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Discussing Covid-19 Exposure, and Rocks

Friday August 28th, 2020

Discussing Covid-19 Exposure, and Rocks

Family from Northern California are visiting with us. Rather, they were smoked out, and chose to come and see us. My husband’s brother Joseph, wife Fahr and son Ez (Ezekiel) drove down to see us on Fahr’s birthday. (Fahr is a nickname.)

We set up picnic tables in and chairs in the back yard. Everyone wore masks, until we cracked open a bottle of red wine. My mother-in-law put out a bowl of cherries. Joseph and his family had eaten on the drive down.

An Apt Metaphor

Fahr had an amusing metaphor for discussing the COVID-19 exposure level that people are comfortable with: it’s like discussing sex: individual boundaries and preferences regarding birth control have to be set. It was an apt comparison: people really do have a range of tolerance for different kinds of exposures, which can vary according to who they deal with. So we spent sometime talking about that.

Fahr also had a similarly useful suggestion: respect the wishes of the most conservative member of the group. In our case, that’s D. He warms any food prepared outside our home to kill potential viruses, still sprays down purchased items with a diluted bleach water solution, quarantines non-perishable items for 3 days in one room of the house, and prefers to wear a mask in most social situations involving persons outside our household. I should mention Joseph is a nurse practitioner who is tested frequently for COVID-19 exposure, and he is somewhat less conservative. Nevertheless, Fahr wanted us to respect D’s boundaries.

I found Fahr’s take on exposure insightful. I loved the fact that Fahr repurposed guidelines stemming out of feminism. Fahr, I should mention, worked for many years as a doula , is a credentialed life-coach, studied ancient healing methods in addition to undergraduate and graduate studies in the humanities. Feminism is deeply rooted in the individual’s conscious relationship to her or his own body. So, of course, when considering matters of the body and personal boundaries, as we all must now do during this pandemic, feminism presents a logical framework for coping with social relations and our comfort level with exposure to disease.

Joseph, Fahr, Ez and their small dog are staying at a nice hotel within walking distance from our home, and we’ve met almost every evening, either in our back yard or the hotel’s outdoor pool area. We’re looking forward to seeing them tonight.

F is teaching karate over Zoom with T. tonight. I hope that Ez will be able to join their class.

Oh, and Rocks!

Now for the fun stuff: rocks!

Since we may have guests again in our back yard, B and I cleared the furniture and the build-up of junk from the back patio, so I could power-spray it down. While helping out, I mentioned to S I’d been looking for a rock to break. We looked at and discussed rocks while clearing some of the beach stones from the patio.

S and I examined a curved rock together, and what angle we might strike it at. We looked at a few other ones, and B took out a smooth composite one maybe a bit more than half an inch thick. S, thinking he’d try it out to see if it would be an appropriate one to break, gave it a wack against the pavement, cleaved it smoothly in half! He said, “Oh, I didn’t mean to do that, Mom. I just wanted to see if it might work for you.”

**Including a penny so you can see the thickness of S’s rock**

I was so proud that he broke it!

Months earlier, I’d also placed chunks of old concrete that I’d dug up from various spots in the yard around our little kumquat bush. Those caught my eye. I suggested to S that we try those. So we retrieved chunks of concrete and broke those first. My reasoning: we’ve watched Sensei and our nidans break cinder blocks. Those are concrete. S and I easily chopped through the thinner chunks of old concrete.

F came out to see what we were doing. She took a concrete fragment and easily broke that in half!

And thickness of the concrete, demonstrated by a penny

I found an actual rock that looked thin and breakable. Oyama advised his students to do just that with river rocks: find one that looks easy to break, and break it! Then try a larger or thicker one, but build up. I broke my rock.

My broken rock fragments, also posed against a penny.

Tuesday June 16th, 2020

I did exercises this morning. During push-ups, I am trying to stay up on my toes for more repetitions, and today was better. During karate class, Sensei had us do sets of thirty push-ups, sit-ups and squats in between various exercises. I had one more set of thirty to do after class in order to get in my evening ninety.

