The Glass House

Sometimes, a place is memorable -- not because it's particularly nice or fancy; the Glass House was neither of these -- but because of what happens while you're there or because of what is going on around you during this time in your life, the context. 

For the kids' fall break we spent two nights in Hiriketiya at an old favorite that is nice and fancy. Hiriketiya was just reopening and many of the restaurants on the beach weren't open yet, so we employed a chef to prepare Sri Lankan breakfasts and rice and curries for dinner. We surfed for two days straight, stopping only to eat and sleep. 

We spent the next two nights in Unawatuna, near where we had found ourselves during our original sojourn to Sri Lanka several years ago when we traveled here from Chennai with my mom. Elise had just received her first photography assignment since the start of the pandemic, and her excitement was palpable. She spent much of those two days working, a welcome distraction.  Her work forced all of us to slow down, stop along the side of the highway, jump out to take a photo, hop back in the car, and continue on our way.  We wound our way from Hiriketiya to Unawatuna along the A2, hugging the coast and forgoing the highway and the fastest route between point A and point B, stopping for KFC at a location with inargueably the most spectacular view of any KFC in the world and for "n'ice cream" (frozen whipped bananas with mango, lime, and cocoa) from a food truck along the beach in Weligama. 

Clementine would go back to in-person school when we returned to Colombo. On the first day of in-person school, a kid in the other fourth grade class tested positive for the coronavirus,  shutting down that class for two weeks and taking down two other classes and a bus load in the process, a clear indication that, though we are moving in thenright direction, we're not out of the woods yet. 

Emergence

Last weekend, we were finally able to get out of Colombo for the first time since we'd returned to Sri Lanka from our summer vacation in the States. We still aren't supposed to wander too far afield so we hit a familiar and comfortable spot, Karuna Villa in Weligama, where the kids were able to spend two days surfing then a third day, a Monday, logging in from the beach for virtual school.  So there are some benefits to not being able to go to campus for in-person learning.  

This week is the kids' fall break, and we're back at the beach. Clementine will go back to school next Wednesday.  We're hopeful the secondary school with follow shortly thereafter. With the lockdown ended (for now), case numbers continuing to come down, kids headed back to school, and my office starting to bring people back, there is a real sense life is trying to return to normal. 

This transition will be no less jarring, no less disruptive than the move to lockdowns caused by the pandemic. Elise shared with me Jon Mooallem's article in the New York Times Magazine, "I Had a Chance to Travel Anywhere. Why Did I Pick Spokane?"

The piece resonated with me. Why did he pick Spokane? Truth be told, I don't think I would have ever visited Spokane -- much less make it the destination of an annual summer pilgrimage-- if it wasn't for Elise. To read someone else's account of Spokane from a vantage similar to my own was interesting, an outsider, unfamiliar to the culture and ways of the Pacific Northwest. 

The author also details his own struggles emerging from the pandemic, "Here’s what I think was happening: It hadn’t been too painful, initially, to settle into a small, circumscribed life — going grocery shopping, volunteering at our local vaccine clinic, getting together with friends outside. But it meant I’d never been forced, or forced myself, to acclimate to the virus as much as other people seemed to have done. I wasn’t learning to live within the odds. This made me uneasy — personally uneasy, because I interpreted it as a lack of toughness, but also ethically uneasy, because I knew that in a broken society like ours, my comfort came at the expense of other people’s demoralization and discomfort. Still, that’s what happened. And while I’m sure this left me with an exaggerated sense of the risks of leaving my particular bubble, the real problem⁰ was, I’d started chronically undervaluing the rewards. I’d been forgoing so much that forgoing felt easy. Too many things I imagined doing began to feel skippable, arbitrary, not a tragedy to decline. Either I was approaching some new state of equanimity and contentedness or I was depressed."

I could identify with the ease of saying 'no.'  It would take a concerted effort of will to do things. So, yesterday, instead of sitting on the beach, I went surfing. (Or, more accurately, I went into the ocean with a surfboard; you couldn't truthfully call what I was doing surfing.) Until I pulled a glute and found myself on the beach again, favoring one button cheek. 

Later, that night, Elise knocked a water glass from the bedside table. It shattered on the concrete floor next to the bed. I cleaned up the broken glass and the water with a towel. After dinner, I stepped on a piece of glass in the bathroom while brushing my teeth.  With one negroni to steady her hand, Elise tweezed the shard from my hoof as Clementine threw up in the toilet in the background, stomach upset from spicy rice and curry. Elise wouldn't admit until the following morning she had broke the shard in half and had to dig the balance of it from my foot after yelling at me to hold still so she could sop up the blood to see the glass. Doing things had costs, but the costs -- even now -- outweighed the benefits. 

