How is Today Different from All Other Days?

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Today is April 15; and like the first of the four questions asked on Passover, I inquire, why is this April 15th different from all others? In this time of Co-vid all days are the same, and yet all days are different from others. Today our taxes aren’t due. Today we need to welcome the “stranger” only from a great distance, along with our friends and non-household relatives. Today we are to remain in place and wonder what day it is? Oh yes, Wednesday, the middle of the week, and our lives are not impacted by that fact, unless we have a virtual date scheduled, either for business or social reasons.  

Today is like all other days and like none of the ones we’ve experienced until a pandemic changed everything. Today like all the days since our devastating time of this disease, I check the numbers: how many are diagnosed,  how many people we’ve lost, I continue to count every loss as an offense against humanity when our so-called President hits the bottomless bottom: new ugly acts on his part: pitting States against States for necessary medical tests, equipment, resources; witholding the relief checks from people who need that money for surviving, so he can put his vile campaign signature on them! He withheld funding for the World Health Organization at this time of Co-vid! Today I find is no different from any other day when it comes to what I think about the maniac in the Whitehouse.

And I never considered myself to be a hypochondriac. I trust my ability to know when to be concerned about my cough, (asthma); my body aches from arthritis, my reactions to gluten; but when I don’t feel very well, I’m taking my temperature. That’s different.

I comfort myself with music, cooking, wine, being in my Garden of Tranquility, and I get to sit here in my bathrobe writing at midmorning. So this new rhythm of life is now the way it is. I am blessed with the loving family in my life, with being in reach of Paul’s arms for a hug, with being able to offer love and comfort to others. This is the same as all other days, but not so. As Joni Mitchell sang: “Don’t it always seem to go; you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” I know what I’ve got, and pray I don’t get the thing that’s taking so many lives.  That is how today is different from all other days. Knowing what we’ve got. 

Angel From Maywood

Too many people are hearing the actual “…sound of loneliness,”(John Prine). I grieve for this, although nothing in my immediate personal life is causing such deep sorrow. I do miss my brother-in-law Michael and dear friend Gary who died within a week of each other in October, 2018, but my grief is for my sister and close friend Terry, because they are now widowed and alone in this time of Covid-19 lockdown.  

I grieve for the tremendous losses and suffering of patients caused by this plague. I grieve for the overwhelming suffering of our medical people, who are not only devastated by their inability to keep people alive, but because they now are having to virtually connect family members to their dying relatives. I grieve for those who are dying away from the comfort of loving touch, and for the family members kept away from those they are losing. I grieve for my country, losing it’s good soul and being slaughtered by the selfish greed of the evil that has entrenched itself.

When Bill Withers died, I wept and kept singing Lean on Me the song for our times. We all need somebody to lean on. Then John Prine died of Covid-19 just a few days later, and I couldn’t stop crying. The tears were certainly for him and his kind heart, his triumph over so many other illnesses, and his beautiful songs. He is now an angel from Maywood, who wrote (among many songs)  Angel from Montgomery, and Hello in There. He’s now “shaking the hand of G-d” a line from……I grew up in Maywood, Illinois. I was born 3 years before John, and because Maywood was the home of my childhood, I just felt a special connection, even though I’d never met him.

My tears were cathartic and a release for all the sad in me. The sad is ongoing, for all the reasons I listed.  I listen to Bill Withers’s & John Prine’s songs. We were all given the joy of their music.  And I am comforted that there are so many good people: we can say “Hello in There” to the lonely, and offer people “somebody to lean on.” And we can work to take back our democracy. That is solace.

The Together /Apart Seders

My  sister-in-law Suzanne’s dear-departed mother once said:

“It should be a crime for families to be apart.”

It feels criminal now that we, who celebrate this holiday of Passover, centered in the home, and the quintessential holiday of our peoplehood, our ethics, our love of Torah, family, rituals and traditions, are celebrating scattered like matzoh crumbs. 

The time of being at one table, the time of having the youngest child ask the Four Questions, the time of laughing at the macho men choking on the moror (bitter herbs), and trying not to choke, or tear up from the heat, the time of even children getting a little shicker (drunk) because of the four glasses of wine), are all now in virtual reality; and in our memories of the real reality. Now all of us are eating whatever we can cook, having a Seder plate laden with whatever was availbale at the store, or online (for those of us who don’t shop for ourselves); this is now how we celebrate. 

We certainly can read the story of the Exodus, say the blessings, see each other’s Seder plates, Seder tables, each other’s faces. We can hear the laughter, the discussions, examine the search for meaning in the themes:  welcome the stranger, let all who are hungry come and eat, stand for freedom, stand for justice. 

However, we can only imagine the hugs, the deliciousness of shared food, the desire to sing together (it's impossible to coordinate singing virtually without edits). So this covid-19 plague time will, hereafter, be part of our “telling” every year at Pesach. And in addition to the last line in the Haggadah being “Next Year in Jerusalem”, we will say Next Year Together.

Our Virtual Togetherness

When shall we all meet again?

Whether sunshine, cloudy, or in rain? 

When the covid disease is done?

When our lockdown battle's won? 

Till then we're in ethereal space.

Still get to see each other’s face, 

We must assure our camera’s on,

Find a good hour for everyone. 

Google Hang Outs, Skype, What’s App, Zoom, 

FaceTime, “gathered” in a room, 

Sure it’s a screen, cameras to face 

A virtual visit to be in “one” place 

Apologies to William Shakespeare ©Sherry Fishman 

An Unpretty Ditty

April 2, 2020

It should make us livid.

Docs, & nurses, getting covid. 

No PPE’s for the heroes 

And Trump acts like Nero. 

It’s getting quite scary,

His lies make us wary. 

On the White House Lawn

His entourage must fawn.

The “President” campaigns 

While the Nation’s in pain, 

Illness and death stats grown. 

Our  Nation’s States are on their own! 

Changing Lyrics for Verse in the Now

March 31, 2020 

Woke up it was a Portland Mornin 

and the first thing that I saw, 

Was the sunlight on our new leafed trees 

I gazed outside in awe, 

At the hopegiving life all blooming 

While the the killer covid looms 

Hope shines outside my window 

A balm for all the gloom… 

My spin on Joni Mitchell’s song, “Chelsea Morning”  ©Sherry Fishman