Risk Versus Reward

By the time you are reading this, we will be in the process of trying to reclaim the lives we had before the Coronavirus derailed them. Thankfully, we didn’t suffer as many deaths as was once predicted, but we are deeply sorry for those who did lose a loved one or who suffered a hardship.

Now, we move into another unknown territory: How to safely go about our lives.

While we were holed up in our homes, when I wasn’t spending my free time reading novels, I was watching television. I don’t know if it was because I was hypersensitive to pandemics, but it seemed as if everything I watched, at some point, contained a thread about a pandemic. Some I suspected were purposely broadcast. One Saturday while I was working out in my game room, I thought I’d try MeTV.

Many of my friends love this channel because it plays reruns of old television shows. Gunsmoke came on, and the episode that aired dealt with a pandemic of typhoid that threatened to shut down Dodge City much to the dismay of the merchants who saw their livelihoods jeopardized. Next on was Bonanza, and Hoss, Little Joe and Adam, although not suffering through a pandemic, were going a bit “squirrely” because they’d been holed up at the Ponderosa for more than a month because spring rains had washed out the roads to Virginia City. It was funny to see people react on the shows the same way people were reacting today.

I’m a big fan of historical dramas, and we watched the Netflix series Medici, which followed the famed family in 15^th Century Florence. In one episode, the plague struck, slowing down the building of The Duomo. My favorite show ever on Netflix is The Last Kingdom, and a new season debuted while we were at home. In this season, we saw fearless warriors quake in their boots when they met Saxons fleeing from the castle in Mercia because of the “sickness.”

I like to fact check these historical shows, and while doing that, I came across a book published in 1891 called A History of Epidemics in Britain from A.D. 664 to the Extinction of the Plague. What was captivating about this book after glancing through it online was that sickness, death and subsequent famine were such a common occurrence, it was as much a part of the human experience as life itself.

For many of us, we’ve been lucky to have been born in a country and day and age when we know more about preventing disease and nothing of the famine that our forebearers did, and we’ve been blessed and a bit naïve to expect that we would never suffer the things previous generations have had to endure. We have forgotten that life has always been a crap shoot.

Another show I watched on Netflix a while back was Hell on Wheels, which dramatized how incredible a feat the building of the transcontinental railroad was across America. The show featured a character named Eva, who had a chin tattoo given to her while she was a captive of the Indians. I also like to watch a series on YouTube called Biographics, and what caught my eye was a woman’s bio on there named Olive Oatman, and she was a real-life person who was captured as a child by Indians while on the Oregon Trail and was given that kind of tattoo.

While watching Oatman’s biography, the narrator dropped this fact: That there are 65,000 people buried along the Oregon Trail who died either from sickness, starvation or Indian attack. Can you imagine that? Or what about the thousands who died on coffin ships while traveling to our shores for a better life? Or what about the 5,000 Americans who died building the Panama Canal? Or the nearly two dozen astronauts who perished in their quest to explore space?

Now, as we venture out of our houses and timidly dip our toes back into civilized society, remember to take the necessary precautions to do what you can to remain safe, but to also remember all of those who have gone before us who knew that life has always been a risk. They also knew that not taking a chance, living your life in fear is no reward, and can be a fate worse than death.

This originally appeared in the June 2020 issue of Northern Connection Magazine. 

When Little Things Are the Biggest Things

When my twins, Caitlin and Christopher, were about six, I remember watching a rerun of The Little House on the Prairie with them. The episode was one that took place at Christmas when a terrible blizzard strikes. Mr. Edwards, the Ingalls family’s neighbor, walks miles through deep snow and whiteout conditions to deliver Christmas gifts to the Ingalls children. As little Laura opens her gift, she squeals with delight and thanks Mr. Edwards profusely for the gift, which was a peppermint stick.

I remember my son looking up at me and saying, “He’s crazy. He walked all that way in the snow to give her a peppermint stick? I’d have stayed home!” I laughed and hated to be a scoffer too, but I think I would have skipped the trek through the snow too.

