Breaking My White Silence

My son was 21 years old before I finally had “the talk” with him. 

No, not that talk. That talk had gone in one ear and out the other years before. 

This was the talk I never thought I’d have to have. The one my friends Heather and Angela and Katrina had with their sons long before the other talk. The one I used to say was unnecessary.

“Hey, Leo,” I said nonchalantly as I heard his keys jingle. It was pouring rain and he was picking up his posse and heading to a party in a neighboring town. “Be careful.”

As if those words ever made a kid stop and think. 

“You know you have a tail light out. The police could stop you. So make sure you’re, uh, you know, polite.”

“Right.”

As far as I know, he didn’t get pulled over. 

And of course, he didn’t get shot.

“You don’t get it," Heather has said to me on more than one occasion. “You don’t have black sons.”

“Yeah, but…”

There is no yeah, but.

Before I moved to Teaneck, New Jersey, I didn’t have any black friends. Actually, I had very little experience with anyone of any color other than my own. 

I was simply a product of my environment. I grew up in a white suburb outside of Philadelphia and my high school was filled with Jews, Protestants and Catholics, and those of Italian, Irish or Mayflower decent. That’s the extent of diversity I knew as a child. 

When I was twelve years-old I was babysitting for some kids in the neighborhood. I was busy throwing together peanut butter sandwiches when the cat, who was not allowed in the basement, slithered down the stairs. I didn’t know (or care) what the cat’s name was because I hated cats. So I just called it by its color, just as I would have called a Dalmatian, Spot.

“Here Blackie. Come ‘ere, Blackie!” I called and cooed.

“I’m coming! I’m coming!” 

The basement door flung open and a black woman stepped into the kitchen.

I screamed, having no idea that their cleaning professional was in the house and was doing laundry in the basement. I then spent a good ten minutes tripping over my words. And the next fifty years mortified that she would think I would ever, in a zillion years call her Blackie.  

Before I moved to Teaneck, I didn’t know any law enforcement officers either. Sure, groups of us were chased from Curtis Arboretum and Fort Washington State Park on a regular basis on Saturday nights.  And there was that one incident with Karen (there's that name) Shea when she yelled, “Yo, Pig!” out the window of my mother’s Ford station wagon as we barreled down Paper Mill Road. 

Sure enough, we got pulled over.

“What did you yell, young lady?” the police officer asked, after taking my license and registration from my shaking hands.

“I said, Yo, Peg!” always-on-her-toes-Karen answered. “I thought I saw our friend Peggy Haug.”

I spent the next two weeks scared to death that the officer would send a citation to my house or call my parents as he threatened.

He didn’t. But again, I was mortified. 

Ironically, if Phillip Pannell, a black teenager, hadn’t been shot and killed by a white police officer in 1990, we probably wouldn’t have moved to Teaneck. 

Teaneck was the first town in America to voluntarily integrate its schools and prided itself on blacks and whites living together in harmony. The shooting that brought Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to town left unanswered questions, split public opinion and incited protests and riots. My spouse was a police reporter at the time who covered the officer’s trial and later the town of Teaneck. Despite the polarizing effects the shooting had on the community, there was something about the character of the town and its people that shone through. We ended up buying our first house within sight of where cars had been overturned in the wake of the shooting.

Teaneck at the time was basically one third black, one third Jewish and the other third was a mixture of other races, including Caucasians. We were young and liberal, so we took the plunge and never for a second regretted our decision to live in a multi-cultural town.  

My kids were a minority in the Teaneck pubic schools and I only slightly exaggerate when I say my boys grew up without ever having a white friend. We’ve had kids of all shapes, sizes, colors and creeds troop through our house, sleep on our couches and ride in the old minivan to one sporting event or another. 

While my kids grew up without prejudice, they were also somewhat sheltered from racial discrimination.

When the daughter was in eighth grade, she had a friend who lived in one of those “rich, white towns” who wasn’t allowed to come to Teaneck because it was dangerous.

“You mean you actually sit at the same lunch table with the black kids?” the girl’s mother asked when the daughter explained how Teaneck worked. 

And, when the daughter went away to college in North Carolina, she lamented over the fact that she had no idea how much racism there was in other parts of the country. 

“Aren’t you glad you grew up in Teaneck?” 

“Absolutely,” she said. “But it didn’t prepare me for the real world.”

I didn’t grow up in the real world either. While it would be futile to apologize for the color of my skin, I probably should apologize for all the times I ran from cops when I was drinking warm beers in dark parks. But never once did I fear anything more than getting killed by my parents if I got caught. 

