Life in a Covid-19 Hot Spot – Week 37 – What’s the Point? (LATC 12/9/20)
Setting up for Thanksgiving was difficult this year. I brought out my late mother-in-law’s harvest-red paisley tablecloth and the bin full of Thanksgiving cornucopias, fake fruit, and fold-out turkeys for decorating the table. Since we didn’t need to put any leaves in the table, I had to fold the cloth under at both ends to keep it from dragging on the floor, and we only had room for one cornucopia and one turkey. What’s the point of polishing the silver and setting out my grandmother’s crystal candleholders if it’s just the two of us?
But the two of us are important. I realized how thankful I was that I wasn’t eating Thanksgiving dinner alone. I got out the silver and the candleholders.
The day after Thanksgiving we usually start decorating for Christmas. I dragged the artificial tree out of the attic and found the outdoor lights in a box behind them, buried under a year’s worth of odds and ends. We have this light-stringing business down. The lights are put away in orderly coils labeled “Garage”, “Kitchen Window”, “Front Porch Swags”, “Porch Eaves”, “Living Room Window”. The cup hooks which hold the strings are painted white to blend with our trim, so they become invisible out of season. My husband has taken apart my garden shuffle hoe to devise a tool which enables him to lift the strings onto the cup hooks with minimal trips up and down a ladder. 
As we arranged five over-size lights on the lemon tree in front of our picture window, I mentioned “The only trouble with these big lights is that they block the view of our tree inside from anyone passing by. “
“We don’t do it for the neighbors, we do it for us,” he answered.
Just then our neighbor, who happens to be Jewish, walked by. “Putting your lights up again!” she called out. “It always lifts my spirits when I see your lights go up each year!”
“Mine too!” I called back, trying hard not to smirk at my husband.
The lights and the tree are for us, but they are also for others. At least a few times a week during the holiday season I know we will be driving around different neighborhoods looking at holiday light displays. And each display tells us something. Whether it is the flickering candles of Dewali, blue and white lights surrounding a menorah, old-fashioned multi-colored incandescents strung along the eaves, dazzling LED displays zigzagging up and down the tree branches, or even Darth Vader and Yoda wearing Santa hats and battling with red and green light sabers, someone in this house is reaching out to let us know a little bit about who they are.
In this difficult time of separation, custom and tradition are comforting. So we will put up our Christmas tree, even though our four- year- old granddaughter can’t come to help us decorate it. I’m hoping someone else’s granddaughter might walk past and see our tree, and that it will make her smile.
So we had a family reunion, properly distanced. The campers set up their tents in the yard (separate tents, properly distanced) and set off for a 16-mile hike which included a fair segment of asphalt and sidewalks, summited the local peak (Elevation, 2,812 ft) and a stop at a local pub able to serve a cold beer with outside seating.
I’m just beginning to feel some fraying in the social fabric. My son refused to get together for a mid-point picnic between our homes, as his son and daughter had recently traveled and he couldn’t guarantee they weren’t infectious. For the same reason my other son canceled a planned joint camping trip with his brother’s family – an infection in his four-room apartment would be a disaster, and he couldn’t risk it. Still not “serious”, no-one is ill, but when families are afraid to meet, that’s wrenching.
When I was a child, my parents moved us from Palo Alto to a small city of about the same size in the segregated South. (It was a bad move, but that’s another story.) My parents were from a part of the country where you were more likely to see an antelope walking down the street than a person of African descent. I had to learn some new words, and meanings of words.
Which leads to that awkward expression “person of color.” Since “colored” historically referred to those people now called “Black”, a new term was needed which would be more inclusive of people who are not of European descent and appearance. This includes those formerly called “Indians” who are now “Indigenous”, also capitalized. It also includes people originating from south of the US border who were “Mexicans” or “Spanish” in my youth, and then became “Hispanics”. This word has now been discarded as being too deferential to the genocidal Conquistadores. “Latino” was used next, but this word recently has been interpreted as sexist and supplanted by “Latinx”.
Years ago, my father used to say “Everything I know about life I learned from Tarzan of the Apes.” Although some tattered Tarzan paperbacks were around the house, somehow I never got around to reading them, though my kid sister read the series avidly. Some time back I mentioned this family story to my husband, and as a gag gift at Christmas he gave me the first four books of the series. They sat on my bookshelf untouched until four months into lockdown. With all libraries closed and the neighborhood Little Free Libraries exhausted, I turned in desperation to the Lord of the Jungle for escape.
Of course, we couldn’t leave it there. The second volume, The Return of Tarzan, sees Tarzan transformed into a 1912 version of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher: handsome, well-spoken, without ties, and able to fend off an adoring female or fight off a dozen malefactors without suffering a scratch. I’m about half-way through this volume, but I’m pretty sure that Tarzan’s true love Jane Porter will end up in his arms by the end. After all, I still have Son of Tarzan and Tarzan the Untamed waiting on the shelf, and I’m pretty sure Tarzan didn’t get it on with any of the apes.
I read the disheartening news articles at the end of May about the George Floyd protests gone awry. I read about looters standing with crowbars at the ready as peaceful protesters marched down the streets of San Francisco and Oakland . They were waiting for the right moment to turn and smash a window for plunder. I read about rubber bullets and tear gas and arson and professional criminals driving up in vans to strip computer shops and appliance stores of their goods.
Allyson Johnson 