Week 13: Man-on-the-Street

June 18, 2020

I am facing a quandary, one that comes up from time to time in my work as a journalist: how to find average people to interview, who will embody the issues in the story I’m writing?

Years ago, when I worked at local papers, the solution was straightforward, if occasionally excruciating. You’d just leave the office, notebook in hand, and go in search of a place where people were walking around. Then you’d accost complete strangers, introduce yourself and your publication, and pray they would stop walking and talk to you. If they did, I had this long pad of paper, with a spiral at the top, that fit neatly in my palm. As they talked, I scribbled and flipped over pages, scribbled and flipped over pages.

Today, I work from home as a freelance writer. And I mean literally from home. Even before the pandemic grounded me, I rarely did interviews in person anymore. Partly this was because I was talking to people all over the country for national publications. But I also wrote for USC, which often meant just schlepping across town to sit down with one or the other of their professors. If that sounds like a pleasant break from the same four walls, it was. USC has a pretty campus, and the people I interviewed there were even more interesting in person than they were on the phone. But it also meant that a 30 minute discussion could suck up hours of my time, between getting dressed in suitable business attire, driving down the 10 freeway, finding parking, walking back and forth to the office, driving home, getting resettled at the computer, etc. etc. So even in my USC work, whenever I could possibly do an interview by phone, I did.

The internet has made it astoundingly easy to find experts from the comfort of your home office. Seems like I remember. back in the Stone Ages, randomly calling major universities and asking the communications staff to recommend professors to talk to on particular subjects. I couldn’t know if they had done cutting-edge research on the topic, but I would hope that at the very least they would be familiar with the issues, and perhaps recommend other people to interview as well.

Now, like everyone else, I have Google, and Google Scholar, and a host of other services and directories.

But I do miss the days of standing in front of supermarkets, notebook in hand, calling out, “Excuse me? Excuse me?”

I recently got assigned an article about parents sending their kids to summer camps run by teens, because they (the parents) are scared of virus exposure at bigger, regular day camps — or the camps in their area are all closed. I did the usual routine: posted a request on my Facebook feed, as well as to a group for women freelance writers with kids. I got plenty of responses, more really than I need — all of them from upper-middle-class white women.

I made a vow on this blog, a few entries ago, that I would make a conscious effort to interview people who weren’t white, no matter what the topic of the story. For this particular story, the editor has even requested it. But I can’t find the women. I have sent emails to more than half a dozen mothers’ group for black and Latina moms, but only one responded, and that was to tell me they couldn’t help me. I intend to send inquiries to more tonight, tomorrow, and possibly — though I hope I’ve solved this problem by then — into the weekend.

This is a tiny problem, a minuscule problem, really, when black people are getting regularly gunned down by police, and African-American pregnancies are severely impacted by climate change, and it took a Supreme Court decision to ensure that a generation of Dreamers would not be shipped back to their countries of origin because Donald Trump wanted to fire up his base.

But it’s frustrating. And it’s embarrassing, because it points out how racially segregated my life is. I have some friends who are, to throw them all in a broad category, people of color. Some of my best friends, actually, fall in this category. But the majority of my friends are white, and the majority of those are Jewish. It’s comfortable. It’s easy. But it’s not right.

And it’s not at all helpful to me today.

Week 13: Path

June 16, 2020

I attended a freelance writing seminar this weekend (over Zoom, of course — don’t get too excited), which was mind-blowing in a lot of ways. We got to pitch a series of big-shot editors, including ones from the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Paris Review. About one third of our group of 20 was African-American, and I am still pondering the stories they told and alluded to about the way institutionalized racism impedes their careers.

As I wrote last week, I’m continuing to grapple with the idea of my unearned privilege, and what I can do to advance justice. This weekend gave me even more to consider. I’ve joined a group at my temple that is going to meet once a month, facilitated by a member who has vast, deep experience in social justice movements. I’m told we should be prepared to drag our own prejudices into the harsh light of day and examine how we can make a difference going forward. I’m sure I will have more to report on that in weeks to come.

In the meantime, I’m also thinking about writing for free.

The guy who runs these freelancing workshops is David Hochman, a journalist who writes regularly for major publications and, even more impressively, manages to raise a family in West L.A. on his freelance writing checks. This is the third time I’ve taken one of his UPOD workshops (don’t ask me why the name), and at each one he repeats the same mantra: you should never write for free.

