Dress Rehearsal

Ever cognizant of that line from Les Mis about words better left unspoken, discretion nevertheless becomes a challenge at moments like this.

A young woman stopped by yesterday to measure the open space in my daughter's yard. Her idea is to grow vegetables on people's private property, then distribute community food boxes throughout this area. The property owners would be compensated by keeping a percentage of each crop.

I've always loved entrepreneurs.

The soil here is not conducive to gardens. It is hard clay. To make it productive, you would need to break it up and add manure, for starters. Most city dwellers do not like the smell of manure. Of course there always is the "potting soil" option.

But the urge to grow your own food now is intense. We live in the most industrialized agriculture system ever developed, where less than one percent grow the food for the other 99 percent.

As the isolation grows, we are all looking for ways to connect with each other. I cannot grow food for you but I can write stories for you. These are not chapters from my memoir but daily essays meant to accompany our mutual journey through the days and nights of our dress rehearsal.

My mind wanders to engage those among my friends and family who have recently passed away, not from coronavirus ostensibly, but from other diseases. They died just before the pandemic hit, so they missed this experience, for better or worse.

***

Children, with their natural curiosity and resilience, can lead us through this journey. Whether you have children with you now or not, you can listen to their stories, Last night, my grandson wanted to play poker. When his Dad and I sat down at the table with a deck of cards, he arrived with a bandana tied over the lower half of his face.

He explained that he doesn't think he has a very good "poker face," and he didn't want to give away how he felt about the cards he was holding.

He's 11. He won the evening.

One of my granddaughters picks up on conversations by suddenly breaking into song. She can dramatize an item as prosaic as a butter knife.

***

Millions of us have been caught by the pandemic away from home. In my case, I'm not sure that I have a home. We've finished clearing out my San Francisco flat; I no longer have the key or pay the rent there.

My apartment in the assisted living facility is absent one item -- me. My journals, files, memories fill the place, but I have not been there in weeks.

Here, as a guest in my daughter's home, I am welcome, but I am taking up one of my grandchildren's beds.

This family knows how to make the most of a challenging time. We've had lunch at the fireplace, cooking hot dogs, sausages and marshmallows (for s'mores). I cooked a meal -- spaghetti and meat sauce -- for the first time in many months, five I think.

The kids gathered tiny fish from a nearby pond and they are now swimming in an acquarium in the living room.

We eat our meals together. The family chatters in French and English. Often a lively exchange is bubbling along when one of the kids blurts out, "But wait, Grandpa can't understand."

"No," I always say. "I understand."

Choosing our words carefully is a privilege of age. Back to where I started, it is probably best that some things remain unspoken.

Other things -- how much we care for one another, how much we've enjoyed each other's company, how love has caused us much pleasure and ineffable pain, how the accomplishment of a common purpose obviates the difficulty accomplishing it, how knowing we are not actually alone even when we feel alone leads to the urge to make a phone call, take a walk, send a text, post to Facebook, exchange memories -- these are the stuff of our dress rehearsal for that time when we will actually be going away.

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