It takes me a while to get up to speed. The wee wife, on the other hand, is one of those people who can go from zero to one hundred in the blink of an eye. I don’t know how she does it. I admire her energy but sometimes, I confess, I find it hard to keep up. To protect myself from her energetic excess, some time ago, I invented “the coffee rule.” It simply states that no chores can be assigned or performed until I can sit on the porch and have a peaceful morning cup of coffee. The rule is reasonably adhered to, if only because I’ve learned to linger over the last few drops of brew while I watch her suspiciously eyeing me, wondering why it’s taking me so long to finish. I can see her wheels turning, coming up with some new chore that, were it up to me, would be done much better if it were put off a day or two. In that instant, I get the fleeting feeling that I’m my own man even though I know perfectly well that I’m not.

The past few days have been delightful over here on Maryland’s Eastern Shore: sunny, warm, and bright, almost no humidity, cool and clear nights. Perfect weather for chores. This past weekend, you-know-who began by painting the back steps; there are only two but they needed to be scraped and sanded before a fresh coat of paint was applied. She knocked off that task in an hour. Then she moved on to bigger challenges like repainting the front storm door, inside and out, along with the threshold and frame. That took her a little longer but only because she realized—too late—that the blue painter’s tape she had applied to the front of the glass door was not also on the inside of said door and therefore we needed to borrow a razor blade from our resident artist neighbor to amend the job. I will say she thought it was a funny mistake and she was her usual cheerful self as she set to shaving a thin line of paint off the interior glass. I watched carefully to make sure she didn’t cut herself.

Once the storm door was freshly painted, she thought briefly about moving on to the front door itself which, I will say, shows some normal wear and tear after a few years of opening it with our feet (hers or mine) because our arms were full. But some modicum of common sense miraculously intervened and she decided to put off that task, opting instead for painting all the porch furniture: the rocking chair, the Adirondack, and the small table that holds a vase of shamrocks, a decorative weathervane, and my cup of morning coffee. This, of course, necessitated a quick trip to the hardware store to procure two more cans of white spray paint. My part of this operation was simple enough: move everything back onto the porch once it was dry. OK, so I was just a bit over enthusiastic which necessitated another call to our artist friend, this time for a little paint thinner so that I could clean up my hands and remove a few specks of white paint from my new black shorts. Live and learn and be sure all the paint is dry before moving the furniture back onto the porch.

Lest you think I was only an inert observer to all the wee wife’s obvious talent with a brush and spray can, I did mow the lawn, front and back, and watered the garden. I also played two rounds of golf. Whew!

You might think that anyone who can go from zero to one hundred in the blink of an eye would also crash like a played-out puppy. Not the wee wife. I usually fall asleep once my head hits the pillow but just before I drift away, I see her lying next to me “working” which means reading a day’s worth of emails and doing her part to keep the wheels of social media turning. Once she does fall into dreamland, she falls hard but not hard enough to prevent her from talking in her sleep about her plans for the next round of chores.  After all, we live in a wood house and as she constantly reminds me, “You have to keep on top of it.”

Good night, dear. 

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer with a home in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.  Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

Another Memorial Day weekend has come and gone but this one was different. All the memorial flags still snapped in the stiff breeze, but this year, there were no parades, no bands, no vendors or lemonade stands, no gentlemen and ladies in graceful colonial costumes strolling through the town leaving us to wonder which century we were inhabiting. There were no angry patriots marching down High Street, their cries of “To the river!” echoing off the facades of the old brick houses to stoke their anger over new taxes on imported British tea. There were no happy crowds of slightly sunburned visitors lining the waterfront to watch our little schooner Sultana, disguised in British colors, bravely firing her cannons at the colonists coming to board her and to throw her cargo overboard, along (these litigious days) with a few red-coated mannequins. No evening bluegrass music or fireworks to cap off the celebration.

