for Yelp is how do I deliver these?
I am now a tutor, teacher’s assistant, short order cook, house cleaner and mindfulness mentor to an 11 year old who is marching through the house with an army blanket draped around his shoulders, a blue handkerchief tied around his neck, carrying a plastic sword.
My son already has a PhD in costuming, while I’m seeing so many holes in the academic side of his equation. Kicking and crying about having to listen to a video about mangrove trees and when it ended, and he took the quiz, he dissolved like a puddle into my lap and said he just wanted to stay there for a while.
One friend visited yesterday, her eyes red from crying. One friend called today and burst into tears on the phone. I don’t have one tear to shed – what will happen to us when we cannot pay our bills? I don’t have an answer, so I can’t cry about what I don’t know, when today, I have so many roles to play.
Feed the cat, walk the dog, don’t forget the fish, wash the sheets because Tin jumped in my bed with sand all over his legs as he watched me dig a hole for the shed’s stairs, his “I’m hungry” boomerangs from the walls and I think to myself, didn’t we just eat?
Instead of getting up at the butt crack of dawn as my friend Flower calls it (read: 4:30am) and making tea and Tin’s lunch and then getting in the car to drive him to school in New Orleans and then hustling to make a living and make the events at the Hall happen, I am getting up at 7:30 now.
Tin has his morning meeting with his class online and then begins his 2-3 hours of lessons. This is day one, he seemed to respond well to this rhythm – he’s able to move around freely and to get individual attention – something he has sorely lacked.
We are finishing the seventh book of Harry Potter on audio, something we used to do on our car ride to school.
We walk Stella by the beach.
In the late afternoon, we meet up with the other quarantined for a bike ride on the beach that includes the appropriate social distancing.
The fact that I am making zero income, and the bills are still coming in, is disconcerting. The rest seems manageable.
There are a handful of homeschool collectives in New Orleans, and there have been smaller groups focused on African American children. A friend of mine, who teaches at Newman, has three children who are all A+ students. Her eldest child told me that the ones to fear in the Academic Games are the homeschooled African American kids.
I’ve thought very seriously about home school for Tin. He now goes to a school that began with 300 students and quickly grew exponentially. He’s been there since kindergarten to now – 5th grade – he began getting lost in the system around 2nd grade.
Today, we started home school because of COVID_19. Already, I know it’s a success. He had to read three chapters and then write a summary. He said in class he never reads. Never. Reads.
School might be the silver lining in this crisis.
Yesterday, I went to New Orleans to pick up Tin and was surprised by how many people were out and about. City Park was chock a block full of blankets with more than a few people on each one. I went to the feed store to get Stella’s food and kept trying to walk down the aisle alone, but this woman had come in and kept popping up and I was desperately trying to avoid her. I was wearing gloves.
Next, I went to the grocery story in search of raw horseradish – I’m making my own Fire Cider. I had been sick since January 3rd and have been using many different holistic therapies (Fire Cider, elderberry tinture, salt water gargle, hot lemon and honey teas) since I wasn’t getting better. What happened was my TSH levels spiked and I didn’t know this till I went to see my doctor a week ago. It means my thyroid production had decreased so she had to up my synthetic dose. What came first, my illness or my TSH levels increasing – hard to say.
After the COVID-19 pandemic was announced, people began avoiding me like I was Patient 0. I can’t pinpoint how I got unsick after so long, but I’m convinced the Vitamin D from taking Tin to the beach instead of school on Friday before they shut down the schools helped me turn things around. I am still sunburned from that day.
Now, I’m worried about New Orleans, my friend text me that a San Francisco doctor told her New Orleans numbers are about to blow up because for every one positive there are 800 infected. So with 800 now identified as positive – could that mean there are 640,000 infected? That’s more than the city’s population! Another friend sent an email saying a New Orleans Parish Prison staff member just tested positive. There are 900 people crammed in that prison right now.
My friend wanted to adopt a dog – she’s been wanting this for some time now and it just so happens she found one during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown. So I met her at the owner’s house to see about this dog. The subdivision was a gated community with cookie cutter mansions each with a green lawn and a concrete driveway. Except for a slight alteration in style, you’d never know which house was yours.
As all adventures happen, we drove up to the wrong house and tried to figure out how to get their attention since there was the chance of a baby sleeping and we didn’t want to disturb.
So we sat in our respective cars out front, then I got out and sat on the lawn and spoke with my friend who was wearing green protective gloves. I spoke to her through the open passenger door. She text, emailed and tried to call the woman.
Then I went to poke around the house to see if there was a way to get her attention without ringing the doorbell. I went up to the front door and right when I walked up a humming bird was beating its wings not in frenzied fashion like they do but more outstretched wings like they don’t do and then the bird collapsed, stood up, wobbled but wouldn’t flap its wings.
Right then the door opened and a man said, “Can I help you?” I explained about the dog. “I don’t have a dog for sale.” Hmm, I gave him the address, and he agreed it was his address but there was no dog. Then my friend called out from the car that she had the wrong address. So I excused myself but pointed out the bird to him. He looked down and said, “It happens all the time because of the windows.” I looked up at the giant hexagon window that was above the door, one story up.
