I TAKE WHAT LITTLE I CAN GET!

Ona better day

After my first visit to the hospital to visit my daughter with the procedures that are now in place because of the COVID-19, the thought of having to go through it seems discouraging. You get online and someone takes your temperature, asks questions, and if you pass muster are given a paper sticker that says you have been screened and the date is hand-written on it. Then you wait some more as the competency level of the people you must now deal with varies from very competent and accommodating to total incompetence, holding up the line of people. Then I think about my daughter and the fact that she is so sick she doesn’t know I am there. But despite it all, I need to see my daughter.

Finally, I am on my way up to the 4th floor and the ICU where I am greeted by a plastic wall with a zipper I need to use to enter her room. A nurse greets me and tells me she was waiting for me and that I need to don a gown and gloves, along with my mask. I do as I’m told and enter, and there lies my daughter Ellen, an oxygen tube running from her nose while she is soundly asleep, and her mouth agape.

As I inch closer to her bedside, I see all the machinery that she is connected to, the numbers and progress lines lighting up the screens, monitoring, and keeping the staff informed of her physical being. She looks helpless, vulnerable, and sick and all I want to do is reach into the bed and hold her, telling her I love her that I will always love her that I wish I had her suffering and she was free to laugh and giggle once more. It hurts that I can’t do it.

Suddenly, she starts to move, her eyes still shut as she maneuvers the dark world of infections from unknown origin, restrictions of her hands so she won’t pull out the different pick-lines, and intravenous that invades her body. I look at her and I want to cry.

As she moves slightly, I call her name… “Ellen… pussycat… hey, it’s daddy!” Suddenly she hears me as her eyes flutter open, a soft smile crosses her lips, and acknowledgment of my presence. With great trouble, she lifts her head turning in my direction and opens her eyes a little. We have connected, for the first time since March 7th! My last visit to her at the hospital was two-days ago without any recognition or interaction.

I ask her how she is, I tell her I love her and that she is my baby. “You my baby?” She does something she hasn’t done in a while as she plays off those words and shakes her head ‘No’ just as she always did in the past. “You love me?” she smiles. “Are you a good girl?’ She smiles, “Do you love me?” She shakes her head ‘no’, but she is smiling. Suddenly my world is turned upside down, I forget about all the inconvenience that occurred to get to her room and am glad I did it. Her smiling at me, her shaking her head, her looking at me transforms my mood from one of despair to one of overwhelming joy. I won’t leave her while this is going on, even if I have to stay until the next day! It is special!

Then, just as suddenly as it occurs, she drifts off to sleep once more. I realize that I don’t want to make her upset, that if she is asleep, she won’t see me leaving her, making it easier for her and me. And so I remove the protection of the gown and gloves and quietly slip away into the rainy afternoon, but my heart is filled with the sunshine she has given me, and her greatest gift to me ever, her smile.

GETTING THE EYE BACK

With all that is going on and my need to write, I have been neglecting one of my passions in life, drawing. If you do like I did and stop for a while, then you can lose the eye that you need to draw. There was a book called ‘THE NATURAL WAY TO DRAW’ by Nickelaides (sic) and what it taught was that you placed your pencil down on the paper and you follow the object with your eye, never looking at the paper. This of course led to some very disjointed drawing but very beautiful line movement and composition that took you out of the realm of reality.

So a couple of weeks ago I took out my easel and propped a drawing pad on it and began to draw. The first drawing was not a happy result for me, so I decided I had to go back to the basics, and instead of drawing right away, I studied. I looked at the details of the subject matter, the relationship or juxtaposition of one element to another, and then drew, and I had some good results!

Drawing is a lot like life in that if you want to understand, you need to study the whole element. You need to know what you are looking at an what you are searching for, the results should be understandable, and how you get there is not as important as getting the truth.

Listening to the news and reading the newspapers every day, so much is thrown at you that you just accept it and move on, instead of looking for the veracity of the so-called ‘facts’ as they are presented to you.

Recently I discussed with an avid Trump supporter, accusing Democrats of name-calling, claiming she was not a racist and very open-minded, then proceeded to criticize people for their beliefs and calling them homosexuals if they didn’t agree with her. She is a very stupid person, hypocritical and so badly racist, misinformed, and unable to think for, herself.

Fortunately for me, I can select my subject matter and conclude, and the best conclusion to draw is to stay away from stupid people.

FIGHTING BOREDOM

With the restrictions of the pandemic, the day can go by slowly if you are not busy doing something. The need to pass time away is all-consuming and sad. To think we are wasting our lives sitting home and yet, so are we saving them by doing so.

One of the better things to do is to call people you haven’t heard from and catch up with their lives, it keeps you in the loop and it is something fresh.

For me, I’m lucky. I have a lot to do and no pressure to do it. I like to write and draw or create some new cooking ideas, something that rings in my mind as a recipe to try. I imagine things that would go well together and I do my thing. It is fun and I truly enjoy it.

I have found the YouTube is a boon for me as I can play any song I want from the past, see things I never saw before, and learn things. Every day I create a new joke with an Italian accent and a list of characters to go with the jokes. Using Italian words for punch lines and last names seems to be a big hit with the readers who, like me, are cooped up all day.

Most days I get unsolicited phone calls from companies, so I turn that into pleasure also. They ring, I answer and they ask for me. I tell them I’ll get him and place the receiver down while the guy or woman is asking: “Hello?” “Hello?” “Hello?”

Today being July 1st, it has been almost 4 months of quarantine, 4 months of staying at home, and wearing a mask. I visit parks and beaches more often now at a safe distance and have already had dinner out in a restaurant. It’s something a little closer to normalcy.