Instead, it was eerily quiet in town. The wee wife and I spent most of the weekend in the garden, not drinking tea, mind you, but doing the back-breaking work that gardens demand of their keepers: mowing, raking, pruning, planting, weeding, edging, mulching. By Monday evening, we were sore and bone-weary but pleased and proud of the revived look of our little plot out back. We even found time to practice socially distant dining with dear friends who live on a beautiful farm a few miles out of town. Dinner was served on separate picnic tables set out on a lawn overlooking the pond, each one lit by a hurricane lamp, looking for all the world like fireflies under a dynamic summer sky. Such a peaceful image…

But then we saw the pictures of crowded beaches and boardwalks, packed restaurants and bars with unmasked patrons out to celebrate the beginning of another summer. Trust me: I understand the impulse. It has been a long and stressful spring and like weary gardeners, we’re all exhausted by this dreadful contagion and the economic disaster it has wrought. But I’m sadly convinced that it’s not over. Not yet. The world is still spinning and until a vaccine is found and manufactured, we are all still in the grip of this hideous pandemic.

So now there is another new and deep divide among us. There are those who say, “Enough! I’m sick of this! I need to work to support my family and anyway, I’m an American; you can’t tell me what to do!” And there are those who say, “I’m worried; I’m still going to wear a mask, stay home, and respect social boundaries, not because I’m afraid of you, but because I don’t want to risk infecting you with anything I might be carrying.” One looks at the other and thinks, “What an idiot!” Sad; how very, very sad.

It would be easy to wish or hope this virus away: it’s getting warmer, it will disappear, life will go on as it always has. But please think again. This is not the time to relax; medically or economically, we cannot afford a resurgence of the coronavirus. Like good gardeners, please keep doing the hard work it takes to make this sick world whole and beautiful again. This is indeed a time of great hardship for all of us, for some more than others. We may not all be in the same boat, but we are all enduring the same storm.

Please: take a moment to remember all the ones who have died and all those who cared for them, whatever the battle. Be safe.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer with a home in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

“To open, or not to open, that is the question.” Even Shakespeare’s melancholy Dane could not have foreseen the debate raging these days as this quarrelsome little coronavirus moves into the next stage of its pandemic life. We’ll know soon enough whether the cure is worse than the illness, but in the meantime, I, for one, have come to the conclusion that I don’t need a haircut after all.

Well, I really do, but not that much. Not enough to risk spreading a virulent infectious disease to others, not enough to risk contracting it myself. I can wait. I can also wait to go out to dinner with the wee wife at our favorite restaurant; wait to invite friends over to commune on the porch; wait to reconvene the usual Thursday night gang of troublemakers; I can even wait for however long it will take for life to resume something akin to what it was like before this nasty little virus entered stage right.

Which brings us to the next scene of this tragedy, the one in which we are introduced to a new character in the drama who goes by the name of “New Normal.” I think about this character a lot these days. A few weeks ago, I wrote in this space about the terra incognita we’ve entered thanks to this villainous virus. While we’re still deep in that territory, we’re learning more about its desolate landscape every day, hoping against hope that we’ll figure out how to navigate our way through it. But now the question becomes ‘what happens next?’ Until I have a better answer to that question, I’m letting my hair grow.

Hamlet knew all too well that the world to come will be a far, far different place: “the undiscovere’d country from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will.” Of course, Hamlet was talking about death, but our current predicament must cause us to ponder about what life will look like going forward. Yes, I understand that people are suffering and that the national economy needs resuscitation, but I have yet to see an iota of scientific data that would suggest that it’s wise to throw caution to the wind and go all out in search of life as it used to be. Those who do endanger not only themselves, but the rest of us as well. So let’s hope that ‘New Normal’ will be a complex character equally composed of truths we’ve learned as a result of this current dreadful experience and imaginative responses that will mitigate its future effects while rendering some new disaster far less deadly and disruptive.

For now, we’ve learned that to be both physically distant and socially connected is not only possible but not all that bad a place to be. We’ve learned that work and learning and even play can happen remotely. We’ve learned about the basic, simple interconnectedness of life on our planet and how the beating of a butterfly’s wings in one hemisphere can create a tsunami in another. That truth alone is worthy of a prince’s soliloquy.

