Rachel's Zoom 50th Birthday

My cousin Rachel turned 50 last week, and her younger sister Margot planned a surprise 50th Zoom Birthday party. 15 screens gathered, about 35 people, and we each had candles lit when Rachel’s husband Ed carried his laptop downstairs to their dining room table.

He called, “Rach, you’ve got to se what Trump did now…. “, then informed us she was taking out the trash… “Rach!” when she was back inside, “Now we have to leave the country, come see this.” Rachel sat down in front of the computer. Ed had warned us she was not going to like this; that she’d been saying all day she’s glad her 50th birthday is happening during a pandemic, so she doesn’t have to acknowledge it with a party. But when she sat down and saw the faces of her cousins, parents, grandmother, in-laws, aunts and uncles and a few best friends, glowing with candle-light and admiration, she looked quite surprised, then started crying. We could see only her at the table, but Ed came over and she turned her head into him for a moment. Someone brought her a tissue. I was crying too, because I have that thing where you cry whenever someone else cries.

I also cried because I love my family so much, and Rachel especially. She’s eight years older than me, and for my earliest years she and I had a uniquely close relationship. Before I was born my parents lived for a few years in a cottage on the farm property where Rachel lived (my parents lived in a cottage where the workers used to live, and Rachel’s parents lived in the farm house, where my dad grew up and where his parents were egg farmers- Rachel’s parents took over the egg farm for awhile). She was three when she met my mom, and as my mom said to Rachel at the Zoom, “I remember when you were three you stood holding my hand as we watched the barn burn down” (that was a barn in which my mom had stored all her possessions; photographs, clothing, a car, everything she’d cared about and saved). Apparently Rachel had stood sobbing with my mom over the barn and the lost possessions. My mom told Rachel when we went around the zoom, taking turns sharing a wish for the coming year,…”since you were three you’ve been someone I could talk to.”

That’s who Rachel has always been for all of us, someone we can talk to. Eventually she decided to earn a PhD. in psychology, with marriage and couples as a specialty. That seemed like an obvious choice, because as long as I or anyone can remember, Rachel has been the person to go to with dilemmas, sadness, relationship problems, lovesick heart, career conundrums, anything!

Since Rachel had such a close relationship with my parents, when I was born she sort of adopted me. A few times she traveled to Silver Spring, Maryland. to stay with my parents (who had moved there from the farm in Guilford when my dad got a job playing in the Seldom Scene). She’d stay for several days to help my mom take care of me. (Once, when I was about 5 she watched Poltergeist with me, which changed the course of my bedtime-routine for many many years, as I became completely scared of the dark and had to sleep with blankets like a hood around my face, back to the wall, looking out for ghosts. I was terrified of being alone in the dark.)

Now I’m remembering how Rachel always felt like mine, and how I adored her. I haven’t thought about this for many years. She was so beautiful, smart, a talented artist and dancer. I watched her dance performances (at home and on stage), played air guitar on a tennis racket when she choreographed all the cousins in a music video to “Rio” by Duran, Duran, at a family gathering, glued myself to her side at parties, leaning against her, holding her hand and studying its shape and texture. I was kind of weird, but she accepted me.

I still feel a special trust and knowing between us. She’s always asked the deep questions that get right to what you need to talk about. But since we were younger, we haven’t seen so much of each other. She lived for years in California, and then I lived almost 10 in Germany. This makes me sad: That there are people in the world who, if they lived nearby would make life so rich and abundant. I was lucky to grow up with that, but now it’s hard to imagine, and my kids have never had family living near. After this shut-down-isolation, though, even just visiting my family for a few days will feel like an amazing luxury. The thought of sitting next to one another on the couch, sipping coffee and talking about our lives, watching our kids play. It’s the most lovely thing I could imagine. How I will savor it if it ever happens.

But back to the reality, the virtual family gathering - it worked! Despite not being excited about turning 50, for the Zoom birthday, Rachel wasn’t unhappy. At the end she said she was very moved to see all of us. She said she is not a cryer, but she cried again at the end and thanked us and said she loved us. We had all told her our wishes for the coming year, blown out our candles when she blew into the screen. The Zoom birthday accomplished more in 40 minutes than a several-hour party could. We experienced it in unison - communication, communion, celebration, distilled. Except we all missed hugging. And it would have been nice to taste the pie my aunt Louise, Rachel’s mom, had made in the morning, delivered so Rachel could bake it… it was in the oven during her party.