David, actually, has a number of mantras, and mostly I agree with them. For the longest time, I agreed with this one, at least as far as non-fiction went (if you say you will not write fiction until someone pays you for it, then you will never write fiction). I agreed with David up to and including the moment I first sat down to write this blog, almost three months ago. Until March, my work life was bifurcated by the dollar: on one side, the fiction writing that I did for free, out of a compulsion born of misery when I tried to stop; and on the other side, any other writing that I did, for as much money as I could possibly earn while still respecting myself in the morning (to clarify, the respect part isn’t about the money, but about the nature of the work that earns that money).

I started this blog because I was locked up at home and ill with mysterious symptoms and bubbling over with more thoughts on all of it than I could jam into assignments on, say, precautions nursing homes should take during a pandemic, or whether the coronavirus will lead to more cashless payments (both articles I wrote in March). I didn’t think writing the blog was a great way to spend my time, because it wasn’t advancing my novel, and I wasn’t getting paid. But it felt so good, and when my body felt so crappy, that seemed like reason enough.

In some far corner of my mind, I figured that one of two things would happen. I’d either write a few entries, get bored, and move on. Or I’d tap into a vein of hitherto-undiscovered genius, and pen the precise words that would make this pandemic come into focus, and I’d be “discovered.”

Nearly three months out, neither one of these scenarios has come to pass. Some days — many days — I’m sure I have nothing left to say, until I sit down and start typing. I have more followers than when I started (79 as of this count) but nothing like the kind of numbers that translate into book deals.

And still, I keep going, because this blog is the gift that keeps on giving. Since I started writing this blog, I’ve done more work on my novel. I’ve worked better and faster on my articles. I’ve started again keeping an actual journal, by my actual bedside, paper, pen and all. And I even signed up to take this weekend’s pitching seminar, because if I can write into the void twice a week and strike a chord with many of my friends, than maybe, just maybe, I have something worthy to say.

So, yeah, don’t write for free. Don’t do any work for free. Unless it’s art. Or, unless you see a path ahead of you, and it makes no sense to head that way, but something in you urges anyway, go, go, go. You can always turn around and head back. Then again, you never know what you might find.

Week 12: The Virus

June 11, 2020

It almost feels indelicate to mention the coronavirus these days.

I don’t mean the debate over wearing a mask. Or whether it’s okay to visit a hair salon. Or even how we will all manage to vote this November during a pandemic.

I mean the actual disease.

It’s beginning to feel like this nation is going to plunge back into economic activity, eyes squeezed shut, hands covering our ears, crying, “No matter! No matter!” while quietly, on the sidelines, our fellow citizens are carted away, coughing, to the hospitals. Here in California, we’re opening up movie theaters. In Texas, you can get a mani-pedi . Arizona will soon be holding Trump rallies. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 caseloads in all three states are on the rise.

“There is a new wave coming in parts of the country,” Eric Toner, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Bloomberg News this week. “It’s small and it’s distant so far, but it’s coming.”

This isn’t to say that I think we should continue indefinitely in a lock down state. That’s becoming an untenable situation, impacting mental as well as fiscal health. Just consider this one statistic — in Nevada alone, 54 percent of small businesses reported in April that they faced immediate or near-term crisis, putting 500,000 jobs in jeopardy. That’s from a study conducted by the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, in conjunction with the Brookings Institute.

Or there’s this number: 1,000 percent. That’s how much texts to a government mental health hotline were up this April, compared to the same time last year.

But pretending the virus isn’t lurking among us, darting invisibly from one unsuspecting person to the next, is folly. Yet that’s exactly what some of us — many of us? — seemed determined to do.

In Orange County, just south of where I live in L.A., the county health commissioner so angered residents that some showed up at the Board of Supervisor’s meeting with a poster of her face, on which they’d added Hitler’s mustache and swastikas. Her crime? Mandating masks in public. She’s since resigned.

In Arizona, cases of COVID-19 have spiked 115 percent since the state’s stay-at-home orders ended on May 15. The state’s health director told hospitals to “fully activate” emergency plans. Banner Health, Arizona’s largest non-profit and its largest health system, tweeted on Monday that “our ICUs are very busy caring for the sickest of the sick who are battling COVID-19. Since May 15, ventilated COVID-19 patients have quadrupled.” (the Banner Twitter feed is a remarkable example of a health system begging people to change their behavior).

