July 5, 2020
It has been four months—
No touch from a human
Given or received
In this time of COVID-19 pandemic
But in the early mornings
My blue-eyed rescue boy
Leaps on the bed
Settles on my chest
And with one paw hooks my wrist in his
And with the other velvet paw
Gently taps my cheek
And begins his warm purr
Which signals to me
That I am not alone
And that a new day has begun.
Here I am, in this raging storm which shows no sign of stopping. But my little boat is snug and strong, and despite the massive waves we are riding out the storm, although sometimes we slide so far into the hollows of the waves that I think we never will emerge. But we do.
At the helm is my fourth great- grandfather Thomas Turner, a linen weaver, who sailed from Belfast Ireland on December 24th, 1766 when he was twenty-three. The promise of 100 acres in South Carolina took him across the Atlantic in winter storms. Ten years later, he would be fighting with the Revolutionary forces.
By his side looking at the compass is my grandmother’s aunt and stepmother Carolina Margareta Brandt. She packed up her little son, my grandmother, and my great-uncle Henry and in 1886 left the croft in Skaraborg, Sweden. They sailed from Gothenburg to Denmark, then took another ship to Bremen, and then across the Atlantic to Baltimore and by train to the Twin Cities to join my great-grandfather.
Below decks is my great-great grandfather James H. Crocker known for his carpentry; he has his tool box ready to make repairs. He was with the Georgia Infantry at Missionary Ridge, Reseca, Kenneshaw Mountain, and Atlanta, among other battles.
In the galley is my grandmother Milda Christina preparing supper. She came home to her Minnesota farm house one day to find her almost- ripe strawberries smashed into the ground by a sudden hailstorm. She was thirty-one when her first husband died of stomach cancer, one year and two months after their marriage, leaving her with a five month old baby.
And across the cabin is my great-great-grandfather James Porter Stockton, tuning up his fiddle because we need music in this storm. He survived the Battle of Vicksburg and spent the last years of his life playing the fiddle on his Arkansas porch.
His wife my great-great-grandmother Rebecca Hendricks has her bag of herbs ready in case of sickness, though she could not save her two young sons from dying of pneumonia in the winter of 1876, nine days apart.
My great-grandfather Dr. Jacob Thomas Crocker is there with his medical bag, too. He was a horse-and-buggy country doctor during the influenza epidemic of 1918, when over 7,000 people died in Arkansas.
The boat pitches and slides down another trough, then slowly climbs upward again.
“This, too, shall pass,” they say to me, and I hear the fiddle music begin.
“We are our grandmothers’ prayers
We are our grandfathers’ dreaming
We are the breath of our ancestors…”
“We Are,” Sweet Honey in the Rocks
May 25, 2020
The petals pool around the blue vase
Set between the candle sticks that we lit every night
For dinner
All those years
And my fingers brush the softness
Reminded of Swan Lake and the
Light I saw reflected in your eyes
That first night at the ballet
So much a part of my childhood
So much not a part of yours
And reminded too of standing with you
In Sissinghurst Gardens in early spring
its White Room empty and quiet
No white roses climbing, no flowers blooming
And saying, “It is too bad we won’t see this”
And you saying “We will come back”
And we did.
May 10, 2020
She walked across my hill
As stately
As the Queen had done across her Palace gardens—
Pausing among the rising grasses
Her head lit by the western sun
And I wondered if she were a messenger
from my husband or even
on this Mother’s Day night
from my mother…
But entirely grateful
For this emissary from
Our blue-green world
For this moment of wonder
May 8, 2020
This morning ShutterFly—the photo site where I have many of my photographs stored—delivered to my computer screen a reminder of photographs taken ten years ago, on Mother’s Day weekend May 2010. It is like stepping back in time, and it brings a smile to my face.
There is a photo of my daughter Melinda and me in this living room, looking into the camera, with slight smiles. I smile back at them. I am wearing a favorite necklace that Bill bought for me on our trip to Peru; it is a blue spiral set into a silver background, the symbol of infinity. I think Bill probably took this photo. He is still alive that May, but frail and pale from the cancer that will take him in July.
But the next photo I am sure I took. It is of Melinda and her daughter Emma Rose—my granddaughter. They are sitting on the black leather couch, and Emma is draped on her mother’s shoulder. She is smiling at the camera warmly and so is Melinda. Emma is eight years old, untouched by time and not too much by grief, though she already has lost a grandparent, her grandmother Nancy. But the warm comfortable love between the two is evident.
I am very happy that my daughter has a daughter. I love my son, my first-born, but there is something special about the love between a mother and a daughter. I know that is not true for everyone. I have heard the sad stories. But I am fortunate, and so is my daughter. Even now at 18 Emma has a close relationship with her mother.
I think of that sunlit Mother’s Day weekend ten years ago, captured forever in these photographs, and I smile again. I will not be with my children and grandchildren this Mother’s Day weekend, sequestered as I am by this pandemic, but I can take comfort in these memories and know that I am loved, as is my daughter. The spiral continues. Happy Mother’s Day, my darling daughter.
April 27, 2020
It has been three weeks since I last wrote. The United States now has over 54,000 deaths from Covid-19; we are leading the world. We are number one. In Virginia there have been 453 deaths. The first death in Virginia was just over six weeks ago.