I am so lucky to have such a loving family. The Rosenthals always gathered on holidays, birthdays, for summer reunions, and my grandparents always said how important it was that us cousins be close. Now Rachel, as the oldest and always most responsible and mature cousin has taken on the role of family organizer in many ways. She hosts our Hannukah party, brings new traditions into our celebrations that reflect more of our family spirit than we even knew (such as during Rosh Hashannah, going around the room in a circle and telling the group our wish for the new year, and then the person next to you repeating and affirming your wish back to you). She makes home-made matzoh and amazing cakes (Louise, Rachel’s mom is still our pie baker, carrying on the recipe of my great-grandma Naomi, but Rachel tries new things and brings the decadence to another level.). She put together a montage of old home movies from our grandparents’ and parents’ childhood on the family farm for us all to watch on our Mother’s Day zoom.

On my wisest and most confident days, I am only as confident and wise as I was long ago when I saw Rachel more often, and was lucky to be influenced and inspired by her. I hope I can be as lovely as Rachel is when I turn 50.

The Writing Life

I have this book on my pile, “The Writing Life”, by Annie Dillard. One of hundreds of books in my house that has so far stayed on my mental “want to read” list. I just opened it up to a paragraph that mentioned Wallace Stevens, which might be a good sign I should read this book now. I learned about Stevens in a poetry class in college which I think was just about Wallace Stevens and T.S. Eliot’s the Wasteland. The professor was a very funny guy - because he was so very serious, heavy in body and in mind, and he read poems with a slow drama that was intriguing to me. I loved reading the poems line by line, uncovering the references and appreciating how mysterious and brilliant poetry can be. One of my most lasting memories from the class was learning that Wallace Stevens, first of all, worked full-time in an insurance company his whole life, a very staid kind of business world in which to dwell, for such a creative mind… and that he walked 20 miles (I think that’s how far…) across West Hartford to and from work every day. That is important. Walking is a kind of religion for some people, often feels like that for me.

That reminds me of one of the most memorable exhibits I’ve been to, at some NYC gallery for Jewish artists. I stopped there alone many years ago, and saw many small paintings and drawings by one artist, which were mostly on the theme of walking. They depicted a lanky character with a very loose, carefree step, arms and legs swinging like spokes on a wheel. Jaunty, I’d say. The images stay with me, like the image in my mind of a pensive Wallace Stevens walking to and from work, gathering images for his poems. Images, images, imprints on the imagination.

I’ve been feeling kind of bogged down mentally, and physically, and emotionally and any other -ly you can mention. I think the problem is that I can’t see a future. It’s hard to walk with a swing in your step towards nothing? Isn’t it? Well, maybe that’s not true. I guess walking is really the point of itself, not getting somewhere. But walking is also very good for exercising the mind, and inevitably we encounter all the things we were avoiding in the house, this time with stronger legs to stand on!

Back to the topic of writing: I haven’t been writing songs these past few weeks. And now I wonder, what is appropriate to write about now? Former themes don’t seem right. Former ways of describing the world aren’t applicable. Our world has changed, people have changed. If we want to write now - and I think whether you are a “writer” or not, we all have a voice inside us at this moment which has something to say…., if we want to write because there’s a lot swirling in our heads….. well…. How? I finally tried working on songs today, and it was painful. I picked up song after song which are about half-finished, from a nice, long period of inspiration over the past several months. I was working on a new album and had a lot of ideas and song-starts coming to me. Working on them bit-by-bit was fun. But today I faced them again after having not played much for these last few weeks at home with my kids all the time around me… And I couldn’t focus; or if I did the things I’d been trying to say before just aren’t what I want to say now. And singing a song from that previous time seems irrelevant.

So my question is not even what to write, but whether to write. And yet I’m writing this blog. I want to communicate. I want to get deep into the philosophy of this with someone.

I went for a walk to the cornfields last night. That’s what we call the spot up the hill from the house, where there were cornfields for the first two years we lived here, but for the past two springs no corn has actually been planted. The fields are tan and gray with the stubble from long-dead stalks. It’s very peaceful there, away from the busy road we live on, suddenly birds are singing and clouds are passing overhead, and distant hills and forests are on all sides, with horse barns and swallows and all the works. It’s wonderful.

