All posts by Kelly

CHIAROSCURO

Camber Sands on the English Channel near Rye

I’ve always been more of a stage manager than a star.  Don’t know if it comes from being the third of five children but, especially as a mother, I’m good at getting people in the right place at the right time.  Keeping straight the behind the scenes logistics.  Ever since Mr Trama jokingly cast me as a backstage “slave” in our eighth grade play, I find I’m good at keeping track of the script, providing the required props, and supporting the onstage players with their lines, genuinely applauding those in the spotlight. Talents like Mary Jackman’s Aunt Eller or Paul Tamaccio’s Curly rousing the Radnor Middle School audience with their comedic and singing talents during our 1981 production of Oklahoma! never disappointed.

I don’t hide in the shadows.  I’m just comfortable with helping others get to their place and shine.  It’s nothing to do with humility or lack of confidence, I enjoy being part of the essential team that helps the whole show work.  You need the dark and the light parts of the stage to pull it off in my mind.  

So I found it quite startling this past Wednesday morning to find myself feeling not just the star but the title role of the production.  I found myself stepping out of the tube stop at Parsons Green in London feeling as though I was walking onto a film set or rather a stage set like one from Singin’ In The Rain where surely some director was soon to yell “Roll ‘em!” or “That’s a cut!”.  It was surreal as a Dali painting, briefly I even thought about The Truman Show as it almost didn’t seem real.  Everything was still there.  In the same spot as the last time I’d strolled this way.  The old CNN correspondent, Dick Blystone (my ex-husband’s work colleague)’s brownstone was still overlooking the little triangle of the green, people were queuing to get into the White Horse pub, the outside seating area where I’d lunched with my family the day before my wedding to Nick and hung my dress in the tree so it wouldn’t get wrinkled while I polished off a pint and a “doorstop sandwich” was all still there.  I made my way to the green via the zebra crossing instantly reliving the many times before when I’d trudged home from my temp jobs, head down against a London drizzle, plastic shopping bags in my hand diagonally crossing the park to Peterborough Road, my road, and eventually my flat about a half mile down on the right.  The park benches were still firmly set there. And in the heat of this August, the requisite sunbathers were unabashedly baring it all on their towels in the summer sun.  I had to stop.  To hit pause on the playback.  At the edge of one of the benches, I literally and figuratively had to catch my breath.  Feeling a bit Forest Gump-ish, recollecting the last three decades of my life as I cast my eyes around.  Suddenly recalling it was nearly thirty years to the day that I had moved to this country.  Fascinated by the amazing synchronicity of Life that on this day when I was twenty-three years old I had gotten my passport and residency papers stamped for entry into the UK and now thirty years later I was flat hunting for my twenty-two year old daughter soon to move to London to start the next stage of her life.

Has that ever happened to you?  The coincidence of a moment forced you to stop, to appreciate how amazingly life unfolds and even if you don’t at the moment appreciate it the revelation that it all has happened as it should? I find it remarkable.  For me, it gives me such focus and affirmation that all is right in the universe.  All is as it is meant to be.

A closer look at the scene roused me back to reality.  On my bench another sitter sat at her corner purposefully with her back to me.  The pavement had markers showing how far people should safely stand from each other. My hands, I found reeked of alcohol from the hand gel being dispensed at the underground exit.  I laughed thinking the content of that stuff was way stronger than any shot I’d ever taken back in my twenties at the bar in the White Horse.  

My arrival into London came just days after two weeks at Camber Sands.  A beach an hour from our home in Kent.  There we’d had a true reprieve from COVID.  Maskless, easily, naturally social distanced walks with our dog, Winston, bike rides into Rye and refreshing swims.  It had felt like we got to let our guard down temporarily and, boy, had it felt good.  We hadn’t been lulled into complacency but instead, enjoyed the sense that there will be a time when we can return to the world and engage in it as we remember from ‘the good ole days’ (circa January 2020).  

Like anyone, there have been so many twists and turns in the story of my life since I decided to lock, stock, and barrel move with my then newlywed husband to the UK back in 1990.  The world had seemed shocking even then on the cusp of war with Saddam Hussein’s first invasion of Kuwait.  Some of the guests hadn’t even known how to spell the country’s name at our wedding reception with a soundbite from our video recording asking “Does Kuwait start with a ‘K’ or a ‘Q’?”  What a strange parallel that thirty years on there are again global issues pressing down on our world as worrying as war.  Some could even say we’re living, not watching, scenes from a Superman film primed to be saved by the superhero.