There’s a number of people in Arizona asking if it’s time for a second shutdown. Not the governor though. Gov. Doug Ducey said in a press conference today that “the virus is not going away … we need to learn to live with it.” He also disputed claims that the state’s health care system was not up to the task.

“We want to reassure the public we have available bed capacity, and surge plans in place,” said Ducey. Not only are hospitals prepared, he added but “we have a lot of ventilators available in Arizona.”

Meanwhile, Trump announced rallies in Florida, Arizona, Oklahoma and North Carolina. They’ll be just like the olden days, with one exception: by clicking register, attendees waive their right to sue the campaign or the venue if they contract the virus at the event.

People! This virus is no flu. It is not a bad cold. It is a disease storm the likes of which I don’t remember in my lifetime, and which we’re only barely beginning to understand. Today is the 84th day since I fell ill with what I presume was the novel coronavirus. I’m still recovering from my rash decision yesterday to attempt a 15 minute workout, followed two hours later by a walk around the nearby elementary school, about a mile roundtrip, all of it on flat ground. By the time I neared the house, I was yawning and coughing and I felt like you do when you have a mask on your face and you’re a little out breath and need to pull it down. Only, I’d already pulled my mask down.

Today I’ve sat in the house all day. I don’t feel great, but thank heavens the cough has receded and my lungs feel expansive again. I do have these pink blotches, about the size of a drop of a water, on my shins, and no one can explain to me what they are. They don’t itch and they don’t feel like anything, but when I’m tired or rundown, they get darker. My main issue with them is they unnerve me. Every time I look at my legs, I remember that something in my body is not yet okay.

But I’m mild. I’m in a FB group (“COVID-19 Support Group (have it/had it)” if you’re interested) and a Slack channel dedicated to what I call COVID lingerers — those of us who aren’t back to normal long after we were supposed to be fine again. Many people in there are much worse than me. Some have had fevers for literally weeks on end. I mean, can you even?

I read an inspiring article in the New Yorker this week about how people in Iceland can go around without masks or worry, because through aggressive testing, contact tracing and quarantining, health authorities there have tamed the virus into submission. I still can’t believe that this great, big, advanced country of ours can’t master contact tracing on any kind of small or large scale. Like, it makes me want to stomp around my house, raging, waving my fists in the air. How is it even possible we’re in this level of mess right now?

But we are, and there’s no use ignoring it. It would be great if the government would swoop in and save us, but it looks like the folks in Washington are on to other things.

We can’t stay home forever. And yet, the world out there is no less dangerous than it was in March. So wear your masks. And stay six feet apart. And wash and wash and wash your hands.

The virus isn’t a killjoy, and it isn’t yesterday’s news, and it isn’t an economic burden. It’s a virus, and — trust me — as bored and frustrated as you are, you don’t want to get it.

Week 12: Privilege

June 9, 2020

I know the internet is chock-full of silly quizzes, and I know I take them at my peril. Still, when this Buzzfeed quiz on privilege rolled up on my Facebook feed last week, I thought, hmm….

It’s one of those quizzes where you are supposed to post your results to Facebook. If you follow me on there, and don’t remember seeing my score, no worries, I didn’t post it. I was too embarrassed.

This is what popped up after I hit “calculate”:

You live with 75 out of 100 points of privilege.

You’re among the most privileged people in the world. We don’t live in an ideal world, but you happened to be born into an ideal lot.

Good heavens. And I think my life is tough (I mean, not all the time, but I’m totally known to fly off the handle for what seem to me in the moment very good reasons).

I’ve been sitting on this declaration for days, thinking about it, turning it over in my head. It wasn’t exactly a surprise. I grew up white and Jewish in a wealthy household with both of my biological parents. I went to private high school, and a top public university. I only worked in college for pocket change.

I’ve always either worked or been supported by someone who has. Never known hunger and had only fleeting moments of economic insecurity. Today, thanks in no small part to my parents, who gave us a down payment, my husband and I live in a home we own, with a mortgage payment that is within our means, in a neighborhood that is safe and charming. And I’ve never in my life had to lie about my sexuality or any other part of my identity. Sometimes, I don’t mention that I’m Jewish, and it’s easy for me to pass because neither my last name nor my coloring is particularly Semitic. But I don’t think that really counts.

So, yeah, serious privilege.

It’s tempting now to list all the ways I’ve been unfortunate, to counter that damning conclusion. But that’s how we distract ourselves, I think. Everyone has their moments when Lady Fortune decides to go on holiday. What’s significant is the structure around life’s struggles, and mine is, I guess, unusually solid.

