Dangermond.org

Unlike social media, here is a place I can speak the truth. Yesterday had many low points.

I woke with a great plan to take advantage of the Crosby Arboretum which has opened to the public. You can go be in nature and not be around anyone and I thought we needed to shake up our routine.

However, after Tin’s morning meeting he decided he wanted a huge breakfast – which I made – pancakes, eggs, sliced mango and banana. And after he ate, he didn’t want to go.

So we jumped right into school work. Only I learned the entire class is on Lesson 30 and Tin is on Lesson 7. What? So I sat with him to do his math lessons and by the time two and a half hours had gone by we were on Lesson 11 and I was pulling out my proverbial hair. Common Core math sucks – that’s my final word on it.

Then I gave him a break before we began ELA – we needed to read three chapters and answer questions. So he had time to play on his iPod and I made lunch – which for him was macaroni and veggie chili and for me was tunafish. After which, we barely got through the first of those chapters when he began fading out – not paying attention – staring out the window – by this time it was the afternoon and I was done playing teacher.

So then it was time for the bike ride. We met our group at Ann’s and rode down to the beach and out to the point where it’s rocky. Tin almost fell on his bike, and so I slowed to ride with him because I could tell he was embarrassed. We were going to ride back down the beach but he kept stopping. The group had flown by and so I slowed to see what was the matter. Then he began riding again. Then he completely stopped and I stopped, but when I went to balance, I fell over scraping the rest of my leg that wasn’t scraped from Stella pulling me down the concrete stairs to the beach the other day.

He said he was tired. I said let’s go home. He said but I’ve waited all day for this. I said that’s okay, we have tomorrow. I turned my bike to head home, the group had now far eclipsed us, and as I was about to get on it, he got on his bike and raced after them. Before I could get on, turn around, he was out of sight.

Lesson No. 1 in these quarantine times – put the oxygen mask over your own face. I had missed my walk with Stella because of his morning meeting. I had spent the day in His lessons. I had done nothing for Rachel and at the end of the day he left me in the dust. Today is my day.

Know what else runs in my family – nurture and love. My mother was a nurse because she was a very caring human being. My grandmother (her mother) in her later years used to go to the hospital to rock babies. My cousins – male – have become nurses. I come from a long line of caregivers, which is why I am at my core – loved.

To all the nurses on the frontlines during this pandemic – I salute you for your tenacity, care and love. May you be protected from COVID_19 and your families be safe and healthy.

I know a lot about coping with anxiety because I’ve had it all my life. I didn’t realize until I started addressing it that it is rampant in my family – on both sides. Since Jewish people overindex to anxiety, I thought I had inherited it from my father’s Sephardic side, but turns it out, it’s everywhere in my family tree.

What I’ve learned is that anxiety does not just happen. There is not an event that triggers it, it’s more insidious and keeps building and building till bang it paralyzes you. So I now know that when I start feeling anxious I have to address it at the onset – meditation, exercise, and positive thoughts. In my times of deepest darkness, I have flipped it. In 2018, I spent a year documenting at the same time every day a #positivememory because dark memories are easy to conjure, the positive ones get overshadowed.

Twitter:
@RachelDanger·Sep 16, 2018#PositiveMemory – The a/c went out and it spiked inside to 95° and my friend Ann sent her husband Ed over to put in two window units. Bay Saint Louis community. It’s why we live here. #BaySaintLouis

Routine exercise is also very important. I went to go meet up with our quarantine friends for our 6PM bike ride. Tin had complained the day before that we didn’t ride long enough, and so I asked if he wanted to ride alone with me, and he said, “No way, we have to go meet Ann.” I told this to Ann and she said, “It’s more fun with friends.”

Anxiety Antidote #1: A long bike ride along the water with friends (at appropriate social distance, of course).

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.