The rules for staying at home, the closing of businesses, and social distancing vary by states, but in most cases we are restricted to groups of ten or fewer, must stay six feet apart, and wear face masks when in public. However, resistance to regulations by a small but very vocal minority now has emerged. In Wisconsin, for example, about 1000 people assembled in Madison, shoulder to shoulder without face masks, carrying signs. Some signs said “I Want a Haircut.”
Governors are working on plans to reopen businesses, with regions collaborating. Georgia, one of the last states to close businesses, now is one of the first to reopen, including nail salons, tattoo parlors, and bowling alleys.
The economic hardships are very real. 26.5 million new claims have been filed for unemployment benefits. It is predicted that many retailers will never reopen. The states are struggling, too, and are revising budgets.
At last Thursday’s White House briefing, the President suggested that perhaps injecting Covid-19 patients with disinfectant might help. This suggestion later was withdrawn.
Gradually many of us have begun to realize that this is not going to be over in a few weeks or a few months. Or a year. This virus does terrible things to the human body— blood clots and strokes. It is terrifying. Even once the states reopen their economies, I wonder who will feel safe in going back to shopping malls? to hair salons? to movie theaters? baseball stadiums? church services? to movie theaters?
I have been thinking about how once upon a time, we went to movie theaters to watch scary movies. One of the best of these movies in my opinion was Aliens starring Sigourney Weaver playing the lead role of Ripley combating aliens who looked like our worst nightmares. But Ripley was courageous and she acted out of love to save a little girl—a stranger’s child. She entered that elevator and strapped on her gear as she descended to meet the alien monster.
We can do that, too. And many of us can do that just by staying home.
April 18th, 2020
Today is the wedding anniversary of my parents Serena Leveau and Joseph Robert Crocker. They married on this day in 1936 in Wheaton, Illinois, at the home of my mother’s half-sister Edna Lindstrom. They were both 27 years old.
They were living in Chicago at the time they met. My father was going to the University of Chicago, working on his doctorate degree. My mother was working as a dietician for the Bell Telephone Company employee cafeterias; she had graduated from the University of Minnesota, and what had brought her to Chicago I do not know.
My mother said they met at a party at a student’s apartment close to the University campus and were married three months later. I doubt they had friends in common for that party. His friend probably said, come on, let’s go to this party, you need a break. And her friend maybe said, hey, I know someone having a party, let’s go.
And so they met and three months later they married.
They had four children, two sons and two daughters.
And six grandchildren.
And ten great-grandchildren.
Think of all the lives and all the histories and all the jumble of wonderful, sad, and amazing things that happened because of that meeting.
Four.
Six.
Ten.
It must have been a cold and perhaps snowy February night of that party. Perhaps my mother hesitated at the door of her apartment. Maybe put on her coat and then took it off again. And then slid her coat on one more time.
And she stepped out the door.
Four.
Six.
Ten.
April 15, 2020
The sun is dropping lower
And I am here by the barn
About to enter the pasture
To collect the windfall of sticks
But then I see the young red fox
Intent on his hunting
Meadow vole for dinner
Eyes focused on the ground
Paws plucking at the grass
And I step back quietly
Drop my hand from the latch
on the pasture gate
The sticks can wait.
March 30, 2020
Today the governors of Maryland and Virginia and the mayor of Washington DC all declared lock-downs of their jurisdictions. A week ago all three officials had called for citizens to stay at home except for essential business. Today’s declarations are not much different, except they have the weight of reinforcement—imprisonment and/or fines for offenders. The numbers of confirmed cases are rising dramatically here—-over 1,000 confirmed cases in Virginia.
Basically citizens are restricted to their homes except for required work and essential errands meaning buying food and medicines.
The man in the White House withdrew his aspirational idea that everything would be back to normal by Easter and the churches packed, and called for social distancing to the end of April. He also said if the fatality rate was not more than 100,000 in the United States then he would have done a good job.
April 8, 2020
We are approaching Easter. We now have 3,340 known cases of Covid-19 in Virginia with 63 deaths.
CDC and the White House now recommend that we wear home-made masks when we go out in public, but not the N95 masks because those are in very short supply and are needed by medical personnel. At first we were told that masks would not protect us, they would only protect others, and that we would need training in how to put the masks on, so no one needed to wear masks. Now people are sewing masks and demonstrating how to sew them on YouTube.
Going to the grocery store has become a fearful expedition for many, and for those who work in the stores it is frightening, too. Many grocery stores have begun limiting the number of customers in the store at one time, have set up one-way aisle systems, marked the floor with tape for six foot distances at the check-out lines, and installed plexiglass shields to protect the cashiers. My last trip to the store was March 11th, but my son brought me food from Costco on April 1. I have a good supply of frozen and pantry foods, it is the fresh items I will run out of. There are food shopping services, but they are swamped with customers. One friend said it took her several days to get an order through—she was successful at 1:35 AM—and it will be delivered in five days. For we Americans accustomed to instant gratification, this is an adjustment.
A tiger in a zoo was diagnosed with Covid-19, apparently contracted from a keeper.
Meanwhile, it is spring. On my hilltop the pear tree has finished blooming, and the crabapple and forsythia blossoms are fading, but the red bud trees and Alleghany serviceberry tree are blooming. The serviceberry was so named because it was the one of the first trees to bloom when the ground was soft enough to dig graves after the winter, and hold funeral services.
Last night through my open window I heard the spring peepers.
April 1, 2020
And on my doorstep in the twilight were these jewels—
Lettuce
Asparagus
Avocados
Cherry tomatoes
And blueberries
Left by my son