F lead kihon and did a good job, though she has not lead in a while, and spaced on the names of some moves that she normally knows. Nerves, most likely, but her form is crisp. She set a steady, quick pace. We were out of breath after her kihon.

Sensei returned to third kyu syllabus for another type of exercise: we did ten of each move on both the right and left sides. So, after doing this, it was easy to remember the syllabus. Also, it is a method of using the syllabus as a workout. He said the IFK will often have students do this for multiple syllabi.

A younger version of my step-mother appeared in my dreams for a few nights in a row. She read my diary, though this didn’t bother me. Since it was published, I was glad to have a reader. In another dream, she was in a room with a girl strongly resembling her daughter, my younger step-sister, who died about ten years ago. I should get in touch with my sister and let her know about the dreams.

Around lunch time, I went to the office to retrieve my things. The company is giving up one of the floors of our building, and they are moving other folks into our offices. I don’t know when this will happen. For now, most of us work from home and will in the near future, given we are not furloughed.

I enjoy working from home. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before. We can thank the pandemic for significantly reduced traffic and more family time . One friend from the dojo, a parent of two, told me that her husband, before the pandemic, was never home from dinner. He drove to and from work for over an hour. His commute, in addition to working overtime, meant he simply arrived home well after family dinner. Since the shutdown, he has not missed a family dinner.

Obviously the loss of life and the isolation that many feel as a result of the pandemic are terrible. Hopefully we as a society will figure out how to be better prepared for these events in the future. If we can avoid or minimize suffering and death, while hanging onto improvements in quality of life, this is best.

Sunday May 3rd, 2020

I will meditate as soon as I am finished with this ten minute write. Tomorrow, it’s back to exercises for me. I should do eighty sit-ups and squats. Push-ups should be forty on the floor and twenty on a matte. So, it is my first week of eighties.

Today, B, F and I baked chocolate chip cookies. We argued about cooking. How silly! Baking cookies is usually fun! We felt too pent-up.

As a family, staying safe during this pandemic is challenging. Intellectually each of us understands we need to avoid catching coronavirus from folks outside our household. Practically, each of us has “blind” spots or areas where it is hard to keep doing what we must to avoid infection.

For example, on Friday, a friend from work dropped by and brought kumquats. I so enjoyed just standing outside and get caught up with her. D, watching from the window, had to remind me to keep six feet apart. We did stand apart, then the mailman arrived and we moved to give him space. We also greeted him, but then we drifted closer as we talked.

D loves food, cooking and chatting shop with cooks. Yesterday he picked up take-out from a new Indian restaurant that opened recently near Hayatt’s, our favorite restaurant. He signed the credit card statement using the restaurant server’s pen: he didn’t have one on him and had not expected that he would need to sign. He did wash his hands when we got home. However, on the way home, he touched the steering wheel, his phone, the car door handle, etc., so we had to remember to spray all of these surfaces as well.

The grandparents sometimes feel it is overkill to heat food–again–that came from restaurants just to be on the safe side, or to let food from the store sit three days, or to stay so far back from the kind shoppers who drop off our groceries. They, and we, tire of all these precautions, even though we know the purpose of these things.

Intellectually we all know that the virus is indiscriminate and will infect anyone, regardless of how nice or clean that person seems. On an unconscious level, it is hard to think of your friends and neighbors as potential carriers and possibly harmful to you, when you know them to be conscientious people. Yet COVID-19 has infected so many people: doctors, nurses, grocery workers, bus drivers, teachers, etc. It is difficult to counter-act our own social programming. When we see friends, neighbors or even kindly strangers, we do not want to be rude or hurt others’ feelings, or we may be simply happy to see them and forget.

We are social creatures, so social distancing is hard. My family is lucky that we are six with cats. I know this, but still miss my community.