That world is just the same. And I had a nice phone conversation while i walked, with Jefferson, a musician who has been sort of my muse for the past year (in that I discovered his songs & singing, was excited and inspired, and it made me want to write songs again). He and I were talking about how or whether to make music in this changed world. What do people need and want to hear now? What would reflect how they are now, vs. how they/we were a few months ago? Our selves, our perceptions, our needs are so altered. Would it be jarring to perform old stuff? Would we hear it and think - “Oh, that’s a song from the world before Coronavirus, I can’t relate!” But we don’t want to just write about Coronovirus-times. Or if we did want to, are we ready for that? Is that even necessary? (Should I write about getting out of bed wondering whether today will be in any way different from yesterday? About the big questions I face, like: Is it worth putting on pants? Bathing? Looking in the mirror? Now I’m way off-topic, but these are issues we have to grapple with!)

Ok, I’m done writing now. That’s my take on it for today. Write to me and tell me what you think about writing. Love, Naomi

Coming Home Curly

To take a walk is a lovely thing. Especially in Spring. Try not to think of the places you can’t be. Long only briefly for the people you can’t see.

Today the kids weren’t screaming and chasing each other down the street with fists swinging. No one complained about how far we went. We talked a little, but mostly looked around. We passed a family from our school and Abel said hi to his friends, but I didn’t feel more than a tiny pang of sorrow for that former life when we’d see these kids every day; when rather than shouting hello from across the street, the kids could lean their heads together over a book or a spinning beyblade.

There’s really nothing I can complain about now. That’s what I thought as I walked down the peaceful street of modest houses with little yards and basketball hoops or little backyard playsets. We’re living in a dream now - a good dream. We’re not sick, and we can either work from home or take a break from working to take care of the kids. And the gift this horrible virus has given us is time to spend with these kids we made. Ordinarily I’m pretty glad when they go to school and I get to do my job, teach a music class, write songs for an album, shop, cook, do the every day things which I enjoy doing without my kids around. I didn’t want all this time together. And it took some getting used to, mentally, not to be worried about it. Suddenly today I realized - this is nice. We couldn’t ask for this or know how good it could be for us, but for our family, at the ages our kids are right now (4, 7 and 9), this is perfect. We get to frustrate and challenge each other, hug and comfort each other, and maybe even play together and accomplish some projects (like painting the fence and making a garden). Anyway, we are lucky, and I’m going to focus on how cool this opportunity to have so much time together is.

I’ve got a lot of things on my list of THINGS TO DO. And they are not getting done, at all. I’m avoiding things that I was proud of myself for making daily habits after years of neglect (mostly playing music!). I don’t know why. There are some “issues”. I walked into my music room/office just now and felt a cringing in my heart - guilt at something or other, I guess it’s that I haven’t played a song for awhile.

But my kids seem to need my help or attention almost all the time. It’s been a struggle for me in the past not to resent this… and not to resent my husband for not taking care of more of their needs and requests. Now I am really aware that resentment is my own guilt, it’s a harmful and unhelpful reaction against myself for expecting things to be a certain way, or people to behave a certain way. Now every expectation of the world following any kind of reasonable order has been torn to pieces, thrown in the air - blown away in the wind.

So, I’ve been just being the teacher, helping the kids, doing puzzles, playing games and reading books with them, making them practice their instruments (which i dread sometimes!), keeping them sort of on a schedule. It takes the whole day, but that’s what I need to do now. I need to not feel guilty that i’m not playing music (or working - I actually should be putting in some hours for my job for the Coalition for Healthy School Food, but I can’t figure out how to do that yet!). This is the hardest thing for me… not feeling guilty about what I’m not doing. I want to write more about this idea of how we decide what to do with our time another day.

And the most important thing today, is that John Prine died. I can’t believe it. Now we’re going to just keep repeating it until it becomes a fact, but yesterday morning it wasn’t. He’s been suffering in the hospital for many days and like all the thousands and thousands of others who this horrible virus has stolen from the world, it is impossible to comprehend. It’s so awful and painful.

But I have to cry over and think about John Prine. His songs moved me as much or more than any other songwriter. He was unique - wry and funny and straight-forward. His lyrics focused on the oddest seemingly “every-day” observations - distilled through the filter of melody and rhyme into some universal human feeling so that if you listened to or sang one of his songs, you could make yourself cry. Just raw, plain truth, or raw, plain poetry, or raw, plain heart. I don’t know how to express it.