Back in 1990, it probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that I was three credits short of my Masters in Shakespearean Studies and Film.  I’d somehow talked American University into letting me study both my passions – Shakespeare and movies (not to make but to study as a medium).  I guess my thoughts still draw to drama and cinematic references.  I’m no fool to think there’s always going to be a happy ending but I am not cynical enough to dismiss everything to a disaster film. My replaying the highlight reel of thirty years’ worth of memories was closer to Forest and his motto about, “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”  My pause on the bench reminded me of just how much I had gotten since I last strolled around Fulham as a resident of Parsons Green; the bad and the good, the dark and the light.  Thirty years’ worth of experiences I can enjoy in their recalling and rejoice in sharing the lessons they have taught me to perhaps enlighten those I know and love, enrich their own experiences or even educate them.  In that moment, I gave thanks for the full, rich, passionate, emotional, caring life I’ve been allowed to lead.

I’ve seen my fair share of ups and downs but just like at the beach I realise along the way you need both the high and the low to get the most out of a stretch of sand.  High tides to provide deep swims in which you can plumb your inner strengths when you need to to see what you are made of, how well you can roll with the waves while keeping yourself challenged and invigorated. Low tides to reveal the broad beaches with their exquisite treasures of shells, stones, and seaglass.  Small quiet gifts to put in your pocket to remind you of what can lie under the weight of the dark, depths of water.

And at sunset in the city or by the sea, did you ever notice how the best ones show themselves when there are a few clouds around?  Something to reflect off of?  Something to give definition to the end of the day.  Wherever we are, whenever we are in our lives may we always manage time to carve out and consider what has come and gone and what promise may lie in the day ahead.

Photo credit to Christy
Photo credit to Nick

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

You might think someone who easily imagines the realities of dreams and fairy worlds would be as fluttery and swirly as fairy dusty.  Christy, my free-spirit-capturer-of-the-world-in-her-art- daughter, however is actually quite stubborn. Maybe that’s unfair.  Maybe a better word would be tenacious.  She will get a project in her mind and then nothing – not food, sleep, even unfolding her long legs perched under her desk or releasing her eyes from the focus of her work – will break her from what she wants, and I’d argue needs, to get down on paper.  Art for her is breathing; way beyond just expressing her thoughts and ideas.  

Her talents run the gamut depending on which medium she decides will work best for representing her work.  Gouache for the blue howlite she painted last week.  

“It’s so opaque, Mom, I couldn’t use watercolour”, she tells me.

Fine, black ink pen for drawing the details of a colouring page she created for kids (and adults) stuck at home during lock down.  “A quarantine craft” her newly developed website, Gyllyflower, calls it.  She wanted to load her drawings on to the page for others to download directly from the website, but when she realised the “whites didn’t match” she taught herself new editing techniques on Photoshop to fix it. As though with one of her magic wands, she painstakingly used a tool to delete the white of her drawing paper around her image so each drawing itself would “sit” properly on the pdf image and allow anyone download a fairy embedded into the paper ready to be filled with colour.  It was an intricate process and I kept telling Christy it didn’t matter but, to her eye for detail and perfectionist streak, it did so she persevered until she was satisfied.  I have to admit the end product is a delight to behold and fun for a little COVID mindfulness activity.  

At any rate, I mention this as I am now being swept into Christy’s latest fascination – gemstones and rocks.  She does go to university in a very New Age-y part of the world with her college town, Falmouth, hosting two shops which sell crystals, gemstones and such.  On a student budget, Christy can’t always buy the wares of the shop so more often than not she spends free window-shopping time gazing at the amethysts, quartz and angel aura crystal.  She’s been researching about all of their healing qualities and even found some studies showing “aura” photos of the stones depicting the electromagnetic field surrounding them.  For Christy, gemstones are not just something soothing to hold in the palm of your hand, the stones are actually pushing good ‘ju-ju” out into the world.  Christy has always believed this and is teaching herself about chakras and how the different stones and positioning of them can impact all those around them.  “Burying quartz to help gardens grow” is one such task she noted to me.  I am definitely no authority but as she seems enthralled I am content to learn through her about the gems and look forward to the beautiful art work which will no doubt be produced by her hand as a result of her investigations.

