MAY 10, 2020
MOTHER'S DAY ZOOM
So anyway. It has been a number of weeks with NorCal under lockdown and people are starting to come out again and the roads that briefly reverted to the traffic levels of 1982 are starting to return to the same old obnoxious congestion and heavy flow with accidents.
The Island is a natural isolation container. It has limited ingress and egress points. Ms. Sanchez, nee Morales, has been challenged as teacher at Longfellow to keep her charges on track with the curriculum during the Corvid Crisis. She has found conducting classes on Shakespeare via Zoom to be difficult.
The Island has experienced a curious dimension of social togetherness as in some other places that do not see boorish, self-absorbed protests against the lockdown orders via protests that demonstrate not so much American independence as American stupidity via pounding on Statehouse doors in close packed numbers and gathering with firearms, as numbskulls are allowed to do in Open Carry states.
You could see them scurrying down allyways and streets, from block to block - people carrying packages of food and necessities to frail shut-ins during the epidemic that has surpassed in fatalities that of the Vietnam War.
Island acts of kindness to neighbors in this horrid time. Just when you think the world has descended into darkness, there remain angels spinning in infinity through the unimaginable blue celestial, festooning the limbs of the heavens with the thing upon which many people focussed when it all came down to crisis: evidence that many people are entirely full of shit instead of common sense.
There remain angels. Like Betty and Gardenia, nurses at the Hospital, who continue to go to work amidst contagion and the lack of masks and gloves to protect themselves because that is what nurses always do from day to day- give of themselves to their calling.
Sunday was Mother's Day, and because of the lockdown the annual gathering of moms at Momma's Royal Cafe could not take place. So Tipitina arranged a Zoom conference between all the girls and their moms in far-off places. It seemed like a good idea at first, but the problem with Zoom is the way in which people stare at each other unflinchingly without the diversion of other things to distract during conversation. Every tic, every wrinkle, every defect is revealed by the insistent camera's eye, and each girl saw too clearly what they would become in a few more years. And of course, due to the lockdowns all over, no one but no one could get a decent hairdresser or haircut. And because it was Zoom everyone scrutinized each other's mother.
This is a distillation of that Zoom meeting.
"Hello everyone this is Suan. My mother passed away a number of years ago but i am going to be your host for this meeting today. Anyone who has any comments or questions for the group please feel free to employ the Chat and i will do what i can to have your concerns addressed."
Mrs. Pontchartrain: Hello, this is for Tipitina. I am your mother, of course. That is why I am here. Have you found a good man by now? One to replace that horrible abuser . . .
Tipitina: Mom, we have been in lockdown for a couple months so socializing is kind of difficult right now . . .
Mrs. Eastwood: Marsha how about you? How are things going? Do you have enough toilet paper? Did you get the fabric masks I sent you?
Marsha: Thanks mom. I got all twenty masks and shared them out with my friends. Love the paisley ones.
Mrs. Eastwood: And how is the romantic thing going sweetie?
Marsha: Uh well I have tried Flirt4Free.com and have a few prospects, but you know it is kind of difficult to tell how truthful a man can be when it is all online.
Mrs. Eastwood: Darlin', let me tell you a man is always lying. That is their nature. You just have to decide who is the best lier and go with that. Believe me dear, I know.
Mrs. Maldonado: Sarah, are you getting enough to eat? You look pale and thin . . .
Sarah: Mom, I am fine.
Mrs. Maldonado: Do not do this 'I am fine' with me. I am your mother. I raised you from when you were smaller than my thumb, scrimping with all my chilblaines and gall bladder causing me pain from morning to night, and Wilbur not being of any use at all, and saving pennies in a jar to put you through and now here I am so far away and all alone and not able to see anyone because of the Corbid and your father does nothing but sit in his easy chair while I work my fingers to the bone and when I die nobody is going to know but the Corbids oooooooo . . .
And there was more of that until everyone wound up weeping online despite the camera's eye. And so it sort of worked out, more or less, the way it always does in life. And it was all good.
Across the Island Mother's Day in lockdown played out via instagram and Zoom and sent flowers as love in the Time of the Virus persisted. There was not a lot of huggin' and kissin', but there remained a whole lotta Love.