And that’s the difference. 

So, I did what I could. I tried to raise my kids with open minds, kind hearts and accepting souls hoping that maybe, just maybe, they would help change the world. 

“Are you marching on Friday?” my next-door neighbor, Kerri, asked from a distance as our paths crossed while doing our daily laps down Palmer Avenue. She was referring to an organized Black Lives Matter protest in Teaneck that was beginning on the road where Philip Pannell had lived 30 years ago and making its way through town. 

“Me?” I said somewhat aghast. “No, that is so not me.”

Kerri looked at me with an eyebrow raised above her mask. 

“What do you mean, it’s not you? You had more people of color in and out of your house than anyone I know. How can you not support this?”

I argued that I’m not an activist by nature. I don’t publicly campaign for politicians, I don’t post rants of injustice on Facebook, or display Hate Has No Home Here signs on my front lawn. I’m too afraid of doing the wrong thing and offending the wrong person. 

“You have to go,” the daughter said. “Think of Koree and Kris and Jordan and Jamal and Siddiq and Chris and all those other kids who look at you as a second mother. You have to do it for them.”

Still, I balked, thinking that my red-haired, gray-striped, freckle-faced, color-coordinated masked self would be screaming white privilege as I made my way through town with my other white-skinned friends. 

In, the end, I went. 

Joining a group estimated at 3,000, was as powerful a thing as I have ever done. While dozens lay their bodies down in an intersection for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, I was horrified at how long a time that was. And, realized that I will never, ever know what it’s like to live with the fear of that happening to me, or any one of my kids. 

But, it happens. 

So, for the Hargraves, Matthews, Williams, Jones, Kendrick, McDonald, Brown, Johnson, Patterson, Wimbush, and any number of other families I know and love, it is my privilege to march for you. 

If I'm Right, Are you Wrong?

“Sorry,  but I can't discuss this with you anymore because you don't seem to care if you get it and that makes no sense to me,” said my friend, who shall go nameless, lest she get even more annoyed with me. 

It, of course, is COVID-19. What else would it be? 

Her reaction came amid rapid-fire emails, mine declaring that I’d go to the beauty parlor tomorrow if I could, hers saying she doesn’t wear a mask when she’s walking.

“How can you not wear a mask?” I questioned incredulously. “I would be so embarrassed if someone like Lyn Familant yelled at me. For me, it’s as much for optics as protection.”

To which she responded, “That’s what I mean. You’re only wearing a mask for optics.”

“But you’re not wearing one at all.”

We went on like that for a while and then I moved on to thinking about my sister who lives in Charleston. She never stopped cooking at the homeless shelter or working at her estate sales job or shopping at the local Walmart. She doesn’t have multiple masks dangling from her rear view mirror, plastic gloves stuffed in her purse, or experience lung lunges after watching the news. She doesn’t watch the news. She lives alone and figures it would be more pleasant to die without knowing what hit her. 

I got a text from Don last week, asking if I’d be interested in a Thanksgiving cruise. Don is my new BFF with whom I drank heavily on our Corona Cruise in early March. The last ship that sailed to the Caribbean before we all got landlocked. 

“Though my ever-loving spouse is fully onboard, or at least resigned to my annual cruise," I answered. "I can’t go away on a holiday until I’m a widow. Or a divorcee. But, February 2021, sign me up.”

That’s less than a year away, another friend gasped. You are Insane. With a capital I. But, I’ve survived noroviruses, choppy seas, gypsies, and now COVID. I’m not alone on this one. The cruise forums are chock full of people champing at the bit to get back on the high seas. We’re a different sort, we cruisers. 

I have a friend who drove her aged car 450 miles to meet her new beau in an Airbnb. Again, no names, no shame. I cringed, not at the thought of infected sheets, but of her plan to never leave those sheets all weekend. I’ve obviously been married far too long. The same friend suggested getting my hair cut outside to lessen cross-germination. Said friend has long locks she can pull back or plop on the top of her head. She does not have hair that grows outward rather than downward, strongly resembling Bozo the clown. Thus, the beauty parlor would never be on her priority list. Nor would she ever call it a beauty parlor. 

Every year, four of us meet in Maine at our friend’s beach house in June. We’ve been holding onto the hope of being able to rendezvous in a couple of weeks.

“You’d get on a plane?” a friend admonished. “That's absolutely ridiculous. Maine will be there next year.” 

This is a friend who is deathly afraid of flying. 