So I’ve been asking myself questions, the same ones I’ve asked of myself for years, only in light of the recent protests and national discussion around race and privilege, and my own privilege quiz score, with more-than-usual urgency: what do I owe the world because of how much I’ve been given? How best to repay that debt?

And maybe, most elemental of all: am I even aware of my privilege? When I’m not — because who ever does go around, consistently aware — whose souls do I trample upon?

This is no idle question, as I write for pay. For the last few years, I’ve written dozens of articles, for the same personal finance website, about credit scores, credit cards, and any and all other things credit-related. It took me until this week, and listening to a New Yorker podcast, to realize that I’d framed all these articles with “white” as the default experience.

At times, I’ve tried to bring in a diversity of views, particularly when I’m writing about personal finance advice. There are a lot of people out there, of all different backgrounds, doling out this kind of wisdom (although, come to think of it, most of them trace their financial awakening to Dave Ramsey, a cisgender white male, which is a framing problem in itself).

But I’m wrapping up work tomorrow on a story I’ve reported, on and off, for weeks, about small business financial struggles during this time of COVID-19. I didn’t ask about anyone’s skin color, but I am almost positive that everyone I interviewed for that story was white. Most of them were male. I didn’t do that because I didn’t care about other experiences. I did it because it was easy, and I was trying to be “efficient” with my time, and those were the names that popped up first, and sometimes repeatedly, when I did my Google searches.

What’s horrifying isn’t that it happened with that one article. Or that it goes on with most of my articles. What’s horrifying is that it’s true of most articles, by most reporters, most of the time.

I don’t know that I can even turn my own habits around in reporting on next week’s article, transform myself into a paragon of enlightened journalism because Now I Know. It’s hard and time-consuming and energy intensive, to do the work differently, and frankly, they only pay me just so much. But I vow to try. Really, it’s the least I can do.

I’ve also been thinking about an exchange this week I had over Messenger, with Jennifer, a yoga teacher of mine who is African-American. We’ve only been in touch sporadically since the lockdown, though I used to see her every Sunday, at her class at the YMCA. I reached out over the weekend to let her know I was thinking about her, and to see how she was doing. This is what she wrote back:

This week has been a mix of emotions from hate to hope and everything in between. It’s surreal. Definitely not freeing because there’s a long way to go to be free of the weight I have carried in this country and I don’t trust people really get it.

I’m sure I don’t. I don’t know that I ever will. But I will try, at least, to listen.

—————————–

P.S. I’m going to be attending a Zoom seminar for freelance writers this weekend, and one of the guest speakers is an African-American journalist who’s started a newsletter to chronicle how the coronavirus is impacting her community. I urge you to take a look, and consider subscribing. If it’s your jam, you may even consider supporting her work with a small monthly donation (she’s set up a Patreon account).

Week 11: Social Anxiety

June 4, 2020

I just fled a graduation party.

My smart, articulate, lovely niece graduated high school today, and my father and his wife wanted to throw her a celebration. She deserves it. First of all, because she’s worked hard. Second, because she didn’t get a prom or a senior ditch day or a walk down the graduation aisle.

So they set up TV screens in their backyard and placed tables at strategic distances, and about 20 of us sat down to watch the virtual ceremony: my two nieces, my brother and his wife; my dad and his wife; my mom and her boyfriend; my sister-in-law’s parents and brother; three of my niece’s friends; and me and my three kids (my husband was still at work, because it’s a Thursday and the ceremony was at 5 p.m.)

It’s a lot of people, even in a good-sized backyard. Still, I think I could have managed it.

But none of the guests wore masks, and people from different households sat in chairs with far less than six feet between them.

Masked waiters served passed hors d’eouvres, which you had to pluck from the plate with your fingers. Later, after the ceremony, the same waiters would serve dinner, made by (masked) chefs in the kitchen. Ingress and egress was through the house. Teenagers were hugging.

Even still, I might have been able to make it through. I saw no signs of the virus. The evening was lovely, the hostess had been meticulous in her planning and presentation, and the guest of honor is a young lady I dearly love.

But my mom’s boyfriend, Richard, has been ill with cancer for a few months now, and when I left, he was seated right in the middle of it all, mask dangling from his chair, next to my mother, who had also set her mask aside. I tried to tell myself that they are grown ups, and responsible for themselves. I know the risks are low — all of us outdoors, a relatively small crowd of apparently robustly healthy people.

