Covid 19

HERMIT TERRITORY

Staying home for me is not the crisis it is for some people. I usually spend my time at my computer, even when there’s no corona virus. I can still take my dog Ginger for a daily walk, my usual way of getting fresh air and exercise.

It’s disappointing but understandable that the festivals I had planned to be attending this spring have been cancelled. And I bought a pink sparkly top just for the Cherry Blossom Festival in Conyers, Georgia. I don't especially like pink, but the organizers played on that color for promotional purposes.

NO VISITS DURING SPRING BREAK

Doug and I had planned to have the grandkids here during their spring break, but our two sons thought it was too much of a risk. Davis and his family live in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Matt and his family in Rome, Georgia. We don’t get to see them as often as we’d like. We have two granddaughters living in London, England, but their school breaks don’t coincide with ours in the States and the cost of their coming here is a pot of money. Their schools have also suspended classes.

LASTING SIDE EFFECT OF VIRUS

We’re focused on the impact this crisis is having on the economy and business, but the closing of schools may have the longest lasting effect. Kids who have computers will naturally gravitate to the screen and mindless games. Let’s face it, there’s not much else for them to do. Youth is a critical time for getting a foundation in facts and thinking that a person uses for the rest of their life. Even if everybody went to home schooling, it doesn’t have the systematic discipline to replace public schools, nor the academic depth.

AT-HOME PROJECTS FOR KIDS

I would hope that parents who are out of work are teaching kids things to do with their time. Some ideas:

1) Sewing: Buy a cheap sewing machine. Assignment: make a shirt

2) Woodwork. Buy a jigsaw. Project: make a footstool or birdhouse

3) Cooking: Download recipes. Project: make a dish at supper

4) Reading & writing: Buy a kid's novel: write a movie script made from the book

5) Music: Buy a harmonica or ukulele. Project: learn one song

These involve small investments of money but will pay off in better spent time for the kids.

thinking out loud

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forgiveness

It’s easy to forgive yourself when you have the resources to repair the damage you’ve done. For instance, a wife can forgive herself for burning the dinner when she can go to the refrigerator and get something else to take the place of the burned dish. But if she’s in a circumstance where there’s nothing in the refrigerator, in other words she burned the only food she had for dinner, then it’s much harder for her to forgive herself.

Of course I’m talking about my own circumstances as a child. I have looked back at my youth and wondered why my mother didn’t do more to teach me to cook. One reason was that she couldn’t take a chance on my ruining whatever she had planned for supper. There was one plan, and without that one, there was no supper. Though she worked all day in a shirt factory and was obviously tired at suppertime, she invariably cooked the meal. My sister and I had the task of washing and drying the dishes, and I’m sorry to say we sometimes watched television instead of doing our task. I still regret that our mother sometimes awoke to a dirty kitchen to start breakfast.

It wasn’t only the limited resources for food that had an impact on our ability to forgive ourselves. With respect to farming, my father bought seed and fertilizer in the spring but could only afford to buy what he used to plant the crop. This meant that if my older brother, who helped with the farming, made a mistake that caused the loss of seed or fertilizer, there was no money to replace what had been lost. That is to say, the loss was permanent. It was a burden he had to bear. This situation made it hard for him to forgive himself. It was made even harder because of my father’s anger and disappointment. Obviously my father would have been less angry and less disappointed if he could have returned to the seed store and bought more.

This aspect of my upbringing is one reason I find it hard to accept my own failures. My husband angrily corrects me when I say something like, “I’m so stupid!” But when I make a mistake, it towers over me, as if something has been lost forever. 

Maybe I’m rationalizing, but I think financial hardship makes people unforgiving of themselves. This leads to an effort to be perfect, to never make a mistake. And it can spread into our expectations of other people. I set a high bar for myself. Not only for myself, but for others. This is something I've had to try to control. 

Farm house where I grew up.

New Address

BEEN MOVING

Office in my Shandon home, getting ready to move.

