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.”
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!
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.