Still. Every time I looked at my mom and her boyfriend, I thought I would sob. I felt horrible about that, because they looked so happy. They have been cooped up since his January diagnosis to a degree that even I, as much as I shelter in place, cannot begin to comprehend. I can see the argument that life is not worth living if you have to spend it caged inside in the same home, day after day.

But that didn’t make it any easier for me to watch them. From the moment he got diagnosed, five months ago now, all I could think was that he must survive this. Richard is one of the best things that ever happened to my mother, and we all love him very much, in no small part because of how good he is to her. I can’t lose him, I thought. I can’t lose him. The word “coronavirus” started to echo in my head. I felt my anxiety start to come at me, like snow rolling down a hill, gathering snow as it goes, threatening to become an avalanche. And I realized there was certainly someone who was going to get sick out of this, and it was me, from stress.

I made an excuse to my dad about a queasy stomach, which wasn’t too far from the truth, and scurried out of there. Now I’m home, writing this blog. The kids will text me when it’s wrapping up, and I will get in the car and drive 15 minutes to get them.

I am not going to argue that I was rational, or that I made a rational choice. I’m emotional and anxious in the best of times. Of course, I’m even more so these days. We are all more so these days.

Here’s what I learned: the world is still out there, and one by one, people are rejoining it. I am, too, to a small degree. I also went to the dentist today, and to Trader Joe’s. But I’m not ready for a party.

I wish I were. I really, really wish I were.

Week 11: Quandary for our times

June 2, 2020

I’ve been thinking about rage.

There’s the rage on our streets, when people smash store windows and steal goods and destroy the livelihood of businesses already crippled by the pandemic.

Or when demonstrators throw firecrackers at police, screaming at them, daring them.

Or when police fire rubber bullets into crowds and smash into protesters — even peaceful ones, even journalists.

Or when no one throws anything or hits anyone. When the marches are “peaceful,” they are still full of rage. You don’t brave the threat of tear gas and pepper spray and coronavirus to march down crowded streets on a weekday if you’re not on fire with fury at the injustice all around you.

Within our homes, there’s rage too. I’ve spent the last three and a half years distraught at our national politics, but I’ve never been this angry.

Here in Los Angeles, we are going on our fourth night of curfew, with no end in sight. The city convulses and convulses again, like major cities all over this country. Yes, we’re horrified by the George Floyd murder. Yes, we’re appalled at the violence casually inflicted on black people at the hands of our authorities.

But here in L.A., we know that too many black people are homeless. Too many people are homeless, period. If we’re paying attention, we know that the COVID wards are filled with the poor and the underprivileged. Our city is a beautiful cauldron of inequity. I worry we’re seeing its contents bubble over.

The one person who is supposed to ease down the heat, our President, instead threatens to call the military on us, then has officers clearing protesters with tear gas and clubs so he can walk across a plaza to a church where he holds up a Bible.

The guns and the threats and the religious symbol — which for him is probably all it is — I defy him to describe even part of what’s inside those covers — it makes me feel as though I will explode, like those emojis with the top of the scalp blowing off. I don’t know what to do with this fury of mine, that’s both potent and noteworthy and completely insignificant, all at the same time.

I have a list of black-owned businesses I can frequent — check. I have and will continue to donate money to causes — check. Once I meet my work deadlines, if I feel well enough that day (still recovering from the virus, in fits and starts), and the protests are still ongoing, I may march.

I don’t know if any of it will matter. The forces arrayed against justice are formidable, and growing more so every day.

In conclusion… well, there are no suitable conclusions to this. Instead, here are two things people said to me that keep echoing in my head, and one story unique to early June, 2020

My mom today, on the phone: “I don’t think anyone is happy right now.”
My friend on Saturday, in reply to my text asking how she was doing because she lives near the rioting: “We are ok, just super sad for the state of our city and our country. Not sure how much more everyone can take.”

And finally, a story. Yesterday, Liam was trying to pick up a Chipotle burrito to join a friend for a socially distanced lunch. He’d made it from Mar Vista to Rancho Park when he realized that they’d given him the wrong order. He’d already driven past boarded up store fronts and stationed police cars and didn’t care to do it again. But he needed his order, so he grit his teeth and went back.