For months, I’ve been preoccupied with moving. Though I love the Shandon house we were living in, Doug and I realized we needed to make a change. This became obvious last Christmas when my sons visited with their families. In order to have space enough for everybody, we resorted to renting a duplex from USC students going home for the holidays. Another developing drawback was access. The many stairs and steps to get into our house made it difficult if not impossible for some of our friends to visit—especially those experiencing problems with their knees or hips. And we had come to the view that we wanted a downstairs bedroom. Given the constraints of the lot, it was impossible to renovate. 

Packing up the dining room.

We began shopping houses in January. Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com are great sources of information. However, when it came time to get serious, we turned to realtor EuniceBeard, who sold us the Shandon house. No online site can substitute for the kind of personal and dependable service Eunice can give. Our objective was to sell our Shandon house and buy another one with more square footage without having to invest more money. In other words, pay for the new house using proceeds from the sale of the Shandon house.

It's sad to leave the house where we've been happy.

Obviously we’d have to look for real estate further out of Columbia. After weeks (months) of shopping and several near misses, we found a house both Doug and I could agree on in Lexington, SC. We were drawn to a subdivision where many trees and abundant greenery were left in place by the developer. In addition, there’s variety in the appearance of houses—some brick, some vinyl, some hardiplank.

As luck would have it, we had an offer on our Shandon house the day before it went on the market, which facilitated our making an offer on the Lexington house. However tenuous I thought this initial offer, we couldn’t turn it down. Eventually it fell through, in large part because the husband hadn’t seen the property. As soon as the house was put back on the market, there were calls and several viewings. We had the good fortune to sell it to a couple who seem to care as much for the house as we did.

Earlier this month we spent four days in transit with the moving company. We’ve unpacked most of the boxes, but it will be a while until we get to know the new neighborhood. And I’m hoping to soon get back to writing.

LOVE OF PLACE

Today is the last day of my sojourn at Beaufort where I've been working on a World War II era novel. I’m already sad about leaving. The first thing I see when I awake in the morning are oak trees in the sunshine with Spanish moss swiping the breezes. It looks as if the roots of the oaks have sucked up sand and dirt and turned them into stringy clouds that cling to the limbs. I don’t even have to move from my bed. The oaks are right outside a wide window.

When I go to the kitchen, I pass my desk and throw open the curtains that screen a three-wide window. Outside beyond the deck is the marsh. This morning the tide is in and there’s something of a lake out there with marsh grass growing in thick islands about the water. By noon it will be all marsh grass with a muddy trail snaking through the roots.

This is my window view at flood tide.

PLACE vs PEOPLE

Love of place is a counterpart to love of people, the inorganic counterpart, if you will. Obviously my attachment to this place has little to do with people, though I enjoy interaction with strangers. There are perhaps two local residents who would recognize me if I stopped them on a Beaufort street.

I have the same “love” for Brussels, Belgium where I lived for four years. The old quarter, or Grand Place, is ancient with cobble streets, stone alleys, open-air restaurants displaying fishes from the North Sea, and a square of castle-like guild houses. It’s physical beauty is entwined with my memories of being there. But to visit is sweet sorrow. Brussels for all its beauty, is filled with strangers and thoughts of days gone by.

Many writers are inspired by their love of place. For example, Aida Rogers has published a collection of “love letters” to South Carolina by local writers titled State of the Heart.*  

THE WORD LOVE

I wonder why there’s not a word other than love to describe attachment to a place (maybe there is and I don’t know it…). Love suggests to me emotion with reciprocity, one that is only genuine if it is mutual. You may argue that you love somebody who doesn’t love you, but that’s belittling to oneself, if not self-destructive. Not my idea of love.

Tomorrow night I’ll be back in Columbia where the scenery is rather boring. There’s no window by my bed. My desk overlooks the driveway. And the wind rarely blows. At least that’s my impression but I look outside so seldom that may be a misconception. But I’ll be with my friends again. There’s Ginny and Carole and Miriam and Laura and many more people of fond acquaintance I look forward to seeing. I’m confident when I say I love them. But do I love this apartment at Shell Point?

*http://www.sc.edu/uscpress/books/2013/7251.html

Good-bye

THE VISIT'S OVER

It’s hard for most of us to say goodbye, especially when knowing we won’t see family or friends for a while, whether days or weeks or months. Toward the end of my father’s life his eyes filled with tears when my visits ended and I headed back to Chicago with my children, his grandchildren. He probably thought he was saying goodbye for the last time for a couple of years before he died, for he had had a series of heart attacks which grew more severe with each event.