It got really interesting for me yesterday although when she told me how she loves to discover the science of her passions, yet she actually prefers not to have all the science to de-mystify her experience of them.  She doesn’t want to lose the magic of nature.  She told me, for instance, she likes hearing the details about bird migration which I’d shared with her via my listening of the In Our Time podcast however she didn’t need the scientific explanation as to the exact guesses of how and why birds fly away and return seasonally.  She just liked watching them do it.  We agreed it was interesting to hear the process by which scientists conduct studies and hypotheses to educate themselves and their understanding of the world as long as it doesn’t steal the joy of watching a flock form a “V” and lead the way to and from their breeding grounds.  The air and car traffic noise is returning to our soundscape filling rather than muffling where the seasonal birdsong had been enchanting our mornings until recently.  I hope this means the birds have found their matches and are laying, hatching and raising young ones.  

Christy’s heart for and tight grasp on appreciating the value of awe is one I respect and agree with. While at the same time, I am fascinated with facts like birds weighing less than a bag of crisps (chips) annually circumventing the globe from Alaska to migrate to and from Africa.  They go over oceans with no place to refuel or rest.  The stamina for that journey is a wonder as is the determination to fight against all odds for what? An instinct? A habit? A future?

I would contend, with all due respect to Christy, that for me, science and mystery, indeed, science and faith can sit side by side. Like Megan (my philosopher/theologist daughter) taught me some of the most pre-eminent thinkers in the world allow that science and faith can co-exist.  In their book, ‘The Anthropic Cosmological Principle’ two physicists Barrowand and Tipler, “list ten steps in the course of human evolution each of which is so improbable that before it would occur, the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and incinerated the earth.  And they calculate the probability of evolution of the human genome to be somewhere between 4-180 to 110,000 and 4-360 to 110,000 so if evolution did occur, on this planet it was literally a miracle and more evidence of the existence of God.” If you don’t want to start pulling up Darwinism the astrophysicist Erik Zackrisson modelled the creation of the universe (as you do) and he worked out that Earth “may be a 1 in a 700 quintillion kind of place”. That’s the number 7 followed by 20 zeros and he worked out that of the 700 quintillion planets in our universe within the “Goldilocks” region where temperature and is just right and there’s liquid water there’s only one like Earth.  Earth’s like a statistical anomaly.” Pretty cool, huh?  (And you thought I only liked words – now you know what ‘quintillion’ is!) So maybe you can agree with the idea if the chances are so(times twenty ‘o’s) slim at the Earth coming into existence, maybe, just maybe some creator struck the match for the Big Bang…just saying, but I digress…

I don’t need you to cast your brain back to the beginning to find examples of an appreciation for Nature as a biologist or spiritualist.  Either would find it hard to deny the beauty of Nature and whichever way you wanna play its impact on us to soothe us as a balm.  On our walk yesterday discussing the crystals and bird migration, Christy and I stopped in our tracks to literally hold our breath in the sight of a peacock butterfly calmly sunning itself on a piece of wood nestled in the blackberry brambles and ferns. As we approached, sure it would take flight, Christy, ever the expert observer, noted the butterfly was making its full wingspan spread across the width of not just any piece of wood but a knocked over signpost which had rotted at the base. It was now the raft of smoothness in the harsh undergrowth of the woods perfect for the butterfly to recharge and regain energy for its next journey.  Christy smiled slowly clicking the camera app of my phone on to try and capture a photo of this beauty.  

“Look, Mom, it’s the delicate balance of Humans and Nature”, she said as she passed me the phone to show me the shot of the butterfly and the post. 

“Isn’t beautiful?” she asked.

Now I am hoping this butterfly and post will be an echo into the world.  I am hoping with all that we are contending with the echo will reverberate its message to use the good minds of our scientists and imaginers to find a cure from today’s woes like COVID and all that befall us.  I am keeping the faith we have the awesome power to do so.  To get the balance of us and this Earth back as beautifully, as exquisitely, as the design of a butterfly.  Be well.  Keep the faith. Look or pray for the magic; it’s there.

Saved from Christy’s school bag back in 2006
All photos captured by Christy Aged 20 😉

ACROSS & DOWN

BE SURE YOU PRESS ON THE GREEN TEXT TO GET THE LINKS THIS TIME!

