End Month One

Covers through April 14, 2020

Dear Family, Friends, and Diary,

OK, so much for lessons from Magdalena when times were REALY tough. Her April in 1945 versus ours in 2020: no contest. We worry about finding toilet paper. She worried about finding a toilet. We worry about finding good food we're used to. She worried about finding food, period. I walk in the neighborhood for exercise. She and Louis walked hundreds of kilometers, through hostile war fronts, to start anew. We'll make it through.

But still, these diaries need to be a record of how we "make it through". After three weeks of daily entries and a pause for Mamo's Lessons, it is time to resume our record, but maybe not daily. Here, I'll talk about where we are after our first month in captivity and where we think we might be, say a year from now.

Status. How are we? First, Marianne. About that elephant in the room, her radiation treatment was postponed to June due to general concern about visiting medical facilities in these times of peak infection. We all hope the COVID-19 infection rate will be much, much lower in June and July and it will not be risky going daily for 16 days of treatment. We'll see.

Marianne seems to have recovered well from chemotherapy. She generally is getting her strength back, along with a new crop of hair. With the whole Coronavirus thing, chemotherapy seems like months and months ago and that's probably a good thing. Meanwhile, she is just now starting estrogen-reduction therapy, daily pills she will use for the next years. Doctor Box warned that the side effects are similar to menopause, but should diminish after the first couple of months. We'll see on this too.

On a positive front, all this time has allowed Marianne to take on-line art classes and spend hours doing homework. Some of the new styles she tries and says "that was enough" and others she incorporates into her preferred abstract style. I like (almost) all of it.

Marianne's art career now induces teaching. Twice a week, she gives Ava and Sam lessons via the currently-popular Facetime approach. I'm sure everyone would be happier with in-person classes, but we do what we are allowed.

Also positive has been the return to home-cooked meals. Pre-shutdown, we would dine out perhaps a third or half the time. We were too busy, you know? Now we have real breakfasts and then Marianne concentrates on one mid-afternoon meal. For me, it's better than restaurant fare and she swears she still enjoys cooking. I hope so, because it may be awhile before we frequent dine-in restaurants again.

Easter dinner was even more special. After chatting with family, we dined al fresco, now that the weather is warming up, and enjoyed great food and decent wine. We have definitely cut back on daily wine, for the calories as much as anything else, so this was a treat.

And as for me? I have adjusted to a routine starting with an at-home breakfast. In the olden days, especially when traveling, I would start many days "working" at Starbucks, with a simple box breakfast and a bunch of coffee. (Now, my regular Starbucks isn't even open and I wonder how Jason and my normal barristas are doing.) Food's better now.

After that, I do whatever at-home chores I can think of, although it is surprisingly hard to actually concentrate on getting things done. On a few occasions, I have shopped for groceries, and we have used Instacart shopping service. Friends have also filled in, so we "elderly" are not threatened. I'll admit, being in crowds, as small as they are, is worrisome. I'm afraid that worry will continue for a long time.

My exercise routine is drastically changed. Pre-shutdown, I would go to the gym three, or four, or five times a week, and worked hard. I would get on the elliptical machine and get my heart rate above 130 or even 140 for 10, 15, 20 minutes - or more. I lifted weights, free and machines. Now, occasionally, I do some leg-lifts, planks, squats, and push-ups. I am very discouraged that my conditioning seems to now match my "elderly" classification.

I walk every day, usually once in the morning and once around the cocktail hour. Others on Cambridge Avenue still show up for drinks on porches and front lawns in the afternoon, spaced far enough apart to be socially-distant. Marianne's special vulnerability keeps her at home and makes me too cautious to join the neighbors, except for some conversation from the sidewalk and distant photos. Some interaction, anyway.

I take pictures to make sure I remember who everyone is. Just joking. As inconvenient as the COVID-19 shutdown and associated social distancing is, I think it has made our street even more neighborly, with more frequent waves and shouted conversations and folks looking out for each other.

I walk with a camera beyond Cambridge Avenue, but still pretty close to home, and I shoot whatever is in front of me. I don't expect wonderful photos, but it keeps up the muscle memory in case we ever make it out into the real world again. "When" we make it out, not "in case". I don't know how long I can keep this up, because I have shot every flower and squirrel and bird and building and empty street many times. We'll see.

For photography, I need the disciline of making the pictures good enough for public viewing, even if the public is normally just Marianne, me, I and a few of the guests to this website. For this particular set of pretty mundane shots, I have pushed all the pictures to a post-script, viewable or not, your choice.

Overall, I suppose I am bearing with the virus shutdown OK, OK enough.. We do not want to catch the virus. I'm not sure either or both of us would avoid a most-severe case and dire results. That's a constant pressure. Otherwise, part of me enjoys calm routine and I have plenty of THAT. Diary-writing, reading, gardening, walking, and even jigsaw-puzzle making have kept me adequately busy. And calls with my boys and email with friends help too. I just have to remember to initiate outside communication if I want to have any in return. Not too tough.

So, that is our status. What might we look forward to a year from now? For us, this last year has been so unsettling that it is hard to imagine looking ahead with any confidence, but I'll give it a shot.

I expect the official stay-at-home order here in California will largely end in June, early or late. Other states will end sooner and, I worry, suffer relapses that will inform California's decision.

We will feel comfortable driving to visit kids and friends in the SF Bay Area once Santa Clara County deaths are single digit. My figure-of-merit is deaths because improved testing will identify infections with increased likelihood, so "new cases" may continue. My guess for when? July, early or late.

We might feel comfortable frequenting shops and restaurants only once there are no new community-transfer cases of the disease in Fresno or wherever we might shop or dine. Maybe only once there are no new cases at all, but that seems unlikely. June? July? August?

Car travel will be worrisome until our destination locations match the above criteria for Fresno shops and restaurants. Again, June, July, August or beyond.

Domestic air travel for us may not even happen in 2020. Would it require the entire country to essentially eliminate community-transfer of the Coronavirus? Or is that too cautious? We'll see. We have time.

And international travel? For us that means Germany and France and we will watch progress in those locations. Currently Germany is claiming early success, while France is not. We'll see. We have even more time.

Bottom line: A year from now, we should be able to cautiously go about our lives, in part because we are lucky to need no employment. Maybe a safe and effective vaccine might exist by then, but history says otherwise. Testing takes time and getting good answers is not guaranteed. We'll see.

Regards and stay in touch,

John and Marianne