So for now, I’ll abide my long hair. I’ll go the barber and ask him to take a little off the top when the time is right.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer with a home in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

Saturday was lovely—sunny and warm, blue skies, just a hint of breeze—and so we put the day to good use. The two little evergreens that grace the front porch during the cold months have been returned to their remote corner of the backyard, replaced by two containers filled with lush summer arrangements. There’s a new hanging basket swaying over the porch, a row of luminescent white impatiens are tucked under the bordering boxwood, a new mandevilla will soon be sprawling along the fence, and the beggar’s bowl which I brought home from Afghanistan many years ago hovers over the wee wife’s swing, not filled with alms but with trailing ultramarine flowers; lobelia, I think.  

Out in the backyard, the birds will be bathing in slightly different spots this summer. The lilac bushes are in full and fragrant bloom. The iris bulbs we planted in the fall have made their first glorious appearance. The clematis blossoms that trail along the side wall have peaked and are beginning to fade, but the peonies underneath are only a day or two away from full bloom. Wisteria is waiting in the wings, soon to be followed by roses and hydrangea all summer long.

The grass has been cut, weeds have been pulled, tomatoes and peppers and herbs have been planted.  Grass seed has been strewn over the bald spots in the lawn. There’s more to do—the edging and mulching of the flower beds—but Lord knows, we’ll have plenty of time for those chores in the coming weeks.

Everywhere, spring is springing, a timely and blessed antidote to the fear and isolation and dislocation caused by Covid-19. A few days ago, I took a back-roads ride through the county and captured the image of the sea of yellow and the river of green that accompanies this Musing. Everywhere I looked, I could see life returning—the natural phenomena of life that seems to be carrying on pretty much as before, even if ours isn’t. I guess Mother Nature has been through this before. Maybe someday, we humans will return to some kind of “new normal,” but for the rest of creation, I doubt the cycles of life will change all that much. In fact, if it’s true that the air and seas are a bit cleaner for all our sheltering in place, maybe the lungs of earth will breathe a little easier.

In Greek and Roman mythology, spring is explained by Persephone’s story. Persephone was the daughter of Zeus and Demeter; Hades, king of the underworld, was so smitten by Persephone’s beauty that he abducted her to his kingdom and made her his queen. Zeus and Demeter were understandably upset and forced Hades to return their daughter, but the wily king tricked Persephone by feeding her a few pomegranate seeds that would forever bind her to him and his underworld kingdom. Ultimately, the gods compromised and as a result, Persephone spends part of the year in the underworld with Hades and the rest of the year above ground with us. Spring celebrates her annual return, and this year, we’ve welcomed her back with great fanfare because now we all know what’s it like to live in hell. 

I wonder how the Greeks and Romans would have explained this current pandemic; after all, even the word is of Greek origin. But were they to come up with some fanciful mythological interpretation of our predicament, I would still put my stock in science and King Fauci. In the meantime, I’ll try to find new ways to enjoy this time—our springtime of quarantine—by watching the season unfold once again in all her radiant glory.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer with a home in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

No one—not Dr. Trump, not Dr. Birx, not Dr. Fauci, not even “Jake” from State Farm—knows what lies ahead. There’s a lot of wishful thinking such as “the virus will dissipate when the weather gets warmer,” but science isn’t so sure abut that, or much else, for that matter. The fact is we’re in terra incognita, uncharted territory, sailing into either hope or fear. You choose.

While hardly a scientist myself, I prefer facts to guesswork. However, out here in terra incognita, facts are hard to come by. Try as they might, the epidemiologists, mathematicians, and statisticians who are studying the coronavirus phenomenon are not really sure if the covid-19 curve is flattening, or, if it is, whether it will stay flat for the foreseeable future. For all we know, this deadly virus may come hurtling back at us with the vengeance of a tiny asteroid bent on destroying life on earth as we’ve known it. So far, no superheroes have stepped forward to save the day, except, of course, all the brave souls on the front lines of emergency medical care, as well as all those who jeopardize their own safety by working overtime to keep us fed and safe. As safe as we can be, anyway.

