Quarantine - Day 49

photo by Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times

Another stellar spring day. Ella pulled me outdoors with her basketball to show off her improving between-the-legs dribble. Then we aired up the tires in the bikes and went for a ride looking for streets unridden before, which are getting fewer and fewer in number in our vicinity. Ella, who is developing a real gift for alley finds, found a metal shop cart without a thing wrong with it, and a pair of needle nose pliers with its nose slightly bent. I found a working gooseneck lamp. All these treasures we brought back to the garage, and after a bit of cleanup, the shop cart found something to cart in the garage while the needle nose pliers went into the vice until its bent nose was straightened out once again with the help of a garage-sale ball peen hammer that cost me seventy-five cents a while back. We hung the bikes back up very pleased with our ride and our finds, and Ella danced upstairs to make cupcakes.

Abbie spent the afternoon fashioning puppets while Laura tried her hand at barbering my scant but still unruly hair. It felt good for this sheep to get shorn, and although unsure of her cutting skills at first, Laura managed to distinguish herself as a fine amateur barber. Nothing feels quite like a brand new haircut.

Later, Donald Trump and Fox News conducted a “Town Hall” at the Lincoln Memorial. In our neighborhood, just down the at the corner of Lincoln and Lawrence keeping watch over his namesake avenue is the "Standing Lincoln", a bronze statue made by, Daniel Chester French, the same sculptor who did the "Sitting Lincoln" statue at the memorial. Before this particular Lincoln, Trump complained that no president, even the sixteenth, had been as maligned as he has been over the past three and a half years. Lincoln, who had more than just his character assassinated, just sat there speechless.

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Quarantine - Day 48

Playbill by Ella St. John

A perfect spring day with lots of sunshine, flower beds abloom, and dandelions taking over the unused park across the street. In the morning, work continued on content briefly until I announced that we were all getting outside and going for a walk. This proposition was not met with much general consensus, but I steadfastly pressed my case. At last, we all emerged blinking into the wash of sunlight on the front steps and, choosing a direction of travel, set off for a walk.

It turns out that the entire city had experienced the same brilliant idea as I did at roughly the same instant. It was going to be nearly impossible to maintain proper social distance in such a crowd. My newly purchased mask that had come all the way from China quickly broke the first time I grinned from ear to ear as it was rather poorly made, and in just a matter of minutes after setting off, we turned back.

Plan B: we set off on a drive with the windows down. We went to Evanston and picked up more books from CARA to deliver to schools and texted the Bradleys to let them know we were driving by their house if they wanted to wave at us. Melissa was out walking her dogs and we missed her. We drove up along the North Shore where everyone was spilling out onto their lawns and the lakefront with bicycles nearly outnumbering cars in places. We looked for an ice cream stand but they were all too populated to stop and maintain distance, so I navigated over to Skokie where I remembered seeing a Culver’s where we could go through a drive thru. As a part-time resident of the State of Minnesota, Abigail loves Culver’s cheese curds and custard, and soon we were once again land sailing with the windows down and the sunroof open eating frozen custard as droves of bikes, motorcycles, scooters, skateboards, and joggers streamed around us. Today would have been the day of the annual Waldorf School May Fair where we would have gathered to watch the children dance around the May Pole. This is the first missed May Fair in many, many years for us, but we made do.

In the evening, Ella and Rosie treated us to a debut performance of their drama:  The Forgotten Child in their backyard theater. The show featured a Playbill, intermission treats, and around five costume changes. It involved an evil flight attendant, a child with telekinetic powers, and a mother that has forgotten she has a child. They plan to develop the script for The Disney Channel. Afterwards, we ate delicious enchiladas prepared by Abbie, wound down our day a bit, and turned in round midnight like Lester Young would have done.

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Quarantine - Day 47

Let’s salute the heroes. My daughter is my hero. After taking a few days to do schoolwork, Abbie resumed editing and composing original music for our series of videos. She has been the driving force for all of our online content, and as we put more of it up it makes us feel that we are moving in some direction rather than just sitting still in the world. It is a little bit of hope we share amongst us, giving us a job to do and a common goal to accomplish. Without her, would we have simply quit at this point? It is possible, I suppose. As soon as she would finish a video, we would gather to watch its first debut, then I would do a bit of post-production and put it up on the site. Laura pressed ahead with one of our schools to get them to pay for the content even as they wanted to delay our contract until the fall. Instead, she got the school to schedule a meeting for their teachers so they can work the content into their remote learning. Without a decent amount of willpower, little is possible.

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