My Daughter, the You Tube Star
Well, to her handful of followers.
I used to worry about her isolation since a breakdown a couple of decades ago, followed by chronic pain…and she spent many years with me out in the middle of nowhere. But these days she’s busy all day moderating a discussion group and does this weekly you tube show (or whatever you call it). (Laura Malcolm You Tube, if you’re interested.)
This evening I have a zoom call with a local women’s circle. We haven’t met in person for months. I briefly saw the organizer last night, when she brought me some nice rotten hay from her horse barn, and it was so nice to chat for a minute. (Outdoors, at distance.) And as a confirmed hermit, I normally don’t much enjoy these encounters.
There are these electronic ways (I guess) for people to still hang out.
N’less, when I went for my morning walk I stopped by my other daughter’s place and left her & her husband some buttermilk/blueberry cake and chatted for all of 5 minutes (outside, at distance) and felt energized for a while. There’s something about actual in-the-flesh other human beings.
Used to be at grocery the other people were just, like, part of the furnishings or something. Now they’re something to be actively avoided. I go at Old People’s Hour, or shortly before closing when it’s also pretty empty, and when I and someone pass in an aisle we edge away from each other, turn away our masked faces. On the way home I sometimes drive down main street instead of quickest way, just to look at people. Not that there’s many of them, in winter, in little old Hope town. And while I used to gripe that hardly anyone was wearing masks, now I am freaked out because everyone is, with only half a face showing, or, with hats, even less.
(One woman I saw this morning was wearing a black and red checked jacket…and matching mask. There’s room for creativity…of a rather pathetic kind.)
Speaking of zoom – couple months back, instead of Canada’s largest pagan festival, which now numbers over a thousand at a converted campground but originated many decades ago with a dozen people on my former acreage, the organizers substituted zoom sessions. I was on one about the origins of the festival. On a practice run, everything went smoothly. On THE day I couldn’t get my audio to work, and eventually had to literally phone my contribution in. Which upset my and my partner-in-crime’s plans as to how to proceed. Owell, it worked out, more or less.
The following session, when I was just there as a commentator, my end worked perfectly (and I took advantage to deliver a little soliloquy at the end).
But I guess my point in all of this, if any, is that while some of our current substitutions for in-person interaction are useful for some people, at the same time for a lot of others the situation is doing a number on their psyches. Yet another thing to undo, when and if.
12/14/2020 @ 10:00 pm
Yeah. it’s difficult. Glad you’re able to drop things off for your daughters. My closest family is five hours from here and my wife’s is farther. (Technically I have cousins a bit closer, but that’s still over three.) And now even my daughter is about five hours from here, just in a different direction.
12/15/2020 @ 9:02 am
I’m pretty isolated at the best of times and now all my contact is by phone. I’ve had a couple of good calls with my daughter but my son is so phone averse I have to try to find ways to keep him on which I usually can’t. Sometimes his wife sets up facetime with the kids but they’re about as phone averse as their father.
My sister in the nursing home has gone on a new quarantine. Some staff tested positive for COVID and now they can’t leave their rooms for a week. I’m honestly scared for her.
12/15/2020 @ 9:30 am
Myriad, was your daughter delighted to get a door drop blueberry cake? Because that would make my day!
I love the youtube stars thing. I taught myself to water gild from a German youtuber video, couldn’t understand the words, but could see what he was doing just fine.
I’m in two artist groups that went zoom, one for my book artists guild, the other a long standing group of local artists. Some work days I just feel too zoomed out to click in. Fun stuff happens though. Currently there is a coffee competition going on between several of the local artist group folks. I don’t drink coffee anymore, but it’s fun to watch them in what is becoming an Olympic scale home barista pissing contest. Nothing to do with our art, but fun for the cooped up spirit.
The hardest few days for me was when my dad passed away last month. He was 91 and went quickly, but neither my sister nor I were allowed to be with him. We couldn’t have a funeral either, so my sister had him buried next to mom the morning after he passed. I’d spoken with him by phone the night he died and because I didn’t get to see him, it’s difficult to believe he’s really gone. I used to call him every Sunday night at 7–he still thought that long distance rates got cheaper then. A couple times I’ve reflexively picked up my phone at 7 before I realize he’s not there anymore.
12/15/2020 @ 10:21 am
My condolences, Greenheron. At least he reached 91, which is something. (I lost mine to later complications of an untreated head injury at eighty, but that was seven years ago.) Have you been able to visit the grave yet? Is he buried anywhere near where you live?
03/17/2021 @ 5:09 pm
Hey kiddo. I dont do many digital venues. In fact I honestly dont do any. But i love that they exist and once in a great while I’ll be forced to dip a toe in and afterwards i feel very accomplished but i still have no interest in zooming or even FBing. Im not an onlne people person. When I think about it I’m not much of an offline people person even before covid.
My grown sons are very online in every conceivable way as are my grandchildren. I suppose there’ll come a time when i start to venture back because this artificial isolation has been driving me up a wall. It turned out the husband is fabulous company but we both have come to the place where enough is enough and PLEASE can we get back to something resembling normal that isnt he and i in the livingroom. Plus i think im ready to show my work which always requires human interaction. (Sigh)
Anyhoo blueberry cake is a lovely gesture and delicious besides and im assuming youre still living in paradise. That serms like perfection.
We’re one shot down, one to go!!
Life isn’t perfect but its living and thats a fuckload better than the alternative.
Huzzahs!
12/15/2020 @ 11:06 am
KS, I haven’t been back to visit, it would mean either two planes/airports or a 14 hour drive, and I don’t want to do that while the virus is raging. The cemetery said they’d send a picture of his gravestone when it’s finished.
My dad was cold and distant when my sis and I were growing up, but after my mom died, he became almost warm and loving, sent us cards and letters, a check at Christmas, that kind of thing. Although we were not Hallmark card close, I think we did enjoy one another. He loved to call and give me old house advice. Last year, he took in a feral cat, and somehow made it tame. I have pix of him with the cat on his lap, both sleeping his chair. He would never have done that in 1980.
So is your mom still alive, or are you an adult orphan? Feels weird to be that.
03/17/2021 @ 5:44 pm
My mother is 87 years old. I haven’t seen her in over a year. She’s completely healthy and mobile, thank God. She gets exercise. She watches what she eats. She’s fine with COVID isolation because of her introversion. Everyone in my immediate family has always looked younger than we were so if you met Mom there’s no way you’d think she was 87.