Various drugs are being touted as having effective properties against the coronavirus, but until a verifiable vaccine is available at an affordable price, we’re at the whim of this small-but-aggressive protein molecule that has been seeking to do us harm for the past several months. Still, we’re trying hard: we wash our hands, we self-quarantine, we adhere to social distancing guidelines, but nevertheless I get the feeling that we’re whistling in the dark. International agencies and governments at all levels are grappling with this vexing problem; some are more successful than others, but all are moving through the jungle of this terra incognita trying not to get eaten by something we can’t even see.

The stress and strain of not knowing much of anything about the landscape of this bizarre place makes matters worse. Maybe if we had a map or could follow a trail of breadcrumbs, we’d feel a little better about our plight. Alas! By definition, terra incognita is exactly that: unknown territory. All we can hope for is that if we are smart enough and careful enough to survive this pandemic, we’ll have learned something about this strange new virus—and something about ourselves in the process.

Once upon a time, cartographers labelled uncharted regions on their maps with “Here Be Dragons.” In their time, the Romans were only a bit less dramatic: they labelled the darkest corners of their maps with the banner “HIC SUNT LEONES” (“Here Be Lions”). It wasn’t until the early 19th Century that these phrases and the depictions that accompanied them no longer appeared on maps because by then, the coastlines and interiors of all the continents had been mapped, had been “known.” Maybe that’s why this new unknown land is so disorienting: we thought we knew every corner of our planet. Turns out we were wrong.

We’ve explored the expanses and depths of the oceans, We’ve sailed through space to the stars. Like Lewis and Clark, we’ve plumbed the interiors of continents. All the great and brave explorers who took up the challenges of terra incognita have helped to name the unnameable, helped us know and understand the shape of our world. I have no doubt that someday soon, other great explorers will make their mark on this new terra incognita. After all, we’re on a new voyage of discovery.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer with a home in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.
Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

We’ve all been brought to our knees—or lower—by this hideous little protein molecule known as the Coronavirus. More than a million people have been infected by it, many fatally. So much has already been written about the virus, history in real time, but we still don’t know how the story will play out. Yes; we are all in this together. Yes, we will get through it. But those are platitudes meant to give us heart and comfort, not really answers to questions or meaningful perspectives or context to the personal tragedies playing out daily. Nor, for that matter, do they forecast the shape of the world to come.

It’s not helpful, either, to play the blame game. There are a million-and-one reasons this has happened—is happening—but the fact remains we’re all groping in the dark without any batteries in our flashlights. That’s why I’ve decided today to shine a light on the wonders of this world rather than to disclaim its danger and doom. It may not help you much, but selfishly, I find it helps me.

A few nights ago, the wee wife and I had virtual cocktails with dear friends who are sheltering-in-place in their London home. It’s much the same there as it is here: lonely, boring, scary. But as we talked into our computers, the distance between us began to melt away and we felt, for a few minutes at least, connected again. That’s a wonder to me: sitting here, chatting with them over there. It’s not a perfect medium but it’s far better than nothing. Technology can have a human face.

We’re all learning a new language, too. The wee wife likes the concept of staying “physically distant but socially connected.” I like that, too. We’ve redefined personal space: the circle of friendship—a familiar concept to those of us who (used to) play golf and concede putts—has now officially been set at six feet. I’m not sure what mathematical or statistical yardstick was used to define acceptable physical distance, but who cares? It gives us something by which to measure safety and friendships and that’s alright with me.

Time, like space, used to be relative, but now that we have plenty of it, I’m learning to appreciate it more. Now I have time to read a book or two; hell, now I have to write a book, something I’ve wanted to do all my life. So I’m doing it. I doubt it will ever be a bestseller, but I’m learning a lot, just like my grandchildren who are learning a lot in their virtual classrooms and their parents who are learning to be teachers. Wasn’t that the way it was supposed to be: parents teaching their children?

I heard on NPR the other day that this current crisis is more a political one than a health one. That caught my attention. I believe it was an Israeli sociologist who was being interviewed and he was making the point that, unlike with medieval plagues, we know what we are up against with this coronavirus and we know how to stop its spread. The question therefore becomes are we willing to pay the disease’s social and political price? Will we change our comfortable behaviors in order to kill the beast? There’s new light in that kind of thinking.