I fell asleep last night after doing, or rather working, but definitely not finishing a New Yorker crossword.  I love doing them.  And this is not a new COVID passion.  My dad worked for newspapers all his life so we were lucky, in the olden days, to get a paper delivered daily.  I was always quick to flip to the puzzle page to see what I could fill in over a bowl of cereal before heading off to school.  When I moved to DC and my ex-husband had a job at USA Today – The Television Show, we both used to pick up our own copy of USA Today and call each other over the course of the day to give updates on whether and when we completed the puzzle racing to see who would the first to finish.  If you are not into crosswords you might not have picked it up, but Mondays are always the easiest and they get progressively harder by the weekend.  Sometimes a New York Times Sunday magazine crossword would sit on the coffee table of Neal’s parents house for a week.  They were keen puzzlers too and would leave the puzzle as much filled out as possible on the table and then when you were hanging out in their living room you could pick up the puzzle and see if there were any clues you could add answers to.  It was a great way to get everyone to contribute over the course of a week.  Kinda like leaving a jigsaw (which I also love) out and letting people have the satisfaction when they had a sec to click a piece in to place.  I liked the community effort.  It was good to feel part of the puzzle team.

I find American crosswords deeply satisfying. I clarify their origin because for love or money I have never in thirty years been able to hack the ones published in England.  I don’t know if it’s because I’m blind to the cultural references you need to have at your finger tips to crack the clues, but American ones still make more sense to me especially with the wordplays.  It is so much fun when you are doing a puzzle and you are stuggling to get into the mindset of the puzzle maker to work out what they are driving at with their trick questions often punctuated with a question mark. The mark lets you know what they are asking isn’t what they are really asking.  It can mean a play on the words or phrase.  Once you figure out the theme hidden in the title (the NYT‘s ones in my opinion are the best where you find the puzzles names are clues as well) it means you gain a hint on how to complete some of the longer responses.  Anyway, I like how once you tap into what the theme is you feel like you are in on an inside joke. I am probably more keen about this than I should be, but I have been know to laugh out loud in delight when I work out what the play on words is and gleefully ink in my final answer. 

I find not just with crosswords but in general, I am forever drawn to words.  I love the sound of them and the feel of them working their way around my mouth, past my tongue, my lips, and across my breath.  I also like the way they look on the pages as they get drawn out from the bottom of my pen’s nub.  It is nothing short of magic.  I love how words allow us to share our thoughts, ideas, discoveries, and news across the distances between us.  And I really love how different languages find similar ways for expressing the same thing.  Adore, amor, l’amour, amore…leading us back to our common roots and reminding us we are not so much different as similar. I’d love to know how the Japanese and Chinese alphabets work and the Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Russian, too. When I see the words in these languages even if I can’t read them per se, I find to me they are almost like miniature works of art.  Because I am unable to garner their exact meaning, I am left instead to simply gaze at their swirls, zigzags and flourishes while I appreciate the true magnificence of their power.  Words – human ingenuity at its best. From a scratch in the dirt to paper written, in print, in an email or text, words let us share the world with each other now and into the future. 

With words or rather their precursors, we can even look to the past. Check out hieroglyphics, time travel, and find the ancient stories and histories of the Egyptians.  I mean how cool is that?

I often wonder when they were translating the Rosetta Stone, which they used to learn hieroglyphs, if there was any humour therein.  It transpires the stone is a decree hailing Egyptian priests loyalty to Ptolemy which I’m guessing is not ripe for humour.  I’m sure a lot of effort went into chiselling out the characters into stone in three languages (thus the stone being the key to translating hieroglyphics) and those “writers” were probably saving their efforts for more weighty subjects like laws and decrees but still, wouldn’t it be fun if their innate sense of humour had them chip out a little inside joke or two somewhere on the stone?  Just to mark it with their humanity? 

