Pandemic hair

 I've always thought of myself as a brunette. The very picture of me on a swing set in a neighborhood playground circa 1984.

It wasn't a particularly flattering photograph: Me hunching forward through the swing's chains, unsmiling, wearing a ratty old flannel shirt; The photographer aiming the pocket camera up from the dust of the next swing's foot space.

But for whatever reason, that picture -- my face awash in the hot light of a flash and my hair as black as a shadow -- is frozen in time as my mind's permanent self-image.

At least it was until my youngest went to Kindergarten. Newish to motherhood, but still long in the tooth, it was just a few weeks of Thursday volunteering when one of his cherubic classmates mustered up the courage to ask me a question. “Are you his Grandmother?"

The innocent inquiry stung as if a crayon-shaped dart had been plunged into my psyche. It pierced the protective bubble that had congealed around my ego until what almost spilled forth was ... well ... a torrent of unsaid thoughts that would have been impolite if not entirely unkind.

The teacher didn't say anything either, but I could see from her pained expression that she would have hugged me if I had been within arm's reach.

Nobody would have blamed me for leaving that den of primary colors and puzzling questions and heading directly for aisle 12 of the nearest drug store, where I would try to choose which box of unnatural color suited me best.

I never thought it would be whatever color this is right now.

The two curtains alongside my face, emanating from a widow's peak at the top of my forehead, are a solid steel gray. Silvery strands throughout catch the light and illuminate like frost on the grass. The haircutter complimented me on the nature of my gray, battling back from long-abandoned attempts to restore it to former glory.

 From the chin down, however, my hair is the color of straw. It even has the same crinkly texture that threatens to fracture and break just by grazing it with my hand as I adjust my shirt collar. I pinch the ends between my fingers, and little serpent tongues slither back at me. It's been so long since my last haircut, I barely remember it.

Once a week or so, I comb out a mat that forms at the base of my skull after a good night's sleep. The rest of the days I just pretend my hair has the body or I hide it under a hat.

This is what happens when time and neglect conspire with the elements to undo whatever magic comes from mixing potions contained in a box of drug store hair color.

Not that my tresses experienced any less stress before the pandemic.

I don't know what color to call it should someone official ... someone, say like the Identifying Officer from the Department of Descriptions, were to try to fill in a box.

Eye color? Brown.

Height? 5'4" with a stacked heel.

Hair color? Let's just call it Manic at the Disco?

Selective shorts

To hear the boy tell it, he had been holed up in his room since the year 2011, venturing out only for bowls of cereal and trips to the loo.

"I've been in this room since I was four," he tells me emphatically. His complaint asserts the unmistakable tone of authority as if the pronouncement were based on fact rather than feelings. Such is the life of a modern 13-year-old who is wrapped inside of inertia and tucked into a pandemic.

It seems plausible.

He does spend an inordinately long time inside those four walls. However, I know his sister has keys to a car and almost full authority on when to use them, the two caveats being that she tells me where she's going; and that she taxi her brother on the two days a week they are scheduled to attend classes in person.

I have seen him in the passenger seat with a pile of books and bags balanced on his lap and a practiced bershon written all over his face.

I have passed him on the stairs. I am headed up with a laundry basket while he is headed down to rummage through the fridge.

I make a point to catch his gaze as I ascend to the step he just vacated. This is the only way I can continue to measure taller in his eyes.

He knows he's gaining on me. His body is gaining mass but losing some of its softness. A patch of hair over his lip is growing darker.

He's not unhappy about any of this. Not outwardly, anyway.

He is the captive to my audience, but he knows how to play it to his advantage. He does his level best to be noticed and then ignored.

A squeaky wheel, he knows, just gets the grief.

It's a hardship he's borne quietly enough to avoid adults bringing him solutions to problems not of his making.

For him, the virus couldn't have picked a better time. The sequestration shields him from view while the fits and spurts of budding adolescence do their work.

Teams were constantly forming, and Natural Selection seemed to glance off him and land on the kids standing on either side.

He didn't take it personally. Sinking two game baskets seventh-grade year would be enough to show he tried and prevailed. He could move on to other pursuits.

He could choose the games that require him to sit in one place and stare straight ahead.

I would have lamented this a year ago. I would have insisted he join a club or try out for a team. I still worry about the pale sunless corner of the world where he currently stagnates. The inertia threatens to expand his waistline and turn his mind to mush.

I send him outside now and again to assuage my guilt. “Do me a favor, please. Shovel the snow from the stairs and then clear a path in the backyard for the dog.”

He grumbles under his breath but obliges. He heads for the door, wearing short sleeves, short pants, and slippers. From the uniform, I can tell this job won't take long.

But at least it will get him out of his room.

The doctor won't see you now

 

I'm trying to will the stress from my body. One breath at a time, I picture the weight of pent-up rage cascading from the top of my head, like sweat or tears, and soaking into the ground below. 

