Day #7 Writing Through Covid-19: Isolated Extroverts or How Reading Will Save You

I am extroverted. I am too friendly, too out-spoken, too sure that everyone wants to know my every opinion.

But I also have an introverted dimension. I love to hole up on the weekends, putter from chair to couch, read a book, then a magazine, then a newspaper--without having to talk to anyone.

I do not dread the isolation of Covid-19. True, Dan is here, and we have children who check in daily. I have students I'm prodding with writing prompts and poems. I have friends in various crevices of my life. I have the best sister in the world, and we sometimes talk five times a day. So my aloneness is not being tested that much.

If you've read my past few posts, you know that my 89- and 90-year-old parents have moved into my basement. Both of these people led extroverted lives. They joined committees, served on school boards, led countless initiatives.

But they also were voracious readers and writers. They knew how to sink into themselves, their private sanctums, and I'm seeing the benefit of that now.

In the past, I may have felt dismissed when, after a Thanksgiving meal, my dad would find a chair and a book and excuse himself from all family interaction for a few hours. I also absorbed deep pain when my mom told me she wouldn't be able to visit my newborn twins because she was busy with her own plans.

My mother works on our puzzle while my dad reads.

But this past week, as my parents and I are choreographing our dance of support and independence, I am grateful they are introverted extroverts, or extroverted introverts.

They lived in the thick of the nursing home's activities, organizing the duplicate bridge tournaments and reading to residents with limited sight. My dad loved his Saturday morning men's coffee time. As of last summer, my mother still rode her bike and scoured the grounds to pick up litter on long walks. Their vibrancy has been good for both them and the people around them.

But today I'm happy they have strong interior lives as well. My mother has filled countless spiral notebooks with journaling for years. Twice yesterday I found her writing when I came downstairs. My father reads and reads.

They are cheerful and conversational when I visit throughout the day, but I know as long as they are surrounded with reading material and lined notebooks, they'll be fine for a few hours on their own.

Reading and writing for the win.

Enough.
Stay well.
Write.

Allison

Day #6 Writing Through Covid-19: Tea Cups and Kentucky Belle

When I left for college, my mother re-entered the workforce as a substitute teacher. Ask anyone who went to Ft. Dodge public school between 1979 and 2009: she was an extraordinary sub. She told me today that aides at the nursing home said they remembered her because she always drew a strawberry (Berry) and a hill (hill) on the board to represent her name. She also brought a bag of cereal and would offer a small Cinnabon treat for student work well done.

This morning I read my mother another poem of the day before I posted it on her bathroom mirror. The poem reminded her of the writing she had done for her own students. Over the years she wrote and illustrated books, had them laminated, and brought them into the classrooms where she taught. Students usually chose the books she'd written over the regulars stocked on their classroom shelves.

I remember one titled "Longer and Skinnier." It told the story of a child asking his mother for a box. She offers several, but the child keeps saying "Longer and skinnier!" until at last, she offers an aluminum foil box. The child says the box is perfect: a home for his snake!

We enjoyed talking about how students value their teachers' authentic writing. But midway through our conversation, my mother began scanning a large bookshelf in my basement. "I can't find the books," she said.

I told her again that she was at my house, and that her books were in her apartment at Friendship Haven. She sighed with relief.

An hour later, I came downstairs to find my father napping, and my mother searching my son's bedroom. "I can't find my homemade books," she said with trepidation.

"Your books are at Friendship Haven," I reminded her gently.

"They'll throw them away! They throw out anything you leave!"

"You are still paying for your rooms," I reminded her. "They won't throw anything out. I will have Adrienne mail them to us."

My mother was once so fierce.  Her self-righteousness, confidence, and cutthroat intelligence contributed to our years-long strained relationship. It has only since she has slipped into dementia (and I have been humbled by years of trying to raise my own children) that I have been able to let go of anger and simply love her. We have never been as gentle to each other as we are now.

In the evening I brought her evening meds in a miniature hand-painted tea cup.


"My mother used to recite 'Kentucky Belle' to her students," she said. "And she'd recite it on long car rides."

"Yes, and you recited it to us! And I recited it to my own children," I said.

"I don't know it anymore."

"I don't think I do either," I said.

"Summer of '63, sir..." she began, pulling the line from deepest memory. I chimed in. Line by line we stumbled our way along. Where one of us forgot the next phrase, the other would pipe up. Together, we managed to recite the entire poem.

This morning I again brought her meds in the tiny tea cup.

Day #5 Writing Through Covid-19: Fruit Salad

"Did you sleep well?" I asked as I set my parents' small table for breakfast. "No," my mother said. She had been up multiple times in the night. In the light of day, she had her bearings. But in the night, she'd been confused. "It felt like a nightmare," she said, "not knowing which door was which."