I wrote to John’s good friend Jim Rooney, a skilled producer who made albums with many of my favorite musicians, and I was lucky enough to have him produce my album in Nashville awhile ago. I told Jim how sorry I am for his loss and how much I appreciate John’s songs and their collaboration. Jim wrote back right away and thanked me for the letter and told me that he and John had worked together for over 40 years, and were just this December in the studio recording a track (a song I love) “Love at the Five and Dime” for a Nanci Griffith tribute album, and that they were planning to record an album with John’s two brothers as soon as the lockdown was over.

Be well, dear family and friends whom I miss visiting with!

Love,

Naomi

Wertschätzend

Last week as I was unloading the dishwasher, I hit a bowl my then-five-year-old son made against another bowl, and the rim was chipped in a bad way. I felt terrible; that was the one piece he made in class which is really nice and he eats cereal out of it often. The next day I chipped the rim of a cherished mug from a German company which I only use occasionally because I love it so much. It was a small chip, but those little things bother me. Still, I thought I could continue to use it. The next day, as I was washing lettuce I looked down and inexplicably, that same mug, still holding remnants of my coffee, was standing upright on the floor next to the dishwasher, a splatter of coffee next to it, and a large chip missing from the other side of the rim. I was really disturbed. When I am careless, especially with pottery (I have always loved and collected and also used to make it), I feel like it means something - deep. I don’t know what. Foreboding? Past-boding? Sins of thoughtlessness being punished? A sign I am moving too quickly and maybe carelessly causing harm in other ways too? But the same cup seeming to jump onto the floor and break itself the day after I mis-handled it? Wait, I thought, this means something else. It means “let it go”. It doesn’t mean I’m doing something wrong, it means wanting to preserve things the way they were is not going to work. It only causes more pain.

I haven’t broken any more ceramics in the past 5 days, so maybe the universe believes I got the message.

These words from my best friend in Göttingen, Germany this weekend have stayed with me, reminding me of something to be hopeful about: “Here a different world is beginning… since today all shops are closed and all people should stay at home or with 2 meters to each other. All feels so unreal and from day to day the virus seems more dangerous. Nobody really knows what will happen, we live from day to day […] I’m quite calm and trustful […] I think it all means that humanity cannot go on like we did. Nobody wanted to change. Now we are forced and perhaps we have a chance to change deeply. Vor allem to become loving again with us people, nature, and the universe, demütig und respektvoll, und wertschätzend.”

What good can come of this? What do you think?

Sigh

There are pictures comparing side-by-side how cities looked a few weeks ago, to how they look now that life is paused. All is quiet, clear, beautiful. (Beautiful because I know that the smog was also choking, poisoning, and decaying the life that thrived there. If I didn’t know this, maybe the smoky images would seem more beautiful.)

Mother Earth must be breathing a deep sigh, the attack against her ecosystems and abundant lifeforms and landforms has lost its aggressive edge. Sigh, Planet, sigh.

We are all taking a break from the roads, from the rushing, the gaining, the buying, the striving. Are we using less, throwing away less, wasting less food, buying less crap, thinking less useless thoughts about stupid things (to focus on painful thoughts about illness and loss)?

Sigh is also for how I felt when on our neighborhood walk today, we encountered a “No Admittance” sign half-way to the horse-track and barns, owned by Cornell, where we like to visit the sheep and horses and geese and run around a huge old horse racetrack (unused it seems) overlooking distant hills, next to peaceful forest. It’s an other-worldly spot, I can’t put my finger on why. Maybe because there is no sight or sound of a car or anything “modern”, just fields, quiet horses in a pasture, open sky. The sky always looks very tall and slanty from the track, like I can see the motion of this planet spinning by it.

So, the sign told us that the property manager of this “Equine Park” (didn’t know that’s what it was called) had closed it to unauthorized personnel due to Coronavirus, but that we could walk around the park on trails. We turned left instead of going straight, walking along the edge of the dried up remains of the cornfields, woods on our right. When I read that sign I thought I’d lost my sanctuary from the lonely isolation, but turns out the woods are even better. They are also quiet, with some trails but no one was there. The trees are very far apart, the terrain is mellow, like scenes from the Princess Bride (the end part, not the Fireswamp). I imagined dousing my kids with essential oil and permethrin tick spray and sending them out to play there all summer. They can build forts and get lost, but come out to familiar fields on any side. And no one will kidnap them because they might have the Coronavirus. (Just kidding, potential kidnappers, I will go with them and carry a wooden sword, like we did today, to fight the virus, or any neighbors who might try to get too close.)

