One of our favorite plants was not looking good. I brought this to the attention of my daughter one day last week. That plant is not looking good, I said, I think it needs more light. She peered at it and said it looked really dry, had I watered it lately? Nooo, I said, is that a thing?
The plant had been moved from its old happy home on a set of shelves to a new location in our living room. This was because the set of shelves, really just some blond pine wood balanced on glass blocks, had been disassembled and left down on the side of Cascade for anyone to take.
Every single item in my house was going out the door. If it didn’t fit in three suitcases, it had to go somewhere else. I was moving to the Hudson Valley in upstate New York. Upstate New York still has a very foreign sound to it, as does the phrase I was moving. Nevertheless, this thing happened and it had ramifications for every item in my house, right down the twenty-five cans of lentil soup in my pantry.
When the California shelter-in-place was announced on March 14th and everyone ran out and started panic-buying toilet paper and Clorox wipes, I panic-bought lentil soup. Nobody in my house likes lentil soup, least of all me. But it seemed like the sort of food one would relish during a global pandemic. I pictured us hunkered down in our kitchen, warming lentil soup over a one-ring camping stove, and feeling grateful for food, any food.
In reality, the grocery stores in Marin never ran very low on food except pasta for a couple of weeks. The empty pasta shelves would have been chilling to behold had I not also panic-bought pasta so that alongside the cans of lentil soup, I had many boxes of really cheap pasta. We made our way through some of those over the months of sheltering. They were all sorts of strange colors that supposedly correlated with vegetables, and they were really not tasty.
When you are moving twelve states over with only three suitcases, your stuff starts to lose its appeal. Cans of lentil soup: where are they going to go? I tried giving them away to a friend of mine who goes to the Food Bank. He said no thanks. I tried making my teen eat them. Ha. Then I hit on the Food Bank itself. They take food, right? I drove there the Sunday before I left. It was all closed up, the giant trucks silent and the doors locked. There were no donation boxes or notices saying thank you for leaving us your twenty-five cans of unwanted soup. I put them by the door in a cardboard box and drove away feeling strangely guilty. Why was I feeling guilty for donating food to a food bank? Covid has really messed with our world.
Moving across the continent really stirs things up. I’ve been having unusually vivid dreams, even for me. The other night, I dreamed my brother brought the police to my house in the middle of the night to investigate some awful crime. When I got up to see what was happening, nobody could see or hear me. I decided that I was either in Sixth Sense II or I was dead.
The night after that however, probably on the heels of the VP pick, I dreamed that I met Pete Buttigeig on the street. He was in a trench coat. Although I knew he was a former candidate for President and his name had butt in it, I couldn’t immediately peg him. Nevertheless I shamelessly lied to him that I was a big fan and had been to several of his town halls. Then I asked if he had any contacts in the organic farming or nutritional biology industries, as I was hoping he could help my daughter get an internship. He said he’d get back to me. Even in my dream, he was probably thinking I’m from Indiana, you mad bat!
The next dream was even better. I was sitting in some bleachers somewhere with blankets and snacks. I happened to glance up at a giant TV screen to my left and there were the Obamas, enjoying a basketball game. Barack caught sight of me, and he began to engage me in conversation. I wasn’t sure he was talking to me at first. I mean, me? From a giant TV screen? But he was. He asked me, very loudly over the crowd and somewhat flirtatiously I thought, whether I preferred sporting events or the beach. I told him the beach. Just because he’s a huge basketball fan and the former President of the United States, there’s no reason to lie.
He flirted a little more with me and then I shut it down. Come on dude, Michelle’s right there. Throughout the rest of the very long dream, I kept repeating our conversation to everyone I met. Nobody was as impressed as I thought they should be. Still, the overall effect was a very warm glowy feeling. And compared to my usual nights of being menaced, murdered, or left friendless and alone in strange cities, this was pretty good.
Now I am on the other side of the continent. I have been here for a week, the DNC has come and gone, and California is burning. The Bay Area has the worst air quality in the world right now. Friends keep texting me: you got out just in time. But most of the people I love in this world are back there, breathing ash and watching the forecast for more lightning.
Hudson Valley is a little slice of heaven. The sun is hot, the rain is warm, and the countryside Arcadian. It’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t seen it how gorgeous it is. Covid is still raging across the world. Soon the leaves will turn here, the mornings get crisp, and we’ll head into my first snowy Winter with its election and its threat of further lockdowns. We might get snowed in, snowed under, or just plain snowed. All that notwithstanding, there isn’t a single can of lentil soup in my house.
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