Speaking of leaving a lasting mark, I heard schools these days, as they fizzle out the academic year that was 2020, are encouraging kids to put together time capsules to mark this year so we can remember what it was like in the future (like we are ever going to forget it).  The time capsules  will provide a snapshot of the 2020 experience – a thumbnail sketch if you will.  I can’t help but wonder what they are throwing in there?  Masks? Unused GCSE exam papers (in England they must’ve printed them before they were cancelled, right?). Of course, hand sanitizer, rainbow drawings, and pictures of the hirsute masses missing their haircuts as well as recordings of over-computer conversations like “Can you hear me now?”  “You need to turn off your mute”. How about unused diaries/calendars with pages left empty or scratched out cancellations?  Please, please let them include a dejected Trump meme post his Tulsa rally when he was easily outwitted by America’s teenagers fooling him he’d have a full turnout of followers only to be met with a near empty stadium!  Oh, oh and there’s gotta be a copy of the US Comedian Sara Cooper’s lip-synching of Trump’s words routine.

Finally, can I request with tomorrow night’s worldwide Hamiliton premier on Disney+, they don’t forget to include the Holderness Family singing their revised lyrics to the Hamilton tunes…”I am not throwing away my mask”!

Yup.  There’s some good stuff out there at the moment to put in the time capsule.

I particularly enjoyed Julie Nolke, a Canadian comedian’s Back To the Future style interview pretending to have a conversation with her past January 2020 self at the height of lockdown.  She has fun only loosely sharing information “because of the butterfly effect” and keeps her viewers laughing with her bemused insight into our predicament.

Just like the words, humour might be a bit cultural or generational dependent, yet, the desire to communicate with some humour is universal.  I’d argue some of this newer stuff might have been inspired by some of the old classics – one of my particular favourites which can’t help but come to mind with his passing is Carl Reiner’s Dick Van Dyke Show.  He died this week at the age of 98 I hope feeling fulfilled with having left a mark, as indelible as the Rosetta Stone carvings, on the way we laugh.  If you are not familiar with the show suffice it to say most of it was just funny observations about stuff we do day-to-day for family and work.  There’s nothing cutting or mean in it just good old-fashioned silliness – more my taste than his work with Steve Martin in The Jerk closer in charm to the All of Me film he wrote.  Of course, there is also the inheritance of sharing that good humour with his son, Rob Reiner, who among other works directed one of my all time favourite films, When Harry Met Sally.  In all of the comedy, the whole family always seemed to be in on the joke not forgetting it was Carl Reiner’s wife/Rob Reiner’s mother who famously spoke the line, “I’ll have what she’s having”. 

That being said, I hope soon we will all be doing as  my own mom always encouraged us to: laugh with but not at each other.  However, as often happens in times of stress, some of the best laughs are to be had right now, hopefully helping to keep us sane as we hold on for better times.  So I will leave you with this because as they say, “a picture is worth a thousand words” and this one is too good not to share:

Thank you, Tracey Somers for bringing this photo to my attention on Facebook!

I dream of interaction

Toys Hill walk with Nick, Christy and Winston

All things considered, I reckon I am as vain as the next person.  Vain, as in, wanting to look good in my own fifty-three year old skin while also wanting to keep a healthy lifestyle.  About this time last year I started to realise the ole metabolism just wasn’t what it used to be and I decided to embark on a new fitness regime.  I have to admit I am one of those people that as soon as I sign the dotted line on my gym membership, I instantly find every reason not to go.  I like the idea that I can go work out and be that fit person you see strolling out of a gym but when it comes down to it I am not very disciplined and need a definite nudge and some accountability on rocking up to work out.  Luckily, about this time last year, I was assigned a personal trainer, Hannah, at the Better Body Gym.  Getting a ‘better body’ is no mean feat and I soon learned it didn’t just involve walking briskly on the running machine plus throwing around some hand weights.  No ma’am.  My six week better body programme included before and after shots (not for embarrassment but to demonstrate muscle weighs as much as fat so if I toned I might not see the scales shift lower), registration with a calorie counting app to track my food intake (I found I had to find the right balance of dropping daily calories while still taking in protein to build muscle), and of course, a fake Fitbit strapped on to my wrist (didn’t go for the real thing as I wasn’t sure I’d keep it up!) so I could count my steps to make sure I was moving sufficiently on a daily basis.  Apparently time spent actually working out is really only a small proportion of what you need to have for effective toning movement.  I was already loving my new routine even before I walked into the gym appreciating I was gonna get credit for loading the dishwasher, walking Winston and trekking the laundry to and from the utility room.  At any rate, the programme sounded so good, especially with Hannah leading the way not only knowledgeably but even in an inspired fashion, I roped Megan and Christy to joining me for the six weeks if nothing else than to give us something to do together doing last summer’s “staycation”. 

