Pandemic hits home with Sarah Street neighbors
Residents respond with humor, optimism
When COVID- 19 made its official landing in Allegheny County on March 14, Carlos Ainsworth scrambled to set up a makeshift workspace in his spare bedroom: a card table and a folding chair.
It has been an imperfect situation to handle business for Dollar Bank, but the perks are great, especially one: seeing his 18- monthold daughter Naomi grow up in
real time.
“Me being forced to work from home, I got to see her first steps and I got to hear more of her first words. I got to see her running,” Mr. Ainsworth recalled while
sitting on his front stoop with Naomi and his wife, Adrian Smith, on a sunny but blustery October day.
“To me, that was the highlight of it all, just being home 24/ 7 and watching [ Naomi] hit these milestones along the way instead of sitting in my office and Adrian having to send me a picture or a video. ... I think it’s allowed me to become closer to her.”
Despite the many aspects aspects of the COVID existence that are difficult to downright awful, the coronavirus pandemic has created some silver linings, shifts in perspective and happy accidents both far away and close to home. Mr. Ainsworth and Ms. Smith are my neighbors on the 2300 block of Sarah Street on the South Side.
According to the Historic Pittsburgh maps collection curated by the University of Pittsburgh, homes started appearing on this block in the 1860s. By 1900 — when the neighborhood was still called East Birmingham — every house that stands there today had been built. So it is a near certainty that 102 years ago when the Spanish flu pandemic ripped through the nation, neighbors on this block struggled with it, helped each other out and discussed the efficacy of masks and shutdowns ( which happened then, too).
For this “19 Neighbors” story, I asked some of my own neighbors how they’re faring more than seven months after the first diagnosed case of the novel coronavirus in Allegheny County and what their hopes and fears are as we approach winter.
“I’ve seen things get fairly strange in the past. I’ve not seen anything quite like this. I’m not sure I would’ve been ready for it to go on this long,” said Dan Watkins, a retired Duquesne University professor who’s approaching 70.
“The world has slowed down, and that’s a good
thing,” he said. “The slower pace of life has enabled people to pay attention to one another perhaps in ways they wouldn’t have before. ... People seem to be kinder for the most part. People are stepping up.”
He and his wife, Joanna, are natives of Alabama.
“We’re from the South, and so when something [ bad] comes up, you respond with humor,” Joanna said. “The humor frequently is encased in a lot of fear. You just have to sit back and gather together those around you as best you can.
“Even in the stress of the situation, for a lot of people a lot of good has come from this. People have turned to each other and said, ‘ What can I do for you? How can I help you?’ We pick up grocery and pharmacy things for people, take people to the doctor, things that we can do and can do safely. That has helped me to balance the situation.”
Dan Watkins recalled an old story from a dear friend who was a Navy pilot about to be deployed overseas.
“He was walking along the beach before he left and found a great entanglement of fishing twine and he scooped it up and took it with him ... because he knew he was gonna have a lot of downtime — and a lot of stress — and so he used that downtime to disentangle the twine,” he said.
“It was kind of a Zen thing — you focus your mind on something in front of you to do that enables you to weather the situation that constitutes your circumstance of the moment. That story has always stayed with me.”
His Zen escape has been playing the drums three times a day.
“That really does help,” Mr. Watkins said. “I take it very seriously, and I never miss a session. It’s the structure I need to keep normalcy,” he said, adding that the couple’s goal has been to “be patient. Be realistic. Enjoy every day.”
A few doors down, 12- year old Keira Qureshi spent the summer learning how to skateboard and reaffirming her love for the Harry Potter literary anthology. But she has also come to accept a pair of hard truths from this experience.
“I’d say I’m in my room a lot more,” she said. The other is less benign: this otherwise precocious optimist’s first experience with cynicism.
“It’s taught me that some people will take [ this] seriously and come together, but some people will be stubborn and have their own opinions ... ,” she said. “I guess they just want to have their opinion be valid and they want to be right.”
It only gets worse on that front, kid. She and her mother, Cathy, have made the most of their unanticipated extra time together.
“Keira and I have gotten to explore the South Side much more than we ever did,” Mrs. Qureshi said. “Every night in April, May and June, we’d go for walks down by the river and in the nearby parks, so it’s made me appreciate exactly where I live.”
She works for the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, whose office is just two blocks away, so she practically worked from home already. She said Keira’s virtual schooling has gone OK other than missing her friends. However, the uneasiness of the unknown is always right below the surface.
“You think you made it 20 yards ahead and then it’s a big penalty and you’re moved back,” Mrs. Qureshi said. “It really feels there’s no clear path to the other side.”
Keira is worried about missing out on annual family traditions — going to a pumpkin patch, heading to Downtown for Light Up Night and to ice skate, and Christmas Eve dinner at P. F. Chang’s in The Waterfront. But she tries to stay positive.
“We just have to work with what we got and adapt,” she said.
“We have been intentionally very positive,” her mother said. “Like everyone, we’ve felt overwhelmed, [ but] it’s super important to us to think about at morning and night what we’re grateful for.”
There’s a similar theme at the Ainsworth- Smith house, despite worries about a winter quarantine.
“We are so fortunate,” Ms. Smith said.
She’s a bartender at Fat Head’s Saloon and has been in and out of work since the pandemic began. Family members routinely drop by to see Naomi from the front door, and they had a virtual first birthday party for her in April.
“We tried to make it fun and have some memories,” Ms. Smith said. “We did a silly photo shoot. We made a banana muffin for a cake. Our family dropped off gifts. It was a bummer, but we made the most of it.
“We’re all safe and healthy together, and so it’s hard to think about the bad things.”
“But I still don’t have a desk,” Mr. Ainsworth quipped.