There are so many fixes I’ve come up with – reflecting tape, a mirror, a crystal hung to catch the light – so many ways that would stop birds from flying into the mirror and being stunned or worse dying because the builder placed a very large window up so high where there would be no activity or light inside to ward off a bird.
I know for certain the first day I came home and saw a hummingbird at my doorstep would be the day I fixed it.
There is a rumor that Buddha said all life is struggle, but that is not what he meant. We struggle when we don’t accept what is. We struggle to change it, we struggle to wrest meaning out of it, we struggle to overcome it, and we struggle to not let what is change us.
I self soothe at night by thinking of all the many splendor things that I’m lucky to have – shelter, food, gas in the car, a car, health, a bed, a healthy child and love from friends and family. Every night there is a laundry list of all of the things I have to be grateful for. In the morning, I start all over again.
Last night, despite having overcome more than nine weeks of a virus, or multiple viruses that took most of my joie de vivre away, I struggled to assuage anxiety. Fear missives were coming from multiple directions – what if I cannot pay my mortgage, what if I cannot pay the light bill, what if we run out of food, what if something happens to someone I love, what if … I could not keep the poison arrows from piercing my flesh.
Finally, I fell into a deep slumber with dreams that collided with one another and woke to feel anxiety sitting comfortably on my chest. Such an old familiar weight I didn’t even bother to disturb it as I tied my tennis shoes to take Stella for a walk. Three miles we tread along the beach path, staring at the Gulf of Mexico, the Bay, with the wild sea oats still recovering from winter, the street deserted from a pandemic, and bird shadows skimming the wet sand.
I am an anxiety expert – I know it’s a creeper, waiting till I let down my defenses instead of rising up to meet the occasion. Anxious thoughts spread into the crevices of my mind and leak into my muscles and tendons. I felt it as I walked, laboring to keep my shoulder blades down and loosening the tight grip on the leash while unclenching my jaw.
A friend once wrote that the sea – Mother Ocean – knows how to self soothe, knows how to cleanse, knows how to be resilient. I looked intently at the water with barely a ripple on the surface and breathed into this wisdom.
Today the 100 Men Hall was going to have the most magnificent St. Joseph Altar. Months ago we met to make the cuccidati:
There were multiple baking days of Italian cookies with Linda Belou and friends, a beautiful label designed by Ann Madden, and lucky fava beans bought at Central Grocery in New Orleans – we have pounds of them! We were so excited about the altar – alas, COVID-19 isolation made it impossible.
In Sicily, the drought caused a famine and the people prayed to St. Joseph and they were delivered. The fava bean was the crop that grew so it’s considered lucky to keep one in your purse.
We have no famine now – perhaps our abundance is about to be curtailed by this pandemic, but for now, Ann dropped off spicy greens from Bunny’s garden, and Kandi left plump ripe strawberries on her porch for me when I delivered her St. Joseph bag today.
My dad’s name was Joseph so I know St. Joseph watches over me.
I’m watching Ava Duvernay’s When They See Us. It’s a tough one. Tin and I watched the first episode together and I realized it was too much for him; it is too much for me. There is a scene where the family is visiting one of the boys and the mom tells him he needs to have something to look forward to and I paused – huh? – something to look forward to?
What do I have to look forward to?
There are obvious answers – watching my son grow up healthy and strong.
There were the things four weeks ago – seeing the 100 Men Hall flourish. I might have said being able to take a vacation – something along the lines of a camper with Tin, Lord Chill and Stella driving across the U.S. There was a latent desire to build a nest egg for retirement since I’ve depleted my 401k slogging through the last nine years of dwindling contract work.
Something to look forward to is special. When I was young it was about getting my book published. In my 30s and 40s, it was having a child. The future held all the magic.
Now, I don’t really look forward to anything. I hone in on what’s in front of me. I go to sleep each night grateful I made it through the day. I wake up each morning grateful to be in my bed and alive. The 2005 Federal Flood, 2008 Recession, COVID-19 and the 2020 Market Crash are proof tomorrow is and will always be iffy.
On my walk this morning I saw a yesterday-today-and-tomorrow bush in full bloom. That was exciting. The Brunfelsia pauciflora is a nightshade plant endemic to Brazil – there they call it Kiss Me Quick. The flowers last for three days and change color each day – white, pink and purple.
I moved to Bay Saint Louis in July 2018 because I wanted to leave New Orleans. I was in a bad relationship with the city. I remember driving back and forth between Bay Saint Louis and New Orleans and the thought of moving three blocks from the beach sounded perfect.
My friend Laurie said, “Of course it sounds perfect. Everyone wants to live on the beach. But you don’t live on the beach, you vacation on the beach.” No, I told her, I want to live there. And now I do.
This is my happy place even though daily the adventure feels more like slogging through a dense forest jungle than an open air beach. Luckily, I have had so many years to perfect noticing what’s good. Today on my stroll through town, which is mostly empty since we are shut in for the COVID-19 epidemic, I noticed a house with a sign – The Happy Place – then blocks later I saw another house with a similar sign. It’s confirmed – when three or more declare a place Happy, so mote it be.