Day by Day by Day

Let me look back on the past week. Here in Central New York, last Friday, March 13th, we were behind many other parts of the world in realizing that this virus had already entered our community and that we must take urgent and drastic measures to stop it. To stop it, we now know we had to stop most of the things we call our lives.

Just three weeks ago I was at an assembly for the whole elementary school, led by my son’s 4th grade teacher, about African American history and Black Lives Matter, for the whole elementary school (just a few parents were there). I am so glad I was there! Assemblies and gatherings like that are always very moving. All the kids in the school prepared something with their classes to present to the rest of the school, essays, poems, songs, re-telling histories. The school did it so well, as a community they are adamant about being inclusive, kind, aware of what others are experiencing, being helpers and showing thoughtfulness and care. I felt so fortunate that my kids go to such a diverse school (diverse in many ways, not just racially, as we live in a neighborhood with families from around the world - Theo’s 4th grade class had all the ESL students, and I think they came from 8 different countries, so many of his friends this year were just learning English and came from Mongolia, Iran, China and more). Even if the kids don’t go back to school this year, that assembly was a wonderful event which brought them all together in effort and appreciation.

At the assembly another parent told me she was worried about the coronavirus, and that the school isn’t doing enough (with hygiene) to prepare. I thought, “oh, yeah, that’s a good thing to think about.” But I was ignorant - it was not on my radar that we had to be so cautious, yet.

Then last Friday evening, after kids were done with school for the week but had no idea they would not return at all, the ICSD sent an email announcing the school would close. Over the next days, the rest of our little world closed around us, one by one all the things I thought we’d still be able to do fell like dominoes. My brain took about 48 hours to accept that the school closing meant everything else in our lives outside the house had to stop as well. No karate, which the kids just started last week and had really liked. No Children’s Garden pre-school for Frieda two mornings a week. No visits to the Children’s Garden which is now closed. No library, no library books (except the ones I had in my car ready to return, which are now back inside the house), no Sciencenter, no going out for dinner, no spring soccer, no piano lessons, no meeting friends. No Rosenthal Family Passover in Connecticut in April, no spring break visit with my kids’ four grandparents in my and my husband’s hometown. No cousins coming from Rhinebeck or Boston for a weekend. Will Abel’s best friend from Germany be able to come here this summer as we’d planned? Frieda, the four-year-old, keeps mentioning places we go and saying, “We can’t go there, because of the Coronavirus, right?”

Also, my own work - no new session of the Singing and Songwriting classes I teach afterschool at the elementary schools. No spring songwriting workshop in my son’s classroom. And as the Program Manager for the Coalition for Healthy School, my job is to offer programs in schools, bringing healthy food and nutrition education to students and the whole school community. I was planning our spring benefit dinner, and a whole bunch of awesome programs in Ithaca middle and elementary schools in the next few months.

And no child-care exchange with my good friends - we each watched each others children a few times every week this whole school year, so our kids were becoming like family to one another, which had it’s challenges, but was such a beautiful thing to see. Frieda especially misses her best friend Ada, they are so much alike and so joyful together.

Not complaining, just reviewing all the changes. Community and activities - all on pause. Now we call out to each other from the screens, from the phones, and hopefully in some paper messages sent the old-fashioned way. And we are meeting more neighbors, from a 10-foot distance during our walks, than we ever knew existed. We used to take family walks and see no one outside - now there are people all over the place in this cute suburban paradise. Stopping to talk about the grim probabilities for the future. Or just smiling tensely to let them know we feel their pain.

Last night walking home from the school (I wanted to remember it for a few minutes), Frieda asked Greg and I to stop talking about the Coronavirus, “it’s making me sad.” I asked her why and she said, “I’m afraid my friends are going to die.”

Low and High

I have the persistent company of four sweet cats! They aren’t always sweet to each other, but we’ve come a long way since the big old Cash was trying to kill the kittens (who were born in my office last summer when I fostered their pregnant mother). Now he just chases them when he’s hungry, and when I ignore his affection.

So, the cats keep things feeling somewhat normal, and seek me out to sit on my lap, which is comforting.