It's not really working as well as I had hoped.

But I don't have to tell you. All of the days in the decade of this year have been a trial of some sort. We aren't all working from the same evidence or relying on worthy advocates. 

Most days, I visit the kitchen and stand in front of the coffeemaker. A stream of foamy liquid splutters into an awaiting cup with enough force to shake me, albeit momentarily, from my doldrums. It is my third vacation of the day.

I need it to bolster myself in my travels through the dining room, which seems to be the connecting hub through which one must travel to reach any other domestic destination. 

Lately, it has proven to be an epic journey that one might not realize presents impediments. First among them is a laundry basket. It contains a heaping pile of mystery. Its contents could be dirty, or it could be clean. Or it could be some combination of the two. Unattended piles tend to attract additions that may or may not belong.

On this day, I have left the house. In a snowstorm, no less. I can't remember the last time I white-knuckled my way through a wintery mix, but doctor's appointments are precious enough to keep, despite the physical risks.

Even if I never leave the car, which is often the case now as I wait for my father, who is inside with his cellphone set to speaker.

It takes a while before the doctor makes his way to the exam room. 

As I linger in my mobile waiting room, the impeachment hearings are playing out. I listen in.

I've missed the beginning, but the person talking now assures us that what preceded was impressive and well done.

He's being cynical, though. His point being it was too good.

As he stomps around his points, which seem to have neither order nor relevance, I understand. Nothing he says really matters. There will be no defense because defiance is enough.

Standing on a hill and yelling about its beacon is the stock phrase.

One side is certainly all theater. And not the Tony Award-winning kind. Maybe it takes one to know others.

I struggle with the passive tense, I think because it leaves the tangle of my thoughts intact for someone else to interpret. 

But I'm finding it less and less likely that people like Marjorie Taylor Greene are using the passive tense by accident. When she said: “I was allowed to believe things that weren't true,” - she wasn't mincing words.

Change that tense and you might understand the truth she holds dear: I am allowed to believe things that aren't true. I am allowed to perpetuate this to my advantage. 

These are the words that frees her. and hamstrings us.

The actions of the conservative movement, perhaps today more than ever, shows they are content with lies and the political theater they've staged to perpetuate them. 

I hope it's not something we'll just have to get used to ...

Like the call that breaks into this regularly scheduled programming. I answer it just in time to hear a door open and a voice greets my father, who introduces me by holding out his phone.

“I apologize that I won't be seeing you right now.”

Value subtracted

 "I don't know how you do it," I gushed to my friend. "I am just so thankful." Where I had run up to brick wall after brick wall, she had managed to wrangle two appointments for my COVID jab-eligible loved ones. 

And they wouldn't have to shuffle off to Buffalo to get the elusive shot in the arm. 

"Don't thank me," she responded with a soft laugh I've come to know as the sound of incredibly kind and thoughtful people tend to have. 

"I'm in this for purely selfish reasons. I want to make sure everyone who can get a vaccine does. It will make us all safer."

All she wanted in return was for me to spread the word. There may be other local candidates that she could benefit from her luck at snagging appointments. She felt strongly that such skills should benefit those who needed it most: the elderly without internet service and the essential workers who may lack the time it requires to sit in front of a computer to keep hitting refresh.

Of course, my heart aches for the people who are, for the moment, one letter out of reach of the protective injection. They are the people who are immunocompromised or who possess other co-morbidities that make this illness so dangerous. 

No one would say they are less deserving. The same goes for all the folks who, as 1As and 1Bs, could be rolling up their sleeves right now but can't secure an appointment. We are all at the mercy of a deluge of interest and a dearth of supply.

It's easy to complain about the roll-out of this vaccine. There has certainly been no shortage of fear that the cresting wave of new infections will swamp us next.

Everyone is tired. Everyone is anxious. No one wants to be vulnerable ... especially when some of us have been more used to having timely access to healthcare than others. 

To date, the US has administered roughly 62 percent of its available vaccine covering 10.27 percent of the population. This seems like an enormous achievement if those numbers are correct, considering the Trump administration's mismanagement and the states' roll-outs leading to more confusion and chaos as supply inequities coupled with understaffed healthcare facilities became overwhelmed with patients, who were responsible for finding their own vaccination appointments. 

Predictably this has meant we've seen many stories about people jumping the line to get the jab. 

It is literally all the rage. 

Some people holding others up between their proverbial fingers, asking point blankly why anyone in charge would think others ... a restaurant server, a grocery store bagger, was more valuable than ...  "Me."

We don't even pause before saying words like these aloud anymore. We believe them, in our souls. We value each other based on a paycheck or a job description. 

And yet, the elderly, the supermarket clerks, and the health care workers are all still out there waiting for a line in which they can stand. 

These are the up-front workers, the people most likely to die, and those who are most likely to be at the center of transmission. 

We all deserve to be protected. And slowing the spread will protect us all a little bit better.