My theory is, it’s probably safer now to fly or cruise or stay in a hotel because they are all so afraid of law suits, and (there's that word again) optics, that the physical spaces will be cleaner than ever. If I wear a mask and they wear a mask and I wrap myself in a scarf and I sanitize my hands every four minutes and don’t touch my face for a week…

Alas, it can still get into your system through your eyes. And hair follicles. And toenails. 

Well, I could always drive. But, the girls coming from Atlanta and North Carolina would surely contract the virus on their filled-to-overflowing puddle jumper planes and we’d all swap germs anyway. Though, if hydroxychloroquine works, it’s possible that an overabundance of bourbon and Tito’s would also do the trick. As the conversation grew more and more contentious, I admitted that it was a moot point and that we weren’t going anyway. Maine isn’t letting out-of-staters in. Or if we get in, we might never get out. 

I have a friend who has yet to leave her house. She has had food, and wine, delivered for the past 10 weeks, with no plans to set foot in Shop Rite. Ever again. I have a friend who doesn’t wear gloves in the grocery store because he said it doesn’t make sense. Another, a non-essential worker, wears an N95 mask. One who bleaches her kitchen regularly. One who volunteers at a food bank and several who courageously go to work every single day, because they are first responders. 

I have a friend who has vowed to go to the Jersey shore the day the beaches open. Another who will go to the movies because the seats these days are so far apart. I know people who have played golf since the get-go and one crazy soul who is sending around a petition hoping to convince the ultimate umpire to allow the high school baseball season to go on. 

I have a friend who is still hoping to get to that Elton John concert. Another who is keeping fingers crossed for a late July wedding. Some people have invited all their adult children home, including significant others, for the duration of the quarantine. And, others still sit six feet away from theirs in the driveway. I have friends who have not seen their grandchildren, and others who are babysitting so the parents can go out into the world.

I have a friend who had her elderly mother sneak out of her apartment, meeting in the woods behind her retirement community. I have a mother who won’t let anyone in her house, though she will sit ten feet away from my sisters and neighbors in folding chairs in her garage. 

Some out there haven't so much as wanded a mascara brush over their lashes, pulled on a pair of spanx, or color-coordinated their earrings. While others are primping to the hilt, just in case. Half the world complains about over-eating, over-drinking, and over-thinking while the other half exercises to excess, hasn't had a sip of alcohol since the farewell toast aboard the Celebrity Edge, and limits chocolate to a pound a day. 

Some people I know can’t wait to get back to their offices and others would rather lose their job than ever ride on NJ transit again. I have friends who love to zoom and others who roll their eyes at the mere suggestion of spending 40 minutes, or God forbid, more, trying to figure out virtual talking-in-turn etiquette.

I know people who immediately broke the rules and crossed county lines to quarantine in their vacation homes and others who won’t defy their governor and thus will lose a summer of rental income. I have friends whose kids have missed their graduations, weddings, and last great sports chances. One who had a had a small birthday party of 12 for her 20 year-old daughter and others who won’t sit in their neighbor’s backyard for a socially distant cocktail. 

I can tell you exactly who would stand in line for the grand reopening of the gym and who has cancelled their memberships. Forever. There are those who conduct maskless, multi-family visits on their front stoops, and those who claim they haven’t seen another soul in ten weeks. But, does the friend(s) they walk with count, if they're doing it responsibly? 

I talk back and forth with friends about whether we should get tested. Some say why bother if you’re asymptomatic. Some say that’s when it’s most important to know. One friend got the antibody test that came back negative, when it clearly should have been positive. One had multiple tests with multiple results. Some say if they knew they had antibodies, they could finally relax. Others say there's no proof that you can't get the virus again, so getting tested would just cause complacency. And, then there's the whole moral question of, if you're positive, but asymptomatic, are you really going to isolate for two weeks, or will you venture out, just that once? 

Despite what I say, I'm a rule follower by nature. And, if the rules aren't strong enough, my guilt takes over. The problem is, it's hard to keep up with the ever-changing rules. And harder still to keep track of which rules are yours and which are mine.

So, we all have to just agree to agree. We may be all right. But we may be all wrong. 

And, neither Dr. Fauci, President Trump, nor our hairdresser knows for sure.

Mothering in Place

“Happy Mother’s Day,” my friend Madge texted from Harrisburg this morning, three hours before I rolled out of bed. “Your kids are so lucky.”

Madge raised one lovely daughter and through the years was in constant awe of how I managed the masses. From afar, her perception was that I did pretty darn good. But, we all look good on social media and all sound great through the stories we tell.