Who do we want to emerge from the pandemic? A stronger sense of self. But that's not possible for everyone.  There is much healing to be done. Elise and I fought hard to thrive despite the weight of loss and we pushed the kids to do the same. The last few months have been the most stressful as we fought the corrosive effect of the fourth lockdown. We see a light at the end of the tunnel, but we're tired, battered and bruised, of mind, body, and spirit. Can we bring it home? 50 yard field goal as time expires and get one in the W column? 

The kids are all right, but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't noticed some deleterious effects of the pandemic. If the kids were molars they may have a cavity. The good thing about cavities is they can be filled. 

I think the lack of normal social cues has affected the way both my sons communicate, but in opposite ways. One of them has become very soft spoken, mumbling or almost slurring his words so as to be barely comprehensible. The other is loud, shouting, boisterous, like a barking dog, chewing at the sky or nothing at all. 

Jon Mooallem summed up the bittersweet dichotomy best, the constant yin and yang of the pandemic, the love of being with my kids and the utter frustration of being with my kids, "Suddenly, something surprising happened to me. I missed my own children, the same two girls from whom I’d wanted to peel myself away for a year and a half, who had infuriated me, depleted me, screamed at me, taken me for granted, picked insultingly at the dinners I cooked."

That being said, I'm proud of them. I'm proud of us, Elise and I. The pandemic has stripped away the world, society's, thin, convenient veneer and exposed rifts, hard truths behind conventions we take for granted. Take the Great Supply Chain Disruption, for example, and the precarious nature of just-in-time manufacturing and delivery. Or how the pandemic revealed and is exacerbating social and racial inequalities. Our own family was put through a rock tumbler. We were stripped and polished, the veneer stripped away to reveal...

...love. And crying and brilliance and screaming and kindness and selfishness and thoughtfulness. 

Many people who lost livelihoods and loved ones will hate the world for doing this to them. Rightfully so. I don't ever want to forget the suffering of many as I choose to appreciate the beauty that persists in a post-pandemic world and love the ones I emerge into it with. 

Beach School

Lockdown, Vol 4 - Part Seven, How to Build Buildings Godzilla Will Destroy

Ash blew across the grey hills. For as far as the eye could see, leafless trees groped the sky, twigs, really, bone, skeletal hands reaching toward clouds. The rolling hills vanished beyond the event horizon, the boundary after which events cannot affect the outside observer, past that, the escape velocity of gravity exceeds the speed of light, and it can't escape.

I shuffled through knee-deep ash, with the clear goal of getting to the border. In another country we would be safe, if we could just get there. Overturned cars littered an abandoned interstate, windows smashed, glass strewn across the pavement, wheels spinning in the air, tires on fire. Somewhere far from here, another rocket whistled from a silo.

I woke up and quietly, carefully extricated myself from bed. Downstairs, I sat on the floor in the dark, pulling my running shoes on. A few moments later, Elise joined me, a ghost silhouette moving across the living room.

I unlocked the front door and gate and stepped into the street, outside in the dark, humid morning. I waited for Elise to join me, stretching my hamstrings, checking the signal on my GPS watch. 

We wouldn't go running. 

A few minutes later, she appeared at the front door. "I hurt my back," she managed to hiss through a clenched jaw. 

'Hurt her back' was an understatement. I haven't seen Elise in this much pain since she gave birth to Clementine. She didn't move for three days. She slept on the couch downstairs. 

On Friday, at 4:00 a.m., the lockxown finally lifted. 

Saturday morning, I drove the kids to run errands for the first time in several months. We picked up cold cuts, brie, and two baguettes at the French bakery, went to the art store and fabric store for Halloween costume supplies. At the fabric store, we spent $30 on a fabric for Sam's costume Elise would later tell me was linen suit quality. How was I supposed to know? We were just happy to be out. We are just happy there may be Halloween at all this year.

Fall has become the season of crafting. For his Jedi costume, Sam cut armor plating out of cardboard and made a wrist-mounted rocket launcher. He spray painted both dark blue and grey in the backyard. Now, the few blades of grass that remain are blue. 

When I picked up my phone this morning, I found someone had Googled "How to build buildings Godzilla will destroy". Now, Peter is building two and three-inch tall paper buildings for his latest stop-motion video. He worked all day and built eight.  It takes a special form of dedication to spend so much time and energy building something with the sole intent of destroying it. 

The lockdown has lifted, a federal government shutdown averted. But not quite all blue skies ahead. Yet, the sun peeks through the clouds. I told my self when the pandemic started it would last two years. There was no short cut or easy road to recovery, no quick return to normal. When we do return to normal, it will be unlike anything that had come before. That is scary for some. But a life completely different than the one that came before can still be relished and treasured. What would be the alternative?

Though the lockdown has lifted, the pandemic is not over yet. We still have rebuilding to do. Not the least of which is to get Elise back to full health. Yet, today things feel a little lighter, the weight of the world a little less heavy. 

Perhaps, I'll stop dreaming about the end of the world soon.