Rattled by … well, everything … he was pulling out of the parking lot when he swerved to avoid a pedestrian and scraped the side of my minivan against a pole. It didn’t look pretty and the bumper seemed to be dangling a bit. I asked him if he could pop it back into place, and he could, so I told him to go ahead, we’d deal with it later. What’s a scraped bumper amid rioting and a pandemic?

Then the President did his shenanigans and we all forgot all about the car.

Today, Liam and Eli drove the minivan down to Manhattan Beach for a protest. They walked five miles round trip during the peaceful rally. When they got back, Eli took the car out again to get groceries for my mother (because she’s in her 80s and remember? there’s still a virus out there). There was a long line in front of Ralphs; inside, the patrons were testy and the clerks were exhausted. When he offered to bag his own groceries, the cashier, an older African-American lady, thanked him and told him he had no idea what kind of a day it had been.

On the way home from dropping the groceries at my mom’s in Westwood, driving down the freeway, he heard a funny scraping noise. A guy in another car yelled at him that he’d better get off the highway and check out what’s going on.

And this is how my son ends up parked at the corner of Amherst and Pearl at 5:30 p.m. with a bumper half-dangling off his car and a curfew barreling his way in 30 minutes.

It turns out there is a unique flavor of panic to getting a call from your kid that a bumper is half off a car and he’s a half hour away from being arrested for breaking curfew. There is no guidebook or precedent that I know of for what you do in that situation.

What did he do? What do you think? He smashed that bumper back into place as best he could, and drove home as carefully as possible. Tomorrow, we will figure out how to get it fixed during a pandemic, skirting protests and riots.

I know this isn’t the fault of the Establishment, or the Bad Cops, or even Donald J. Trump. But it sure feels like it is.

Week 11: Ablaze

May 31, 2020

It’s late, and I should go to bed. But it’s hard to close my eyes on our burning nation.

Look, I’m a white lady from a white neighborhood. I’m not sure what right I have to my opinion, on the murder of George Floyd, on the protests, on the riots or the looting. And I’m not writing this because I believe what I think is important or necessary at this moment. There are so many more important and necessary voices than mine tonight.

But I’m confused. I’m shocked, and embarrassed that I’m shocked. And I’m appalled at myself, because I know by doing nothing so far to affect change, I’m complicit in perpetuating our racist system.

I also want to apologize to everyone who doesn’t enjoy my white privilege — apologize because I know I still don’t get it, and I’m sorrier than I can put into words.

I’m almost always someone who gets almost all her news from print. But today seemed like it demanded video, so I watched my local CBS station and then CNN, for about an hour, until my stomach hurt and I turned it off. I saw so much yelling. So many menacing officers marching forward (though I’m sure, underneath those helmets and bulletproof vests, many of them are terrified). I watched things burn.

First I watched it in L.A. Then Long Beach. Then Santa Monica. Then Philadelphia. Then Washington, D.C. Then New York City. It seemed like our nation itself was on fire.

But the head of our national fire department? Our Commander in Chief? Where was he? Where were the calm words? The call to our better nature?

Nope. Except for an occasional rage tweet, he was quiet.

I’ve lived through national crises before. But we’ve always had a leader who believed he answered to all Americans. I don’t know how a leaderless nation stops convulsing once it starts. I’m scared to find out.

P.S. Here’s a video I watched on Twitter tonight. It brought me to tears. I just had to share it.

my god this is powerful. sound up. pic.twitter.com/IbdsfyyA4U
— shauna (@goldengateblond) May 31, 2020

Week 10: Thanks

May 28, 2020

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my attitude. I’ve been wondering, why are these days so dispiriting? My family is, miraculously, all here in Los Angeles and everyone is in at least decent health. My city has never looked better, with its scrubbed-blue sky and barely-congested roads.

Plus, I have the sweetest dog, and now we get to be together all the time.

Yes, I know there’s a deadly virus lurking out there. Yes, the country is on the verge of economic collapse. But this moment…. this day… when I’m fairly healthy and we have enough money to pay the bills … why at even the best times, do I feel kind of sad?

On Sunday, I read this editorial in the New York Times and it hit me: the sadness is at least partly due to our collective, American mood. Every day, it seems, there’s some new horror, another injustice, a different reason to scream at each other. We’re all so angry, so angry we’re enraged, and that rage makes us sad. Meanwhile, our leader taunts and rails and posts falsehoods to Twitter. And then we’re madder still, either because we hate what he says, or we hate that others seem determined to get him wrong.