Despite all the traumas caused by the coronavirus, this is still a wondrous world. There are silver linings all around us. The hole in the earth’s ozone layer is shrinking. The oceans are cleaner. Pollution is disappearing because traffic is almost non-existent. People are exercising more, being kinder to one another. They seem to me more thoughtful, more generous, more empathetic, more creative and resourceful. Funnier. When this fog finally lifts, will these new attitudes last? Will we see more clearly, act any differently? Time will tell.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer with a home in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.
Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

Just two days ago, I was invited to a birthday party. My buddy Gavin was turning seven. There was pizza, cake, and ice cream for the kids and salad for the grown-ups. Sigh. Maybe that’s why I started thinking about the time I was seven…

Like Gavin, I was in the second grade. My teacher, Miss Cook, was young and pretty and I thought I would marry her one day. Now I know that was just a crush but at the time, it made perfectly good sense to me. It was very likely my first crush and it was certainly a memorable one. Two years later, I had another crush on my fifth grade teacher: Mrs. Lively. She was a little older, but pretty, too, and she seemed to me to be just like her name. But she was already married and by then I knew she wouldn’t want another husband. One was enough.

When you’re seven, life is pretty good. You have no idea about the potholes and speed bumps that lie in wait in the road ahead. High school, broken hearts, college, Peace Corps, marriage, grad school, two kids, first job, second job, divorce, more broken hearts, therapy, third job, second career—a long one this time—eventually a second marriage, a repaired heart, grandkids, and finally, a new home over here on the Eastern Shore. When you put it all in one long sentence, it doesn’t sound all that bad, but the day-after-day aspect of it is another story. Thankfully, it all came right in the end.

But back to seven. As numbers go, seven has a heady legacy. There are, of course, seven days in a week. There are seven seas and seven continents. Snow White had seven dwarfs. Once upon a time, there was a drink called Seven-Up and there were seven deadly sin although it seems like there are a lot more sins these days. The wee wife is the seventh of nine children in her boisterous family. A rainbow has seven colors. It even used to take seven virgins to light the Olympic flame. I could go on but you get the picture. There is something quite mystical about the number seven which is probably why the secret society at my alma mater was called the Mystical Seven. I still haven’t gotten over the fact that I wasn’t one of the tapped.

Whatever. But Gavin’s seventh birthday got me to thinking about the lay of the world when I was seven. A nice old man named Eisenhower was in charge of things and life seemed pretty good, at least until he had a thrombosis (whatever that was) out in Colorado and another man named Nixon—he didn’t look so nice, needed a shave—took over until avuncular Mr. Eisenhower thankfully recovered and went back to work. At home, one of my older sisters had just gone off to college and I inherited her former bedroom, a giant step up from the little room with the single bed I had been living in for the first seven years of my life. My new room had twin beds, my own desk, and enough space for a miniature pool table. High cotton! Sure; there were hurricanes down in Texas and a pogrom over in Greece, but at the time, I had no idea what a pogrom was, let alone knew where Greece was on the map. All that came later.

But by far the biggest event of the first month of my seventh year took place down south in a place called Mississippi: the acquittal by an all-white jury of two white defendants charged with murder for brutally killing a fourteen year-old African-American boy named Emmitt Till who was accused of offending a white woman in her family’s grocery store. The jury deliberated for all of 67 minutes before rendering their verdict of innocent; one of the jurors famously said “it wouldn’t have taken us that long if we hadn’t stopped to drink a pop.” A few years later, one of the two men acquitted of the murder later admitted that he and the other defendant had in fact killed the young boy but thought “they hadn’t done anything wrong.”

Now, more than ten times those first seven years later, I still shudder to think about all the things I didn’t know that were happening back then. Or were yet to happen. Maybe that’s a protective blessing for a seven year-old. The world can be a pretty tough place and your seventh birthday should be a wonderfully happy affair, full of pizza and ice cream and cake and a bright future.

The salad can come later.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer with a home in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com