Well, we’ve just celebrated an Easter, and for those who celebrate Passover, a season like no other—almost as simple as one on the prairie. We’d become accustomed to donning new Easter outfits, crowding into churches, and enjoying brunches or Easter dinners. We’d become accustomed to the ease of walking into stores to purchase items for our feasts. We’d become accustomed to participating in Easter Egg Hunts and celebrating with those we love. We’d become accustomed to being able to hold our infant grandchildren and kissing the little ones on cheeks. But this year was different—much, if not all, of that was taken away by the Coronavirus. And what did remain was changed.

Perhaps your holiday was like mine. I attended Mass online, stayed six feet away, cordoned off by orange safety cones, to watch my little granddaughters hunt for Easter Eggs. We ate Easter dinner with only those who resided in my house instead of gathering with my whole family. We went online and Zoomed with each other in rectangular boxes as if we were the Brady Bunch. 

Everything that we’d come to know love and expect when celebrating Easter was changed. But as Mr. Edwards went the extra mile in a blizzard to share the Christmas love, I’ve gained a greater appreciation for each small way that we were able to keep the holiday. Though we couldn’t go to church or dine with family, couldn’t shop for Easter finery, foods, candy, or flowers, though we couldn’t hug our loved ones, it helped to make me focus on the little things. My son and I may have sneered at Mr. Edwards back then, laughing at his simple gift of a peppermint stick, but like the Ingalls family who faced a difficult life on the prairie, we now have been humbled and have learned that little things mean a whole and sometimes are the biggest things.

This article appeared in the May 2020 issue of Northern Connection magazine.

What Does 60 Look Like?

I turn 60 this month. I had to go back and look at those digits and ponder them after I typed them. They look so foreign. Me 60? Recently, when people have learned that I was coming up on a milestone birthday, several have kindly quipped, “You don’t look 60!” But after the third person told me that, I thought, Well, what exactly does 60 look like?

When I was a kid, 60 looked ancient. That was my grandparents’ age. When I went to work, and a I was PYT (Pretty Young Thing), 60 looked like those old ladies in cardigan sweaters on the executive floor. Now, that I’ve arrived at 60, it doesn’t seem that old. Here’s a little secret for all those not yet 60: it’s not that bad. Sure, I’m not as svelte or supple as I used to be, but on the inside, I feel the same as I did when I was 16—only a whole lot smarter. I know a lot more; I figured a lot more things out; I’ve achieved a lot more; and I’ve come to learn what is important in life. I think you spend the first 20 years of your life becoming you and then the next 40 creating and living your life—getting married, having children, building a career— and then all of a sudden you’re rounding the bend and sliding into third at 60.

If I could go back now and visit my 20-year-old self, I think young me would be delighted and relieved as to how I have ended up. I’ve been blessed with so much and by so many people, it’s hard to mourn the passing of the years.

As I mentioned in a previous column, I was fortunate to go on a Caribbean cruise (before the coronavirus hit), and the ship was primarily filled with passengers who were 50 and up, and let me tell you, they were having the time of their lives. Sure, there were a lot of people on canes or were wearing knee braces or didn’t exactly look like Sports Illustrated swimsuit models, but they were enjoying themselves, with a sense of they had nothing left to prove. They’ve married, had children, had careers, faced obstacles, become grandparents and survived. There’s no time to look back only time to enjoy the here and now and make the most of what’s left of your life.

Last summer, my granddaughter Sadie, who was three at the time, was over at my house, and she was playing at me feet. I was wearing shorts, and she looked at my right calf that has a varicose vein that runs down the inside like a lightning bolt, leaving a constellation of three clusters of spider veins. She touched one of the spider veins and smiled up at me. “Grandma,” she said, “I really like the blue spots on your leg. They’re beautiful.”

I chuckled. Only a three-year-old could think a spider vein beautiful. “Why, thank you,” I said.

What does 60 look like?

A lot like a varicose vein. In one sense it’s an unmistakable sign of advancing age, and on the other its simply beautiful.

This originally appeared in the April 2020 edition of Northern Connection magazine.