Mothers don’t have it easy. We can’t help but compare ourselves to the bounty of perfect mothers out there. The mothers who cook dinner every single night and whose kids willingly sit around the table with them. Every. Single. Night. The mothers who spend hours finger painting, play doughing, and splashing in puddles without ever once worrying about the mess. 

There are those mothers who can do an ER run without having to call her best friend. And without saying, don’t drip your blood on the car seat. Mothers who get up in the middle of the night, at the crack of dawn, to answer a child’s cry without elbowing her spouse awake, so that he, who works 12-hour days outside of the house, will do the dirty work. Mothers who change the sheets every week, wash the towels every day, iron the wrinkles out of linen blouses. 

There are mothers out there who bestow flowers upon their daughters as they finish their cheerleading routines, buy lawn signs praising their graduates (back when kids actually graduated), and post videos of the cute little things their cute little kids said or did, or didn’t do. 

There are mothers who are fiercely protective, brag incessantly, and announce to the world that their kids are the strongest, smartest, and best human beings ever born. Mothers who make decisions with confidence and embrace their children’s decisions with calm. 

And, yes, there are mothers who have never, ever thought, let alone said out loud, the F word in conjunction with, or as an adjective to one of their children's names. 

I hear from many of those mothers on Mother’s Day. Bonnie and Angela and Claire and Theresa and Tracy and Karen (even though I always yell at her for sending wishes in a chain with 30 other mothers included). Texts go round and round to all the mothers in the UNC gang, the college girls, the church ladies. I get texts from Heather and Susan and Janice and Betty and Ann and Holly and Kathy. It’s a lot for someone who doesn’t even believe in the “holiday.”  

But, it’s messages from the kids who I’ve duped along the way that tug at my heart strings. The Oliva and Harleys, the Diana's, the Chris Joneses and Koree’s (I know it’s coming), the Mike Chiaradio’s. 

Every single year since I’ve known her, Liza sends me a text:  “Thank you for always being an example of a great mother.” 

I shake my head and smile, thinking please, please, don’t follow my example with Penelope, the most perfect two year-old ever. 

And Tanya, who was there when I woke up from my mastectomy, who visited me after I had my knees replaced, “Thanks for being an outstanding mother and giving me my sisters Max and Molly and brother Leo.” I’m thinking that typo was a dig at Max. 

I hear from Heather, the daughter’s oldest, bestest friend, who won me over twenty years ago and will be at the top of my list for the next twenty. Or forty, if I live that long. 

I always say that I had the perfect mother. The one who never meddled. The one who never yelled. The one who loved every single minute of being a mother. And still does. I’ll zoom with her later and she’ll pooh-pooh the praise and lament over all the things she thinks she did wrong.

But, perception is reality. 

And while I will continue to encourage my children to shelter in place, as long as it’s not my place, I will always and forever feel their pain, their joy, their heartbreaks, their hopes, their fails, their fun, and most of all, their love. 

Because apparently, I’ve duped them, too. 

Nothing to be Stressed About

“Hope things are less stressful for you,” my friend Ann texted from Nags Head.

“Stressful? What would I have to be stressed about?” I snapped back. 

Ann is someone I keep in touch with regularly in real life, but as is the case with so many other friends, our correspondences have escalated with the coronavirus. We share uplifting quotes and poems by email, send humorous memes back and forth by text, and expose our graying roots on Zoom calls.  

Ann knows stress. She counts on income from her beach house rental that may or may not happen this year. She’s a high school teacher trying to keep her students engaged and her seniors from falling apart. Oh, and her beloved brother is battling metastatic melanoma. In the brain. In the middle of a pandemic. 

That's stress. 

I'm not one of my many friends who are nursing heartbreaks as their sons and daughters postpone their weddings. Or toggling back and forth, wondering if September will be safe, and if it is, will it mean wearing masks and distant dancing? I'm not the mother of a high school senior who is missing his final year of baseball. The year he was going to win major accolades. I don't have a kid, who after all that preparation, is deprived of the big blowout bar mitzvah party after stumbling through his Torah portion. I don't have a daughter who thought she was coming home from school for a week or two. But, surprise! her college days are done. 

We were able to celebrate my sister's 60th birthday in early February and if we can't get together for my mother's 95th in October, well, we'll do it when she turns 96. I'm not a health care worker. I'm not a first responder. I'm not a small business owner. 

I have absolutely no stress. 

