This week on my podcast, “Voices from My Bunker 2020”, I interview Joan, a 74-year-old widow and retired nurse in Rochester, NY who, unlike myself, does not have the prerequisites for a successful quarantine, in other words, she is not a sloth or someone who enjoys sitting for hours at a time reading, clicking, snoozing and I feel 100% sure never uses her bed as her living room, dining room, and office.
She is a mover. A doer. A socializer. A walker. An organizer. When she flew to see her daughter’s family in Franklin, Mass before COVID19, she would tell them not to pick her up at the airport as she could get on the Silverline at the airport in Boston, go to South Station, and, then, take a train out to Franklin. She allowed them to pick her up at the Franklin station.
So, the prospect of her not being able to leave her house for days, months on end in a chilly Rochester, NY? A challenge. She has Raynauld’s disease so walking outside was not possible either. Yet, she got through quarantine in her own determined way and taught me a few things. One of them? When in doubt, drive around.
The second lesson is more sobering and I’m still trying to understand it: she still feels in August 2020, five months after the initial lockdown, as if she and those around her and her family and friends are still on the same conservative wavelength with respect to managing their risks for COVID19. Why is it a lesson? Because I do not feel that way. At all. In fact, lately, I am beginning to realize that this schism may portend a more permanent distancing even when social distancing is no longer necessary. This is a separate post I’ll publish later this week.
But, for now, before you meet Joan, let me introduce her by saying that my sewing teacher, Jen, is Joan’s daughter, and being my sewing teacher is no easy task. Patience is required. Here is what was a typical day in the sewing classroom with me as a student. This is an example of my bobbin threading skills and this was after a solid year of classes!
So, now, just click below on the white arrow on the lower left-hand side and Meet Joan. I think Jen’s ability to adjust to the abnormal may come for her Mom. (The photograph is of “Pitcher Plants” that I photographed to suggest they were in conversation with one another.)
Rather than drive around, I clipped my passion flower vine and embedded them in tissue paper with Glossy Medium and then scanned it while still wet from the medium. Two flowers bloomed the day after I did the original and I added their purple in the final version. I call it, “Snow In August”.