I tell you all of this now as I’ve gotten into the groove and been assured by Hannah I’ve definitely made a ‘lifestyle change’ and starting to come to grips with this fitness thing. During the process I had to learn all the workout lingo to raise my game to push myself through something that went against the grain for me.  I am naturally more a cheerleader than an athlete so this is a big deal for me.  At any rate, a year on, I’m feeling pretty good for myself even now as I find I’m having to apply my fitness knowledge to another family member – none other than our laid back nine year old cat, Natalie a.k.a Fatalie.  Turns out, the stress from our house building works really took a toll on her and although she’s never been too slender a girl (never having lost the post pregnancy fat after giving birth to her four kittens in 2012), her metabolism is off (stress induced hormone to blame) coupled with her successful hunting campaigns supplementing her diet food from the bowl, Natalie has gone beyond her voluptuous, much loved, downright Rubenesque body to one which limps a bit from having to carry too much weight.  

Natalie is not vain like me, instead, she is on the edge of Type 2 diabetes and we need her to drop some weight to be healthy again.  So I’ve been told by the veterinary nurse I need to take a photo of her from above and the side to see where we are starting sizewise (just like I did at the BBG), feed her four small portions a day to hopefully get her metabolism working as it should and, finally, I need to exercise her as much as I can.  Here’s where my real challenge begins… I wonder how do I exercise a cat who can barely do a yoga ‘cat posture’ let alone ‘downward facing dog’. Dogs…that’s easy I can walk ‘em, take ‘em swimming, get ‘em to fetch – a dog, I can exercise. 6.3kg (13.8lbs!!) of cat is not so easy.  String, catnip toys, a foil ball perhaps?  I’m just not sure it’ll do the trick.  The nurse wants me to monitor this daily in a notebook and I’m wishing there was such a thing as a ‘kitbit’ to track how far she’s meandered from her food bowl to roll on the warm patio stones to loll in the sun on the brick garden wall.  I keep picturing Natalie trying to do a Zumba class or some stomach crunches or how about a side plank, but to no avail. She doesn’t even care. She’s just so happy to spread out her luscious white belly to ponder the clover or a butterfly or two.

As I admire Natalie’s oblivion about her weight issues while intending to do all I can to ensure she gets to a healthier size, I’m finding her nonchalance sometimes mirrors too much the lack of ownership for health, in general, we can bear witness to these days.  I keep reading about issues people have about wearing masks in public, for instance.  And I just don’t get it.  These people try to bring in a request to wear the protective masks as a violation of their civil rights, but this seems a bit of a stretch for me.  In my mind, wearing a mask seems akin to wearing a seatbelt or even sunglasses.  

I am totally dating myself nevertheless I remember back in the ‘80s when legislation by state started to make seatbelts obligatory in the US and people protested the requirement arguing it violated a “right to bodily privacy and self-control”.  I always thought that was a bit of a push especially now as I consider the subsequent dramatic decline in road deaths since those laws were introduced and I feel their point is moot.  My quick wikipedia search claims that from 1991-2001 lives were being saved in the following chart. 

And if saving a life isn’t enough reports note that “mandatory seat belt use and enforcement of seat belt laws results in substantial social benefits. For example, an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that in 2010 non-fatal injuries to motor vehicle occupants cost the United States $48 billion in medical expenses and lost work.”

Furthermore, Wikipedia told me that “Studies of accident outcomes suggest that fatality rates among car occupants are reduced by between 30 and 50 percent if seat belts are worn. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that death risks for a driver wearing a lap-shoulder seat belt are reduced by 48 percent. The same study indicated that in 2007, an estimated 15,147 lives were saved by seat belts in the United States and that if seat belt use were increased to 100 percent, an additional 5024 lives would have been saved.

An earlier statistical analysis by the NHTSA claimed that seat belts save over 10,000 lives every year in the US.

Finally, according to a more recent fact sheet produced by the NHTSA:

“In 2012, seat belts saved an estimated 12,174 lives among passenger vehicle occupants 5 and older. […] Research has found that lap/shoulder seat belts, when used, reduce the risk of fatal injury to front-seat passenger car occupants by 45% and the risk of moderate-to-critical injury by 50%. […] Research on the effectiveness of child safety seats has found them to reduce the risk of fatal injury by 71% for infants (younger than 1 year old) and by 54% for toddlers (1 to 4 years old) in passenger cars.”