But here is what we should have: someone to congratulate us. This is hard, this staying inside and waiting at home and twiddling our thumbs until the pads get callused. We should have a leader who says “Thank you!” and “Wow, I’m so proud of all of you!” and “You are setting an example for generations to follow, with your determination and courage and sacrifice.”

Because we are. We have shut ourselves down, at great cost to our personal lives and our financial futures, putting our mental health in peril, and not necessarily to save ourselves. To save everyone.

We’ve heard about the Greatest Generation, those folks that braved the Depression and then turned around and won World War II. But we are upstanding, too. We are worthy of praise. We thought we were soft and iPhone-addled and addicted to Easy. Look at us now. Some of us, I grant you, are trying to pretend that none of this is happening, and their determined ignorance increases the danger for everyone.

But most people are trying. And that’s kind of incredible, when you think about it. The economy isn’t roaring back anywhere, even in states where governors have declared they are open for business, because so many of us continue to stay home.

We don’t have a leader who sees our sacrifice or recognizes our valor. But we should remember that we’re doing something we would have sworn, as recently as January, was simply impossible.

It would be a balm to the soul to hear our leaders in Washington say this . But they are too busy fighting. So I’ll say it.

Thank you.

Thank you for wearing a mask.

Thank you for staying home.

Thank you for washing your hands. And washing your hands. And washing your hands.

Thank you for not hugging your elderly relatives, though you miss their embrace.

Thank you for not going out to dinner, or the movies, or the theater, or any of the other venues and events that make life exciting and fun.

Thank you for letting your children watch hours of screen time, though it breaks every rule you so painstakingly laid down since they were first able to sit upright and stare at a TV.

Thank you for not working, even though you need the money.

Thank you for working from home, even though there are days you want to hurl that laptop across the room.

Thank you for entertaining your children when you have no more fun left in you.

Thank you for working, even though it puts your life in danger.

Thank you for working out alone to videos in your living room, instead of at the gym with your friends.

Thank you for cancelling that European vacation, that Alaskan cruise, that jaunt to San Francisco.

Thank you for not visiting your parents who live across the country, even though they are frail, and you don’t know when you will see them in person again.

Thank you for not cutting your hair, or coloring your roots, or getting that mani-pedi you miss so much.

Thank you for not touching others, not exhaling onto others, not offering your hand, or reaching out to kiss a cheek — even when that means no one touches you anymore, and you touch no one.

Thank you for managing to live with the same handful of people, and not killing them in the process.

And thank you for getting up each day, and doing it again, and doing it again.

We need this. We see your efforts. And we really, really are grateful.

Week 10: Memorial Day

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Our street organized a COVID-style, Memorial Day barbeque last night: bring out your own chairs to the sidewalk, sit at least six feet apart from your neighbors, slap on a mask, and remove it only long enough to eat the food you brought from your own home.

I was so excited about this I looked forward to it all day. But as with many things lockdown-related, the anticipation and the experience itself were hardly universal in my household.

I first sensed trouble when it was time to grab dinner. Bill, the boys and I had set up our chairs; Sarah was still inside, doing a dance class on Zoom. As the boys headed in to get the falafel boxes I’d picked up for them earlier in the day, I asked if they could also bring out one for their father. He looked so relaxed and happy sitting there in that chair. His life — treating COVID patients, worrying about treating COVID patients — has been so stressful these last few months. Wouldn’t it be nice, I thought, not to break this spell?

But the boys, striding up the walk, refused.

“It’s okay, Con,” my husband said, getting up. “I can do it.”

But all I could think, watching Liam walk away, was this was the same kid who rode Bill’s bike every day high up into the mountains and down by the ocean and along city streets while his father, who cherishes his bike rides to work, drove his car instead. So I strode after him, yelling that this would not do, that he needed to show respect, that he’d better not, or… or…

Soon I had Bill enraged as well. The younger brother, Eli — an expert at evading responsibility — scooped up his food and slipped back outside. Meanwhile, Liam and Bill and I hollered at each other in the kitchen. Sarah, trying to dance in the next room, slammed the adjoining door, but not before whisper-yelling at us that we were humiliating her in front of her studio.

Finally, I told Liam please, please, please go to your room.

He did so, after throwing a few choice words at us on his way out.

“Oh my God,” Sarah said, sticking her head through the door. “You guys have to stop. Now.”

We didn’t see Liam for the next three hours. He missed the “barbeque,” and another one of our neighborhood, COVID birthday celebrations afterward.