When you’re young it doesn’t usually occur to you that, given life’s vicissitudes, you might never meet again. Saying goodbye is little more traumatic than turning off the TV. In fact, as we become more mobile, partings become commonplace. And maybe we get better with practice.

Perhaps it’s my age that makes parting teary-eyed, not that I think every goodbye is the last one. But visits with my sons remind me of how little I now have them in my life. Time passes and they have families, careers, and homes, and we’re no longer in daily touch. While I’m away from them, living my own life, I don’t notice this so much. Then we visit. And invariably we have a great time together. But then I leave or they leave, and I’m painfully aware that time will pass while we’re living our separate lives.

I’d just as soon skip saying goodbye. In fact, I’d prefer to sneak out in the middle of the night without waking anybody. If I can just close that door and go back to my routine, I won’t have to think so much. On the other hand, if one of them left without saying goodbye, I’d wonder if I’d offended him. Is there no easy way to say goodbye? 

Ah, Yes, Fruitcake

FRUITCAKE

When I was a kid, my mom baked a big and a small fruitcake at Thanksgiving. The small one we ate immediately. The big one she dribbled with either wine or grape juice, wrapped it in cloth, put it into a green cake tin, and stored it in the pie safe on the porch. I can’t tell you how eagerly we awaited the cutting of the Christmas fruitcake. Only Aunt Myrth’s coconut cream pie could compete with fruitcake as the most treasured dessert.

To this day, I become emotional about fruitcake, and it always tastes wonderful to me, regardless of the variations in the recipe, well almost. One year I made one using mincemeat as an ingredient, and it didn’t turn out so well. In fact, I was baking it in Chicago when my mother called from South Carolina with the news my father had died suddenly of a heart attack. His death wasn’t unexpected—he’d had a number of heart attacks. In fact he told my mother several days previously that he felt like he was going to have an attack, and he knew it would be his last one.

I’ve baked fruitcake through the years for my family but without conferring on them the high regard I have for it. This year I subjected my son and his family to left-over cake from last Christmas. As usual, I ate more of it than anybody else. Every year I swear I’ll never bake another one. Maybe 2012 is the year to dig out Aunt Myrth's coconut pie recipe.

Lexington County, South Carolina

FAIRVIEW CROSSROADS

Fairview, South Carolina is a community without a post office or school, located between the North Edisto River (what's left of it after the droughts) and Black Creek. A blinking light marks the crossroads where Neely Wingard Road, Calks Ferry, Merrits Drive, and Wagener Hwy. intersect with Fairview Road. It's where I was born. 

South and to the east is Pelion and to the west Wagener. It's told that once Fairview was as big as Pelion and Wagener, but the settlers were so ornery, nobody would move in. The inhabitants are historically independent-minded with limited tolerance for government. 

So seldom did strangers wander into these backroads they didn't have names until about 1960. Some are identified with people. Others have names like Barn Owl, Whiskey, Lost, and Swamp Rabbit Road.

AT THE CROSSROADS
The Crossroads Cafe, Padgett's Store, and Wilson's junkyard are located at the intersection. That the site of the former Fairview School is now a junkyard is a hard knot to swallow for those who attended, though not many of them are still around. Fairview's former students have had their share of knots. The school building became a chicken house upon closing. Henry Shumpert donated the property for the school. His remains lie within sight of the junkyard, in the cemetery at Pauline Church, land he also owned at one time. 

GONE ARE THE DAYS
An abandoned building also sits at the crossroads, once and for years a country store and forerunner to Padgett's store. It was built a shotgun house with no windows. Inside the wood front door, two long side walls were layered from floor to ceiling with shelves, in back a meat cooler, in the middle a pot belly stove. On rainy days, farmers sat around the stove and talked crops and drank colas.

At one time another store did business across the street in a cinder block building of uncertain use today. Being smaller in size, it was always the competition.

Several communities surround Fairview that don't usually get on a map—Sugar Bottom, Seivern, Rayflin, New Holland, Chaffee, and Boiling Springs for instance.