I’m used to working from home. The only difference now is that I have no work. I’m used to spending hours a day exercising. The only difference is now I’m double downing on my walks. I’m used to eating the same thing every day, depending on which diet plan I'm following. The only difference is now I'm following two diet plans which means I'm eating twice as much. I’m used to book clubs and writer’s groups and church meetings and get- togethers with friends. The only difference is I don't have to chop the vegetables and buy the hummus, because we now have an online host. 

What is different is when we do our check-ins, way more often than ever before, we end up spending 7/8ths of our conversation exchanging war stories. 

My little town of Teaneck, by no fault of its own, has been hugging the headlines for weeks. Sadly, it is the epicenter of Bergen County which is the epicenter of New Jersey which is an epicenter away from New York City. And, we all know what’s going on there. 

My friends are scattered across the country, some in big cities, some in sprawling suburbs, some in tiny towns. Some live in harder-hit areas, and some still aren't wearing masks to  grocery stores. And, while some of them know a friend of a friend who has gotten “it,” most of them don't have a personal connection with coronavirus. 

Meanwhile, my count hovers around twenty. Twenty people I know who have tested positive. I'm not talking about great aunts of former school teachers. Or NBA players I've watched on television. These are people I actually know. People I socialize with. People I like. People I love.

On top of the confirmed cases are a dozen or more who were or are presumed positive by virtue of their symptoms and/or proximity. Then, of course there are the many in denial who claim their coughs and fevers and loss of taste and smell are no more than spring allergies. In an eight-block radius of my gridded neighborhood, I know eight people who tested positive. I know four people who have died. Five more who are parents of friends.

  

I talk with Ann and Kathy and Holly every few days and we banter back and forth about what is right and what is wrong. Should we shed our clothes and take a shower after food shopping? Is it safer to go to Stop & Shop in Teaneck or Cafasso’s in Fort Lee? Can our adult children come from Queens and Brooklyn for Easter dinner? Is it OK to go mask-less when we’re out walking if we cross the street when someone comes close? Should we wipe down packages when they come from Amazon?  We talk about what stores provide gloves and which ones have no lines. Two of us express shock that the other two don’t use Scott toilet paper. All four of us lament the shortage. We share pictures of masks that we’ve made or, in my case, had made for us. We do yoga. Sometimes. If I'm awake at the appointed hour. 

And we can’t help but wonder what in the world we talked about before the world went haywire.

The other day I told them about the heart-wrenching Zoom funeral I attended that afternoon. Phil went into the hospital in mid-March and never came out. He died intubated and alone and the service honoring his life was limited to a few family members with the rest of us watching on our iPads and laptops.

Our Zoom call completed, I turned on Trump's daily press briefing in which he announced that states could start opening up.

Later, I went for something a little lighter and watched The Bachelor: Listen to your Heart, (thanks to Taryn for getting me hooked on something I had successfully avoided for all those years). There was a lot of touching, a lot of tongue kissing, and a lot of crowded spaces. I cringed, despite knowing that it was taped months ago. 

At that point, my ever-loving spouse summoned me into the kitchen for a backgammon tournament. 

"Are you more or less afraid of getting it now than you were in the beginning?" I asked.

"Getting what?" he responded as he knocked me off the board.

I rolled my eyes. Then rolled the dice. 

He coughed. I doubled. I won.

Game over, I turned to Rachel Maddow who was talking about Ireland and how they are handling the inordinate number of nursing home deaths versus what we are doing in our country. Then, I played a few hundred rounds of Words with Friends followed by watching Brian Williams’ The 11th Hour. He announced we were in Day 1,183 of the Trump administration, with 201 days to go until the presidential election. He reported that, while a reopening strategy had been unveiled, our death toll is somewhere north of 34,000 with some 667,000 confirmed cases out of the one percent of the nation that’s been tested. One percent. 

And then I went to bed.

I woke up the next morning with a heaviness in my chest. A slight sore throat. General malaise. Yet, I rolled out of bed, put on my sneakers, grabbed the very fashionable mask my neighbor Mona left on my door step last week. The same Mona who is, at long last, recovering from COVID-19. I headed out for my walk, taking the route with the steepest hills to test my lungs. Four miles later, after listening to earnest NPR hosts taking calls from nannies and domestic workers who have found themselves jobless and stimulus package-less, I was still breathing. I came home and mailed a check to the cleaning professional who hasn't worked for me in six years. Then, I read some of our president’s tweets which said Liberate Minnesota! Liberate Michigan! Liberate Virginia! 

And that’s when I realized, it’s only a pandemic. It’s only a divided country. It’s only a few hundred thousand people. It's all in my head. We're all going to be just fine. 