As Bill and I loaded up the dishwasher at the end of the night, I reminded him of how I’d gotten so incensed with our younger son on Mother’s Day. Eli has turned my home office in the garage into his music studio. This is no small transformation either — he practices jazz trombone day and night. I’d asked for the space back for Mother’s Day, and when the time came, I requested that he move my chair back in for me. But he said he was too busy, and anyway, it was enough he’d cleaned up and vacated for the day.

What is wrong, I said, with both these boys, taking our precious possessions as if they were their birthright, not even pausing once to thank us or even remark upon our sacrifice?

This was a parenting fail, we agreed. And it was ending tonight. We started plotting a meeting of the four of us (Sarah being full of her own righteous indignation at her interrupted dance session, deflecting apologies with a blink and a mutter). You defend me to the younger son, I suggested to Bill, and I’ll defend you to the older one.

Then the older one walked in the kitchen.

“I don’t think I was treated fairly,” he said, plopping down on the banquette.

I thought he was treated more than fairly, but I was also glad he was talking and not yelling or cursing at me anymore. I took a deep breath. “Okay,” I said. “Why?”

We started again, around and around. At some juncture — many of the finer points of the argument having become a blur, just 12 hours later — Liam said that Bill and I couldn’t possibly understand what he was going through because our lives haven’t changed at all in the last few weeks.

“I lost my office!” I said.

Okay, he said, he would give me that. But Dad — look at him, the same work routine, nothing changed one iota.

I could hear my voice rising as I reminded Liam about how the very nature of his father’s work had transformed, from a job where he was helping patients in need to one in which every person who walked through his door was a potential lethal threat.

“But he still goes to work every day,” Liam insisted.

“I don’t know why I’m giving my bike up for this,” Bill said, his words clipped and sharp.

“Look,” Liam said. “I lost Africa. I lost my summer internship in D.C. The bike is all I have.”

Oh, I thought.

And the office-cum-studio is all Eli has. And the dancing classes are one of Sarah’s only reprieves from the hellscape that is 10th grade online.

The boys have watched junior year abroad vanish and spring of freshman year evaporate. Liam doesn’t get that summer in the nation’s capital that he’s talked about since high school. Eli’s valiant attempts to learn guitar won’t bear fruit this summer because there’s no sleep away camp, so he won’t be a song leader. And Sarah… well, this isn’t what 16 is supposed to be like. Or should be like, for that matter.

The bike is all he has, I thought. And I started to cry.

“Mom?” Liam shifted in his seat.

“Aww, no, here she goes,” my husband said. “Honey?”

I could really have let loose. All I had to do was think about how a few months, or even a year, lost in your 50s is easily replicable, later on down the line. But the same time lost at my kids’ iconic ages — 21, 19 and 16 — is time gone forever.

At 21, I spent the entire spring semester in Oxford, England, during which I memorized granular details about 19th Century English parliamentary dramas; fell in love and got my heart broken; traveled across Europe and the Soviet Union on my spring break; and made one of the best friends of my life (hello, Orley).

At 19, I walked hand in hand with my first boyfriend across the Berkeley campus, and cemented new friendships at my sorority, and reveled in huge lecture classes where no one knew my name.

At 16, I loved attending my A.P. Euro History classes and writing articles for the school paper and hanging out with friends on the lawn at Westlake Girls School. I hated just about everything else that year, but at least I got to hate it in person.

Meanwhile, my three are home. And though I despair at the thought of what they’re missing, I have to admit to a greedy satisfaction at having them all under our roof again.

My gain. But surely, their loss.

I stopped crying after a sob or two. Liam apologized for his behavior, and thanked Bill for the ongoing loan of the bike. We both told Liam how sorry we are for his losses.

Then he headed back to his room. Time for another phone call with another buddy, who’s somewhere that isn’t here.

I’ve heard from so many friends these days who say their kids are sulking, or angry, or just plain rude. And I know we all know this, but still, it bears repeating: they are grieving. And they have more to grieve than we do.

I hope the five of us can make something beautiful out of this time together, something we will even cherish when we look back on it, years from now. But that’s tomorrow’s judgement. Today we have to muddle through, remembering what should have been, knowing it would have been great.

Week 10: Memorial Day

Tuesday, May 26, 2020 Our street organized a COVID-style, Memorial Day barbeque last night: bring out your own chairs to the sidewalk, sit at least …
Week 10: Memorial Day