In a previous blog post, I shared some of my impressions from the first half of a two-week quarantine that Ken and I experienced following a trip to the States. This post contains daily impressions from the last seven days of our quarantine.
Day #8 Impression: Routines help to give some normalcy to unusual times. Some of our daily practices and duties we kept up during quarantine, and some we tweaked to better suit the situation. The snow still needed to be shoveled, for instance, there was always food to be prepared and eaten (but we only had two main meals a day), and there was always clean-up waiting to be done after said meals. I loved the routine of Ken helping me with the latter. Sometimes we chatted as we worked, or sang together, or were quiet together in our own thoughts. I liked the time we said the Little Wang Fu of China poem together. Since we both had memorized it and had been mesmerized by it when we were youngsters in summer Bible School class way back in Herald Press curriculum days, we could help each other recall the whole thing, building the story of Wang Fu with lines such as "This is his blue bowl full of rice, that smells so good and tastes so nice, cooked by his mother, kind and good..."
One routine was entirely new that we added. Every morning after brunch clean-up, we'd call in our daily health report. This involved both of us taking our turn to pace about the house with phone in hand (why not multi-task and get some steps in while we're at it?), listening to a series of recorded statements and questions and punching number keys in answer to the dozen or so prompts. By the fourteenth day, we had nearly memorized those lines, too, including the lady's expression and voice inflection in certain areas. "...this inforMAtion will be disCLOSED...under the QUARantine act..."
Day #9 Impression: It's possible to totally embarrass yourself at the beginning of Sunday School and (almost) convince the class members that you did it on purpose. Our church is able to meet again in person for Sunday services, but we continue to have our Sunday School class sessions on Zoom. It was my turn to teach our ladies' class one evening during quarantine, and I had trouble getting started due to my laptop not cooperating. I couldn't access the Zoom meeting by clicking on the link that was emailed to me, so I got my phone and tried connecting with it. That worked just fine, but since I had my laptop open nearby, suddenly I was connected on my laptop as well.
Then things really started going south. I can't explain it all, but let's just say that a bright yellow background hue on my laptop screen, very annoying and echo-y feedback, an inability to shut off my phone when I desperately wanted to, and brain fog on my part were all involved.
Finally, we got going on the Sunday School lesson, which was titled "Order in Public Worship"! 😏The ladies in my class had been very patient, gracious, and helpful during my disorderly beginning, and one friend told me later with laughter in her voice that I could've had it planned - my kerfuffle at the start of classtime - as an effective illustration to introduce the lesson.
Day #10 Impression: I love making new word or phrase discoveries. In a book study I'm doing with one of my friends, I learned about lectio divina, which, in Latin, means "divine reading". It's a method of reading scripture that invites the reader to slow down and take the text to heart.
I chose Psalm 121 as my first passage to read through slowly three different times, to ponder and pray over, and to ask God what I am being called to, as a result of the word He gave me. I found it a very meaningful exercise, a calming and grounding experience. I learned things about myself: I tend to look down rather than up. I can choose where to put my focus. I tend to be slipshod. I need guarding and keeping. I learned things about God: He is solid. He is loyal. Preserving. Loving. Helping. He keeps guard against the outward blasts of a slay-by-day sun and the subtle invasions of a smite-by-night moon.
Day #11 Impression: It's easy to get sidetracked when sorting through old files and storage boxes. From snapshot prints of dear little Kerra back when she was a squeezable toddler to copies of song lyrics written in my grade-seven teacher's longhand to mushy Valentine's Day cards from Ken to letters I sent to my twin when I taught in a Happy Hollow in the Ozarks, a whole range of intriguing paths beckon me off the main trail of organizing.
I mean, if you came across some descriptions of mountain people like "a fairly young couple who just moved into the log cabin down by the low-water bridge" and "Bob won the championship (state) for fiddling last year" and "Franklin knows alot along the line of botany and...guess who he looks like? Dagwood!" and Fern's "favorite word is fantastic...she was talking about the dust here and saying I'm not kiddin' it was this thick and made our trailer as red as those tomatoes there", wouldn't you want to keep reading a bit longer, too?