And, there’s absolutely nothing to feel stressed about.

Searching for Surgical Gloves

I’m a counter. I guess that makes me somewhat OCD (I hear you, my sisters, somewhat, you say?). I count laundry that I fold, I count minutes that I write, I count seconds that I clean, I count chores that I complete, and of course, I count calories that I consume. But, admittedly, sometimes I can’t count that high.

In the olden days when I went on my walks, I’d count my steps. Then I got an Apple watch that does it for me. So now, I count steps in my head and compare with those recorded on my watch, which are surprisingly, or maybe not, pretty darn close. When I get bored of doing that, I move on to counting how many dogs I see, how many red front doors I pass, how many people honk and wave, or how many kitchen cabinets I have left to clean out (down to three, gotta ration them). 

Yesterday, to preserve a modicum of sanity, I took a break from the Cuomo press briefings and COVID-19 news conferences and call-in radio with idiots asking why, if baseball is played outside, they can’t just open up CitiField if we promise to keep our distance from one another. Instead, I listened on my old-school Sony Walkman with the old-fashioned headset to a classic soul show on public radio. As I internally bopped my way through town with Al Green and Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, I came across something completely new to count. 

In a three-and-a-half mile walk, I counted not one, not ten, but 17 surgical gloves discarded on the side of the road. Some of them were quite attractive. There were blue and purple and green gloves. There were gloves with fingers fully spread. There were gloves that looked brand-new. But, there were also some so rumbled and crumpled and torn and twisted that I had to kick them with my toe to discern whether I could add them to my count. To make sure they weren’t a newspaper bag filled with a Pomeranian’s poop. 

I don’t know about you, but 17 surgical gloves in a three-and-a-half mile radius seems like an awful lot to me. Perhaps because surgical gloves are a new household product, we just haven’t figured out their place in the world. Will they choke pigeons and puppies and lie in landfills for eternity? Do we bag them in zip locks to keep them from contaminating innocent trash collectors? Are they recyclable, flushable, reusable? 

I get that we’re all trying to figure out the risk vs reward of surgical gloves, but still can’t wrap my brain around why anyone out there thinks it’s OK to litter the streets with anything, let alone, PPE. But, then again, I still haven’t been able to grasp why so many people causally toss Corona bottles out of their car windows, leaving unsuspecting bicyclists with flat tires, twenty miles from home. 

While alternately cogitating and counting, I made another disturbing discovery. Not one single glove had a partner. It was as if the wearer had made a Sophie’s Choice – the right one stays, the left one goes. I wonder what the thought process was there. I’ll keep the left one because I wiped my nose with the right. I’ll keep the right because I touched the grocery bag with the left. Or was it the left? Can’t waste two, I’ll do eeny-meeny-miny-moe, out the window one will go. 

I’m really trying hard not to judge anyone’s actions during this time. Not the sneezer in the supermarket. Not the social non-distancer on the sidewalk. Not the families who are filling their homes with friends and lovers and sending them out in different directions for tacos. 

No one, not even the most normal among us, is being normal. 

So, instead, I’ll just keep walking. And counting crazy things. 

It’s a whole lot better than counting the days we’ve been quarantined. And, infinitely more comforting than counting the ever-growing list of friends who have fallen victim to, or died from, this unfathomably unaccountable thing called COVID-19.

Corona Can't Kill a Soul

“I know I’m somewhat biased,” Janice said a couple months ago at her nephew Ian’s wedding. “But, they are all so smart. And handsome.”

“And pretty,” I added, tipping my head toward Jenna. 

Janice smiled. “Well, that goes without saying.”  

I laughed. No one but an aunt could get away with that kind of somewhat biased remark without it being met by an eye roll, or worse.

Janice was the quintessential aunt. She had more nieces and nephews than anyone I’ve ever known. Though only seven of them were true blood relatives, half the town of Teaneck had been graced by her goodness and love. So much so, that dozens of young and old took to calling her Aunt Janice. 

Aunt Janice was a huge part of my kids’ lives. For most of their childhood, Janice lived with her brother, Larry, his wife, Claire, who was my best friend and co-dependent co-parent, and their four boys, Ian, Zack, Harrison, and Noah. The Preschels lived within screaming distance from our house and my kids and I spent an inordinate amount of time up on Prince Street.