In short, seatbelts save lives and I think masks could to. 

I remember feeling so self conscious getting into the car in high school and bemoaning the fact I felt so strapped in as I pulled the belt across my lap and shoulder.  I remember actually complaining that I couldn’t move around in my seat.  Now, the seatbelt is such a familiar part of riding in a car, I sometimes forget to unbuckle when I arrive at my destination.  I actually watch old films or tv shows, marvel that the car occupants aren’t strapped in and worry about the actors’ safety.  (as I said I am 53 and these are things I think about at times)

I know masks feel awkward and unfamiliar, but in using them as a regime for entering out into the world I ask – aren’t they worth it?  Isn’t the protection they can provide yourself and others worth the risk to your vanity (if that’s what’s causing your hesitation) to mask up and head out safely?

Summertime is here and we are all definitely seeking the pleasure of separating from the likes of school or lockdown routines to go out into the season.  With COVID there’s been so much time together at home it feels odd not to start to find ways to stop separating and start integrating however, because I don’t want this to go on any longer than it has to, I’d argue we need to do it with some level of responsibility.  It is unsustainable to keep us from each other even for our own good so why don’t we take some of the simple precautions being advised to us to allow us some of that freedom to take the steps safely outside?  Of course I, too, would far rather be blowing bubbles then working out who I can form them with, yet to be able to engage with the world again and begin enjoying, in person, the people I care about; I think the masks are worth it.

As I said I think of them like a seatbelt or even the Maui Jims I sport daily to protect my eyes from the sun.  Simple really. I know scientifically that radiation can damage my sight so dark glasses on a bright day, even though others can’t always see my eyes, seems to be worth the shielding of my eyes.  Wouldn’t it be great to raise the profile of a mask so to speak so that people wore them like they sport sunglasses?  Again the dating, but most Americans raised in the 70s would have to agree that they thought Barbara Eden’s Jeannie was one of the most gorgeous girls on the TV; her genie veil looks a heck of lot like a mask in my mind and a look I’d definitely be happy to try to pull off.  These masks have so much scope for a Dragon’s Den/Shark’s Tank product.  There’s the the bog standard one-use disposable kind or an Etsy or homemade cloth one (as long as you are sure to wash it afterwards).  If universities are going to be able to go back this autumn (that is if people can integrate sensibly, responsibly this summer!) then whose not going to design ones with school colours or funny quips?  In America – the land of the t-shirt – I can’t believe no one is cranking out masks with catchy sayings or cool designs.  Maybe I need to jump off the Wikipedia and check out Amazon for choice, but I’m just saying these masks could have some personality as they protect us.  I’ve even heard how people are going to make see-through ones so that people can see your smile (if your eyes crinkling isn’t enough) or better yet people with hearing disabilities can lip read.  These masks do not need to to inhibit our interaction they can help it to take place safely.  I’ve even found people look me more in the eye with my mask on so we can be sure to understand each other which to me is always a good thing.  

It could even get to the point we just get used to them so you don’t feel so aware of them.  I started writing this blog wanting to reference how much I love the scene of Risky Business with Tom Cruise dancing in his button down, tightie whities and his Ray Bans (so as to make the cool sunglasses reference) only to watch the YouTube clip and find he’s not even wearing sunglasses in the scene.  I kid you not.  Maybe the habit of mask wearing could be the same.  We wear them so much we forget whether they are on or not – the main thing is we are getting a chance to be together.  

And when its all done and the masks can be chucked for good.  It will be great to see how many more lives were saved by this simple, generous gesture of service to one another.

Finally, because I know mask or no mask, it can be scary taking tentative baby steps back out into the world, I share a poem read by Feral Keane from John O’Donohue’s Benedictus: Book of Blessings which hopefully gives you courage to carry on:

This is the time to be slow,

Lie low to the wall

Until the bitter weather passes.

Try, as best you can, not to let

The wire brush of doubt

Scrape from your heart

All sense of yourself

And your hesitant light.

If you remain generous,

Time will come good;

And you will find your feet

Again on fresh pastures of promise,

Where the air will be kind

And blushed with beginning.

If the poem doesn’t work, one last photo of my girl…now off to get her to try a sumo squat or something…

Natalie in all her lusciousness