‘Sheltering in Place’ in Northern CA Rebecca Pope (1978) gives us her perspective from the early days of lockdown in California.
Last week our county government issued an order that everyone ‘shelter in place’. This term of art for lockdown first appeared in the aftermath of 9/11. I was in DC that day, and for many months after we faculty at Georgetown University regularly received emails from the administration informing us that the university ‘had enough stockpiles of bottled water and Power Bars to sustain the entire campus should we be required to shelter in place due to a dirty bomb.’ This was supposed to be reassuring. No runs on Power Bars at our local Co-op now, but people seem to have, unaccountably, stockpiled all the bottled water as well as loo paper. A local business owner reports that his parking lot has become a place for people doing toilet paper deals out of the boots of their cars. It’s California, and the edibles were swiftly swept from the shelves of the marijuana dispensaries as well. Everyone has a different notion of ‘necessities of life’. For the moment, this feels a lot like the aftermath of 9/11 – empty streets, a sky empty of airplanes, the constant casting about for the line between sensible precautions and hysteria. Eerie, edgy anxiety as this time we wait not for a bomb but a ‘tsunami’. At night I dream of the computer breaking down and the internet blowing up. My spouse, Susana, and I live in a university town, Davis, and it seemed like our undergraduates disappeared overnight. I hear the same of Oxford. People in town are re-hanging their holiday lights for cheer and one neighbourhood has planned an ‘Italian night’, each family to its own patio eating take-away food from a locally-owned restaurant, singing to follow. Both of us had paternal grandparents who came from Italy, so we watch the situation there closely. Last night, the Feast of Saint Joseph (patron saint of Sicily), we raised a glass of red in appreciation of the indomitable spirit of the Italians and in hope that their suffering ends quickly. In good health, (health-) insured, and able to pay our bills, we are among the fortunate few. Both of us are over 60, so we have fewer work and family responsibilities than we used to. But there was a shock of mild surprise to find ourselves in a new demographic, the ‘if there’s a shortage, no ventilator for you’ cohort. Our adult children, all of whom are selfemployed, now have those work and family responsibilities, so we worry about them and the stuck-at-home grandkids, one of whom, on getting a list of assignments from his teacher, asked with dismay, ‘Is there room for modification here?’ Happily, two of our children are in essential lines of work: one manages the family organic farm and the other, forced to close his recently opened brewery, is figuring out how to home deliver beer by bike.
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We worry about our family and friends who have health issues, about health care workers (including a sibling), about the people in the homeless encampment a mile away. Each symbolic of countless others. Principal’s email mentioned cooking, reading, music. Yes to all three; they root us. The library closed without warning, so we are left without the usual weekly stack of crime fiction. Alas, I was very near the top of the list for the new Hilary Mantel. When the world is too much with me, I take to minor Trollope novels and there are still a few on my shelves unread. And of course there’s rereading Middlemarch, which, I have found, yields something new every decade of your life. So that we don’t spoil a good evening meal with talk of the virus or the menace in the Oval Office, Susana and I have assigned ourselves books that we can report on and discuss. She’s finishing a book about regenerative ecology and I’m making my way through a tome on neuroplasticity. More than brains will need rewiring when all this is over. As for music, I always listen to Mozart when it’s time to whistle into the abyss. For playing, nothing like Bach to require all of one’s attention, so the house is now filled with bad Bach on both the cello and the classical guitar. Weeks will probably become months, and we will then have to set some rules and tasks: no lying abed past 7:30, no wearing the same jeans for a second week, Marie-Kondo the closets. Ration the chocolate and the BBC World News. Don’t open a second bottle. Years ago, Susana and I gave up our faculty positions in the DC area and moved to California. I retrained in Chinese medicine and we both keep up our qigong, tai chi and meditation practices. I can’t see clients or teach my tai chi and qigong classes during lockdown, but I still go out onto the nearby greenbelt and practice on my own. It’s the tai chi that resonates most right now. Be rooted like a mountain. Flow like water. Take a step forward, shift back. Open in a big stretch, close in a squat. Block left, block right. Raise the arm to protect the chest. Keep safe the lungs even as the heart breaks for the world. REBECCA POPE (MPhil, 1978) March 20th 2020