Aunt Janice was always there. She was there for every single first-day-of-school photo opp. She was there when the kids piled off the bus in the afternoon. She was there for homework help, lifeguarding in the backyard pool, and for getting the boys to Hebrew school when no parental bribes worked. Aunt Janice cheered through countless baseball games, wrestling matches, swim meets, volleyball games, and football games. She was there in the rain. She was there in the heat. She was simply always there. 

To Aunt Janice, no swing-and-miss, no not-so-great report card grade, no fight with a friend was ever one of her nieces' or nephews' fault. There were always extenuating circumstances; a bad call, a late-night belly ache, a misinterpretation. And, that went for all of the kids she loved, not just the ones who lived inside her house.

Aunt Janice loved fiercely. I say fiercely because as kind as she was, if anyone said anything the least bit disparaging about one of her, kids – yours, mine, and ours – she would bite your head off. I know. I was bitten many times.

Aunt Janice always protected the underdog. And, for a long time, that underdog was her nephew, Noah. Noah had the ill fortune of being the youngest of Claire’s and my collective seven kids. He was still a baby when the others were toddlers. He was still a toddler when the others were little kids. He was still a little kid when the others were adolescenting and he was still an adolescent when the others were teenagers. While our kids often delighted in making Noah the odd man out, Aunt Janice swooped in. She took him under her wing and gave him extra-special attention, showering him with gifts and games and special outings. And, for some reason, it worked. Noah turned out to be perhaps the most beloved of all, despite being spoiled by his Aunt Janice. Or, more likely, because of it. 

When we’d go on group outings; to the Liberty Science Center, on the Yankees behind-the-scenes tour, to Geronimo’s after a game, Aunt Janice would always be responsible for the ones we were tired of. The wanderers, the weirdos, the whiners.

And, once her nephew, Eric, started working for the Nets, a whole new opportunity opened up for Aunt Janice. Now she was getting tickets and taking carloads full of kids to games, pumping them up with late-night sodas and snacks, because really, what’s a game without all the fixings? 

Aunt Janice was a pillar in our community. She was president of the Rotary Club, not once, not twice, but three times. She was active at her Temple. She was founding director of Teaneck’s Helping Hands Food Pantry. She was kind and giving and witty and wise. Oh, so wise.

In high school, the kids all had to put in a certain number of community service hours in order to graduate. Between playing multiple sports, and monumental socializing, those hours were just about impossible to complete. 

Aunt Janice employed our kids to help out at “her” food pantry with the promise of extra hours added to their time sheets. Word got out and dozens of surrogate nieces and nephews were suddenly interested in feeding the needy. But, Janice had an ulterior motive. Knowing that it’s impossible to help others without helping yourself, she knew she wasn’t really cheating the system with all those inflated timesheets. But rather, she was creating a whole new generation of do-gooders. 

Aunt Janice stood with unabashed pride at all six of her nephew’s bar mitzvahs, as well as at her niece’s bat mitzvah. She straightened bow ties for proms and ironed shirts for awards dinners. Aunt Janice loved to iron. She went to every graduation from Jelly Bean Nursery School’s moving up ceremony through college commencements. And, she was often present at off-year ceremonies to see an unrelated child celebrate, especially if she knew that child didn't have a huge following like hers did. 

“Who woulda thunk?” I said to Aunt Janice at Ian and Kaori's wedding back in October. The two of us surveyed the room, taking in all the friends and family members who we had spent a lifetime worrying about. We silently targeted the ones who had traveled and transformed, battled and believed, stumbled and succeeded, leapt and laughed.  

“We did good, didn’t we?” Janice said, uncharacteristically blinking back tears.

No, Janice. You. You did good. 

Janice Preschel, sister, sister-in-law, friend, and ultimate aunt, died on March 30, 2020 at age 60, from complications of COVID-19. To honor her memory, the family asks that we all take this deadly virus seriously and continue washing our hands, social distancing, doing good deeds, and helping others. Because, as Aunt Janice would say, it's just the right thing to do.

The Best of the Best Doing Their Best

Despite my many health-related incarcerations, I have only been sick, really sick, once. I was hospitalized for nearly three weeks with pancreatitis and spent seven of those days in ICU. Though it was nearly twenty years ago, it's still as vivid in my mind as yesterday's distress after binge-eating an entire bag of chocolate Easter eggs.  

I remember waking up in the middle of the night alone in a room, tubes dangling, machines whirling, TV flickering. On the screen was a bejeweled woman in a turban, a medium as it were, calling out to the spirit world as she communicated with the dead. 