Yesterday I got really worried and depressed half-way through the day, reading an article about how we may have to practice extreme social distancing for 18 month, until a vaccine for COVID-19 is available. What would that mean, what would that do to society, to our minds, to our kids’ education and emotions and psyche? What is the point of this homeschool experiment, it feels so ad hoc and almost random, just throwing together things that sound right. What value do they really have, are they just a distraction? Thinking of it going on for even a few months is at times overwhelming.

Then there are the other fears - Will we run out of food? Will I have to stop eating the massive quantities of salad I consume every day?

Will our society survive? Maybe there will be places on the planet where the virus is less prevalent, and that will mean economies there have a chance to become stronger. Maybe this virus will effect rich countries the most, places where people travel and connect and rely on goods from far away. We were spoiled and we’ll suffer. We have to re-learn to rely on ourselves and make and fix and grow things.

Anyway, those are the cheerful thoughts that kept me up last night. Now I feel confused and groggy!

But here’s a thought that lifted my spirit this morning: Think of all the brilliant, thoughtful, creative, passionate, concerned, wondering, hard-working people all over this town, all over this country, the world - all (or most) stuck at home, now faced with finding meaning and work to do in this limited space. I am seeing their faces in Facebook videos, playing songs, sharing stories and messages to help each other, to help themselves. We have this - we have good people there. So even if I feel pretty low right now, I think the rest of the world on the whole is going to carry us. We can take turns.

Coronavirus: Family Sequestration

Tears are coming often to my eyes these days when I think about what other people around the world are going through - and how many are experiencing the same shock, fear, excitement, confusion, and interruption. And then adaptation. I also cried when I heard about the people in Italy and Austria who decided to all go out in their front porches and balconies at 6 pm each evening to sing together - if not the same song, then together in time, in lifting their voices or instruments and letting the sound reach out over distances they are not allowed to cover with their bodies. Pretty neat how music/sound lives in the air, and in the ear. It can FLY, like we humans often dream of and wonder about. What’s it like to be a bird or a bee or a bat? Or what’s it like to be a particle in the air, in the waves we create? Even our own bodies are rippling in the waves, we are the waves, and we can fly - our shouts and laughter and songs!

I got really sad yesterday about my 96-year-old grandma Lillian in Hamden, Connecticut, stuck alone in her apartment in the retirement home, no visitors allowed. She has four children living relatively near, many grand-children and great-grandchildren, and normally her apartment sees more visitors than most in the building. So I shouldn’t feel sorry for her. And she’s tough, she would never complain about her own problems. She probably misses her beloved, Irving, more than the family who now aren't allowed to harass her so constantly (except now by phone)! But she’s got so many physical problems, like arthritis and spinal stenosis that makes it so she can’t feel her feet, can’t move her hips or shoulders, can’t really walk or dress herself or go to the bathroom without major effort. Mentally she’s still completely sharp, has a memory 10x better than mine, and as a former librarian and obsessive reader, I’m sure she’ll enjoy reading through hundreds of books, and listening to opera from old cassette tapes. No more of her favorite Saturday afternoon live broadcasts from the Met though… the opera has closed, along with every thing else. Anyway, my kids made her some drawings yesterday, sending love and misses/kisses. They really do miss her. We’re goddamned lucky that they know their great-grandma!

About today’s home-school…. This is Day 2. Theo and Abel, ages 9 and 7, have been so enthusiastic about creating our elaborate schedule, and about keeping it. I hope this lasts, but it’s really hard to tell. What I’m more worried about is my own patience and interest in being the teacher. Right now, for example, I want to write, but it’s their Language Arts time, and if I’m not there actually watching and listening to what they’re doing, they start talking to one another and making jokes. Does it matter? I am kind of rigid… I think it does matter and that if we just let our days slide quickly into being silly and “fooling around”, that this period of weeks or months will become a mess. If the kids had some other useful work to do, like farming or building something, or could play outside all day, that would be ok. That makes me think, maybe we should use this time to get away from the intellectual grooming and just be outside a LOT. We are so so fortunate at this pandemic moment that we have a house and a yard - we have a lot of space to be isolated in! But though I like nature and hiking and planting and stuff like that, I think I like “inside” activities better in general. If I didn’t have to take care of the kids and couldn’t go out, I would be reading, cooking, writing, playing the fiddle, doing my exercises and listening to podcasts all day. Doesn’t that sound ridiculous? Is that what single people are doing now? If they aren’t working from home? Or being sick…