The day before, as I settled them in, I offered to put a blue painters'-tape path on the carpet to guide them from their bedroom to the bathroom. My mother laughed and assured me she would find the bathroom if we left the light on.

In direct conversation, my mother is lucid for stretches at a time. But twice now I've gone down to the basement and found my father softly explaining to her where she is, why they're here.

After lunch, I brought down a puzzle and dumped it out on the Ping-Pong table. My diligence to maintain distance and limit physical contact slipped considerably when I felt compelled to turn the pieces face up. My mother and I bowed toward the table, eagerly touching and re-touching the pieces we'd both just touched. Chalk it up to quality over quantity of life. We had a lovely time.

Later in the afternoon, my son and his girlfriend walked down the gravel road for exercise and "visited" my parents by walking past the window and waving.

"Enjoy it!" I announced. "This is the day's entertainment: viewing beautiful young people for one minute!"

My parents moved into Friendship Haven's most independent housing ten years ago. They were still alert and strong, and their friends wondered why they were so eager to move to a care center. But my parents wanted to be proactive in assuring their children would not need to house them in their dotage. My mother had cared for both her own father and my dad's mother and wanted to spare her children that. Last year they moved to a higher level of care. Two meals a day were provided, but they still had a kitchenette and some independence.

Their hesitation in coming to stay with me during Covid Time comes from an urge not to be a burden. They asked if they could cook their own meals on a hotplate. Could they wash their own dishes? We put a dorm refrigerator in the basement and stocked it with fruit so they can nibble at will, but I assured them it would be ultimately less work for me if I could simply share what I was already cooking for Dan and myself for meals. They acquiesced.

But last evening when I brought them supper, my dad was standing at the Ping-Pong table cutting up fruit for a fruit salad. He was using a table knife to slice a soft pear, banana, and orange sections directly on the table. He had placed the peelings and cores in the empty puzzle box.

At 89 and 90, my parents are the gentlest of people now. They thank me profusely for every simple kindness I show to them. I could tell it took my dad some effort to ask me--if it wasn't too much trouble--to have a boiled egg every two days or so. I was only too happy to accommodate this small request. "It's for Vern," he said sheepishly. "He likes his dog food so much better if we put a little egg on it."

I brought them a bowl of boiled eggs and placed them in the refrigerator. I discreetly wiped fruit juice from the Ping-Pong table and moved the peelings from the puzzle box to a wastebasket.


Enough.
Stay well.
Write.

Allison

Day #4 Writing Through Covid-19: My Parents Move In

So much has happened so fast. My daughter in Spain is my harbinger. Her country had zero cases when I was there 24 days ago. This morning their tally was 24,926 including 1326 deaths.

It is her warnings, and those from family in Minneapolis, that were the impetus for today's move of my feeble and moderately confused parents from their sitting-duck situation at Friendship Haven to their moving-duck situation in my basement.

We don't know if this move will actually prevent them from getting Covid-19. But the care center where they've been happy to be living for the past year is necessarily limiting the residents to their rooms. No more Bridge Club, Trivia Fridays, Memoir Writing Group. My siblings and I agreed that moving them during this time will hopefully lessen their chances of being exposed, at least in the short term. The main goal is to increase their happiness, not necessarily their longevity.

My biggest worry for now is that there might be some confusion on what increases happiness.

We have set up their living space on the single floor of our walk-out basement. It is bright with east windows, and they can walk their dog Vern out the back door without a step. (Side story: my parents' favorite topic seems to be quantifying Verm's BMs, as they call them.)

Last evening I showed my mother where the washer and dryer were and told her I could show her how to run the machines as often as necessary. She laughed and said, "Oh, the machines at Friendship Haven are automatic! I'll just use those."

"But you're staying here," I said, jolted again by how memory holes suddenly gape open in her conversations--like loud cracks of ice when you thought the ground was firm.

My mother looked at me with terror and said, "How LONG will we be here?!"

I quickly realized my mistake in saying "staying here" and assured her she would eventually go back to Friendship Haven--where she wants to be. I reminded her that this was a temporary move, and her horrified expression relaxed a bit. We shared a common shudder at that thought this situation might be permanent.
----

Before I went upstairs for the night, I walked my mother into the bathroom to show her a poem I had taped to the mirror. She began reading it aloud, and I joined in. We read it together to our reflections as our audience.

Enough.
Stay well.
Write.

Day #3 Writing Through Covid-19: Meet the Parents

Game changer: I woke this morning to an email from my brother that will alter the next months of my life. Stafford lives in St. Paul, Minn. He is experiencing the pressures of isolation and virus transmission at the city level, while we here in rural Iowa are still in "isolation lite."