Photo Cred: Janet Brubacher
Day #12 Impression: Thanks to technology, it's possible to attend two weddings in one day during quarantine. Our nephew Tanner married his ladylove Brook (pictured above) on one of our stay-at-home Saturdays. We were so grateful for the privilege of viewing their wedding service via live stream video. Also that day, we "attended" another wedding ceremony in which our longtime friend Ernest married his beautiful bride Yvonne. Their wedding had the distinction of being a union of widower and widow, both of them having lost their previous companion by death. Besides rejoicing at seeing these two being joined together in marriage again, my heart was drawn toward Ernest's children that day. Speaking from experience, I would say that not only is it a strange and unique experience to attend your own parent's wedding, it is also a precious mixture of bitter and sweet.
Outstanding in both weddings, in my opinion, was the music. The choice of songs, the solo in "I Believe" by the bride in the one wedding, the duet in "His Name is Jesus" by the bridal couple in the other, and the emphasis on our Bridegroom Jesus in all of the songs brought such beauty to the ceremonies. And I was delighted to note that the last song we heard in the first wedding and the first one we heard in the second wedding was the same song! It's one of my favorites: "Lord Jesus, You Shall Be My Song."
Day #13 Impression: Sometimes a crackling, spitting sound in the oven means something more than chicken sizzling in its own juices. One evening I put a couple pieces of frozen chicken cordon bleu on a tray and into the oven to bake for our supper. Since it would take half an hour until they'd be ready for serving, I went into the dining room to do something at my computer. About 10 minutes later I vaguely heard some cooking sounds coming from the kitchen and subconsciously noted that it hadn't taken long at all for the chicken to thaw and get to sizzling hot stage. Shortly after that, Ken went to the kitchen and began poking among the snack foods in the pantry. Suddenly, he threw me a question. "Hey, is the chicken supposed to be popping like that?" And then, an exclamation. "It's on fire!"
Things happened fast after that. I rushed out to the kitchen and we both discovered that the bottom heating element in the oven was shorting out and burning up before our very eyes. The short started at one end of the coil and burned its way around to the other end, sparking and flaming as it went. I remembered that you shouldn't douse an electrical fire with water, but I didn't remember that it's grease fires that you put baking soda on, until after I had tossed some onto the flames with no effect. (shh, don't tell my firefighter brothers) Then we recalled the story of a similar fire that had happened in Tom and Danae's oven just weeks earlier, and that Tom (one of the firefighter brothers) had said the solution was to pull out the stove and quickly unplug it from the receptacle behind. We tried that, and managed to access the plug without too much difficulty - except that we yanked out some loosely-fitted screws - but we could not wrest the plug from the outlet. Meanwhile, the flame kept working its way around the coil. Thankfully, it never caused high-leaping tongues of fire nor plumes of smoke large enough to activate the smoke alarm located down the hall. Eventually the fire burned out and our nerves settled.
This episode was not the only factor, but it was one factor, in our decision to go out the next week and visit an appliance store. Rest in peace, our faithful-for-thirty-some-years stove!
Day #14 Impression: It is possible to arrive at the end of quarantine and not yet be at the end of one's list titled "Possible Things to Accomplish During Quarantine." Both Ken and I say that our fourteen days of isolation went by quite quickly. I didn't move down my list so quickly. I didn't clean out and organize things in the computer room like I hoped to. I didn't get several chapters written in a book I'm working on. I didn't get one puzzle put together - didn't even break open a puzzle box. I didn't phone and email as many people as I thought I would.
I guess that's pretty normal for me, though - not to accomplish all that I dream of doing when I write out a list. I take comfort in recalling a quote by Kathleen Norris in which she suggests that we can even do nothing, gallantly.
But when I look back over our two weeks of quarantine, I see that I did manage to do a few things. Two blog posts worth, at least.
