AND THEN IT SNOWED ...
I am writing this column on Wednesday morning with the knowledge that, by the time you read it, Greenwich will most likely be covered with snow. The kids are already licking their chops for a snow day and dragging out the old sleds from the before-the-virus days, along with the snow pants that are probably too small (given our COVID 20 pounds). And while the entire tristate area awaits the storm, do you know what I just can’t stop thinking about?
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his sled.
Doris Kearns Goodwin opens her FDR biography, “No Ordinary Time,” with the following passage:
“On nights filled with tension and concern, Franklin Roosevelt performed a ritual that helped him to fall asleep. He would close his eyes and imagine himself at Hyde Park as a boy, standing with his sled in the snow atop the steep hill that stretched from the south porch of his home to the wooded bluffs of the Hudson River far below. As he accelerated down the hill, he maneuvered each familiar curve with perfect skill until he reached the bottom, whereupon, pulling his sled behind him, he started slowly back up until he reached the top, where he would once more begin his descent. Again and again he replayed this remembered scene in his mind…[And thus], the president of the United States would fall asleep.”
That has got to be one of best openings to any narrative history book ever — and I think about it a lot these days.
There’s so much about 1932 that rings true now. A new president was elected during the Great Depression, promoting American democracy in the face of global populism and authoritarian regimes. FDR’s campaign song was “Happy Days Are Here Again.” It was an era of change and hope; time for a “New Deal;” and those who opposed sought refuge in conspiracy theories. It’s no wonder FDR couldn’t sleep.
And then there’s me, circa 12/17/20.
Now I don’t mean to compare the sleeping problems of a pre-holiday pandemic mother to an American president who faced polio, a World War and the Great Depression. Actually, I kinda do… Last week, we canceled our biennial, extendedfamily Christmas. Schooltravel restrictions, recent quarantines, questionable exposures and a death rate that is exceeding 9/11 and Pearl Harbor fatalities every single day just did us all in. It’s just not worth the risk. We did the same at Thanksgiving; we know the disappointment drill.
And I get it, I get it, I GET IT already — but it still just sucks.
My nephew, whom I have not seen in months, can now use full sentences, a fork — and a toilet! This while my quarantine
addled middle schoolers seem to have forgotten these skills entirely. Milestones missed; holidays, birthdays, anniversaries and parties gone by, some irreplicably.
“WAIT — are you traveling for Christmas?” I asked my friend Sarah yesterday. (She just slipped into our phone conversation that she was busy packing.)
Turns out she is flying her family to Washington to be with relatives. She couldn’t wait; she needed to “get out of here.”
“Oh,” I told her, in a tone that gave me away. “How nice…”
And here is where it gets ugly.
“It’s just, what are you going to do when you get back?” I continued, setting a rhetorical trap. “Pulling the kids out of school for two whole weeks again is so hard because you have to quarantine after traveling from a state with one of the highest rates of infec
tion, you know?”
There was a long pause. I had her.
“Wait,” I continued, like some COVID-19 Jedi Master of passive-aggressiveness, “you ARE going to quarantine when you get back, right?”
And we were off to the races.
“The fact that some of us are following rules and others are not is ... just infuriating,” a friend told me. “So it’s like, ‘Great! Have fun at the beach, skiing — or whatever you’re doing — you schmuck. Just don’t send me any pictures, please ... or come near me when you get back.’”
The whole COVID judgment thing is not new; since March, we’ve been dancing the bizarre “how-much-can-we-really-trust-our-friends” tango, as we smile at each other through our face masks. But something about this week just did me in — and so I got just plain mean.
“You DO understand what went down on Thanksgiving, don’t you?” I started, as I circled in on Sarah, like a Velociraptor. “Even though everyone was warned not to travel or gather, millions of Americans still did — and now we are seeing death rates spike, exactly two weeks later. And now people are doing this all over again for Christmas? Are you kidding me?? Fauci calls it a ‘surge upon surge,’ HELLO?!”
But Sarah was saying good-bye. She reviewed all the statistics, and informed me I was “welcome” to send her any new websites with more ”solid numbers,” but she had made up her mind. She had weighed the pros and cons, and they were going.
And suddenly I wanted to take her down … as in downtown … as in waaaaay downtown, past Chinatown, if you know what I mean.
The whole “this-is-because-I-really-care-about-you and-your-family” vibe was now buried in accusatory questions like, “Have you informed the school of your travel plans? Is your school EVEN ALLOWING travel?” But she had already told the schools, and offered to send me her emails and cc me on them going forward, as proof.
And there it was: the COVID slap-down; the gauntlet had been thrown.
And so, as I sit here reflecting on why I’m all worked up, I have to ask myself: is this coming from a genuine concern about my friend’s health, or the health of others around her — or is it because I am just plain jealous? Or both?
And I know, I know, I KNOW ... but as I look across the hallway at the K2 summit of laundry, I’ve got to say it’s feeling more and more like the latter. There’s a twist of anger here that is not consistent with sisterly love.
You know things are not looking good: 1 million new cases and 3,000 dead per day. One third of U.S. hospitals at capacity.
But then, something happened. Two days later, it started to snow. Slow, lovely snow, coming down everywhere from somewhere else, somewhere better ... making the messy white, the dirty clean, the loud muted, and the busy calm. For a minute, snow would still everything, just like snow always does ... and just like snow always will and always has.
And suddenly there was FDR again, smiling at me.
“There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still,” he said, quoting himself, with a twinkle in his eye.
And off we went, FDR and I, past the laundry and the dirty face masks and out to our pile of hopeful sleds. And up we trudged on that big timeless hill, only to ride down again — over and over again — against all odds.