After getting through that night without passing over to the other side, I remember the unsettling sense of not being able to see my children who, at the time, were nine, seven, and five years-old. I’d been having weird and fierce stomach pains for a couple of weeks and had scheduled an endoscopy to figure out what was going on. The youngest was not yet in school, so I dropped him at Claire’s house, promising I’d be home in an hour. As it ended up, I was sent by ambulance from the doctor’s office and neither he, nor my other two kids, saw me again for far too long. I didn’t necessarily miss being a short-order cook, laundress, peace-keeper, taxi driver, sports spectator, and anchor. But, my heart hurt as I felt their fear, confusion, anger, and angst. 

We all forget pain; if we didn’t, none of us would have siblings. But, certain memories simply don’t fade. Like when the twilight drugs didn’t work during my hip replacement and I laid awake through the entire surgery.

“I feel you sawing my bone. Now you’re tugging the old hip out. Now you’re stapling up the incision,” I warned the surgeon who thought it was just Betsy being Betsy, assuming I’d forget it all when it was over. Which, of course, is what should happen, if the anesthesia did what it was supposed to do. I didn’t feel any pain – it was like Novocain during a root canal. Painless, yet unpleasant. But, not scary.

Scary was being alone in the hospital with pancreatitis. Though, my ever-loving spouse visited regularly, he couldn’t spend endless hours with me. While our kids loved nothing more than hanging out with Claire and her four sons, they also needed that sense of normalcy, that old iron-fist that only a father can foster. But, that meant that I was often alone, trying to decipher the doctors’ words and deeds through my sick-hazed brain.   

One of the side effects of my pancreatitis was an abnormal amount of fluid in my lungs. I couldn’t swing my legs to the side of the bed without exhaustion. Nor I could I take ten consecutive steps without stopping to rest. Every few days a nurse would come into the room with what appeared to be a three-foot needle and stuck it in my chest, filling liter-sized jugs with beer-colored liquid. 

“Am I going to die?” I asked one of the doctors.

He responded with a firm hand on my forearm. The forearm that was finally free of the IV tubes now that they had created a port in my neck. 

Not, “Absolutely not.” Not, “Don’t be silly.” Not, “We’re not going to let that happen.” 

Just a firm hand, a grimace, and a report back to the spouse that his bride knew it was a distinct possibility. 

The spouse responded by holding my hand and telling me definitively that I was not going to die. And, that reassurance made all the difference. 

Meanwhile, back in real life, I’m often glib and snarky and dismissive when people moan and groan over their illnesses. I’m a flu shot resistor, a suck-it up mother, a this-could-be-so-much-worse kind of friend. You know, the kind of person you love to hate when you’re not feeling well. And, sometimes when you're feeling just fine. 

But, COVID-19 has removed a layer of my snark. I’m not worried about me. I can deal with whatever comes my way. But, what breaks my heart are the ever-increasing stories of people, some of whom I know, who are alone in the hospital. Whose spouses can’t visit. Whose kids can’t visit. I ache for those who have died alone, whose final farewell with loved ones was through FaceTime. Or whose last face-to-face was with a nurse with a kind smile concealed behind a surgical mask. For the new widow who is quarantined and can’t even see her adult children in her grief. For those who are wondering what that firm touch on the wrist means. If, indeed, a firm touch is even allowed through protective gear.

I continue to read my spouse's news stories. The ones about refrigerated trucks serving as mobile morgues. The ones about choosing who gets a ventilator and who dies. The ones about overtaxed health care workers. I feel horrible for the high school and college seniors, the missed proms, the postponed weddings, the canceled (gulp) cruises. 

And, I just can't stop thinking about the absurdity of it all. That this is the year 2020 and we can't do better.

In the meantime, we're doing the best we can. We're suffering through quarantines. Covering our coughs and cringing over rogue sneezes. We're washing the skin off our hands and proselytizing about what is and isn't the right thing to do. We're sanitizing and social distancing, zooming with friends and attending church on Facebook feeds. All of us waiting and wondering, hoping and praying that this too shall pass.

Then, there are those good, selfless people out there who don't have the luxury of complaining about limited grocery store hours, shortages of toilet paper, parks being closed, salons being shuttered, or mandates to work from home.  

You know the ones. The ones who really have a right to complain. The ones who are out and about doing what needs to be done. The ones we are applauding from our porches and balconies in community-wide thanks.

But, somehow saying thank you seems insufficiently superfluous right about now.

To all the fearless who are getting us through this, I don't know what else to do but to wish you Godspeed.

And to pray that when all this is over, your lives will be ever blessed with all the good the world has to give.

You are the best of the best.