My parents live in a care center in our home town of Ft. Dodge. Stafford asked if Dan and I could relocate our 89-yr-old (suffering dementia) mother and 90-yr-old (weak heart, frequently stumbling)  father to our (relatively isolated) farm for the next weeks (?) months (??) while the virus moves through their care center. Lots of parentheticals. Bear with me.

Of the five siblings, I have the home that offers the best isolation option. My husband and I live in the country and can limit our contact with others. We can do this. We will give my parents the basement level to accommodate their limited mobility and still give them a degree of privacy.

But as the day unfolded, the reality of embracing elderly parents began to set in. My dad asked if they could have a stove or cook plate in the basement. (NO! You'd both forget to turn it off!) "Of course," I said. 

Would there be refrigerator space for all the sundry leftovers they'd like to cart halfway across the state? (JUST THROW IT OUT! I've seen your refrigerator!) "Of course," I said.

Oh my. I love my parents. I want to love them through this time of Clovid-19. But it helps to talk about it here.

Enough.
Stay well.
Write.  

Leighton, Adrienne, Allison, Megan, Stafford
Leroy and Meredith Berryhill, 2017

Day #2 Writing Through Covid-19

My first few days of this week were pretty worthless. I stumbled around in a fog of uncertainty, checking my phone for news updates, frittering, lollygagging, napping, checking for news updates...

This morning I told myself to snap out of it, and I wrestled myself back into productivity. I got to work posting a daily poem, a creative writing prompt, an informational writing prompt, and a reading log for my English 9 students. I completed the writing prompts myself and posted my writing as examples. I read for 100 minutes.

This evening I made phone contact with the parents of seven students who hadn't responded to my emails Tuesday and Wednesday. I asked them to nudge their children to fill out the Google form I'd sent to identify learning supports they'd like during this hiatus. 

The phone calls turned out to be the highlight of my day. The parents and I commiserated, shared our dismay, and bonded over our shared concern for their children adrift in this surreal experience.

The burst of activity was good for me. I felt like a teacher again.

Tonight I will write a poem.

At the suggestion of Sarah J. Donovan, I posted a poem by the hand-washing sink.

Enough.
Stay well.
Write.

Following Rachelle's Advice: Writing Through Covid-19 Day 1

I retweeted my friend Rachelle's Twitter post:
@msrachellelipp
Mar 16
We are always witnessing history, but crises like this remind us of the sentiment; that’s why I challenge you to write each day: jot down your new routine, write a review for the show you just binged, list events that have been put on hold—take a snapshot of this time in history.

Having shared Rachelle's advice, I must also take it, even though I don't feel like my thoughts are settled enough for a cogent observation. 

Routine: 

Sleep in an hour
Read
Make a list
Play the piano
Take a walk or go for a run out here on the gravel
Do a crossword puzzle
Touch base with students 

Send out learning options (none of the work we're sharing is required)
Call my kids
Call my parents
Call friends

Take a nap
Play the accordion

Do some laundry
Read some more
Write a poem. As luck would have it, Ethical ELA began the March 5-Day challenge on Saturday. Perfect timing! My goal is to keep writing a poem a day through this. Here is last night's "origin" poem, using the mentor text of Jacqueline Woodson's opening page of "Brown Girl Dreaming":

December 29, 1959

I am born in
Wagner, South Dakota
Yankton Sioux Reservation
USA–

My father
a late bloomer
is 30 but looks like a boy
playing dress-up like a doctor

Korea or government service?
pacifist answer for
why he delivered me

I am the family papoose
dark-haired and swaddled
in my mother’s arms

Her hair is bobby-pin curled
in a style abandoned
along with the house dresses
and lipstick
by the time my mind
captures her
eternal pose
scowling at the kitchen sink
1974

she gazes at me
in the Wagner photos
with a love I did not know

until now
2020
when she hugs
me with her boney arms
her steely judgement
and acute memory
have sluiced
together
into the past 

I'm not bored. I like doing the low-key things I'm doing. Dan is stressed as the price of grain tanks alongside the price of oil, so I'm giving him LOTS of social distance. He'll take ibuprofen tonight to keep from clenching his teeth in his sleep. Eloise, in Spain, is housebound with her dog, a quarter mile from a beach she cannot go to. Harrison will be coming home early from Utah because the slope where he works ski rescue closed Sunday. His girlfriend is a pediatric emergency room nurse, so we're trying to figure out how to prevent the her--to him--to us--to Grandma germ-spread. Is everyone thinking of crazy stuff like this? 

Meanwhile, Grandma (Dan's mom) is the one we are most concerned about protecting, yet she has been getting her news from questionable sources for the past weeks and isn't ready to admit there is any worry. Against my advice, she went to the dentist Monday and to the medical center Tuesday for a non-essential thyroid test!

Enough.
Stay well.
Write.

Rex, after today's run in light drizzle.