WHO HAVE YOU BEEN MISSING?

Who have you been missing most during this pandemic?  I've been missing my mom, been wanting her advice. This is bad because she's been gone for 15 years.  She's the Nina Naomi this blog is in memory of.  I love being her, just for this bit of my life, this on-line persona.  I know some of us dread turning into our parents but, for the most part, I'm fine with it.  Do you have a role model whose advice you would welcome?  On dealing with isolation, limited options, money, health and child worries?  Or just plain change?

We've got a running joke in our family--"What would Fauci do?"  You know, the doctor in the White House Coronavirus briefings.  Would Dr. Fauci recommend the beach rental house?  And on what conditions?  Would he approve the college student's meal delivery job?  Does he wipe down those plastic clam-shells that the grocery deli comes in?  

Maybe my mom wasn't my lodestar consistently when she was alive. Not when I was young and going full force. I didn't always want advice.  Got enough of that at work.  Maybe you too.  But as I was ruminating on what she would tell me if she were alive, I realized:  the role model is there.  Her last years were isolated, she and my dad retirees in a rented condo at the beach, no in-town relatives, having to wait for family to show up.  World-travelers (I have a picture of her on a camel) became stay-at-homes.  Party-givers became TV watchers.  They found a way--because of their age--to accept an unknown future.  

So what did she do when her world changed? She taught herself how to quilt.  She entered local craft competitions and once even won a ribbon.  She read voraciously, especially American history.  She sent cards in her clear, even handwriting, an old-fashioned cursive.  She went shelling on the beach and organized her treasures in interesting ways, before the term shelfie was coined.  She planted hostas in the shade and gardenias along the porch.  She labelled photos with enough information so that no ancestor would disappear on her watch.  So many parallels between our coping and hers.

She would tell me, and all of us, that we're doing just fine.  That isolation and health problems, even death, can come at any time to anyone and we are made resilient.  Then we would discuss that there are tools to help with depression, grief, fear and loss:  friends, therapists, medication, God, nature, children, pets, hope, sleep, walks, a good cry, healthy mourning, books, the Psalms . . . .  And I would be helped.  I hope you too.  In peace, Nina Naomi