Tim the Postman

My letter carrier is the only person from before Covid who is still in my life in the same way. When I retired, he became the person I saw most often. And he still is.

Our relationship began this way. My living room is at the front of the house. I could hear him opening the mail boxes. I opened the front door once or twice after he had put the mail in my box. After that, he started knocking on the door so he could hand me the mail directly.

I learned that his name is Tim, which I find easy to remember since my cousin Tim was also a mailman before he retired. If I wasn’t home and Tim had a package for me, he would give it to a neighbor or put it somewhere safe and leave me a note written on the back of an envelope. We greet each other if our paths cross outside my home. When I caught him at his truck once, he remembered that he had a package for me and handed it to me. I give him a tip at Christmas.

Post-Covid, he still knocks on my door and hands me the mail, wearing no mask. His cheery smile is the last lingering piece of interpersonal normalcy in my life. All other encounters take place over the internet or from six feet apart.

I ran across him the other day while walking six feet from a friend; I hailed him “There’s my man Tim,” and we smiled at each other. I cherish his presence in my life, my last link to the old normal whose loss we all grieve.

Wibbly Wobby Time

Wibbly Wobbly Time

Lots of folks are having trouble remembering what day of the week it is, now that most of us are away from the structure of work week and weekend, of scheduled meetings and events. It’s a problem I solved when I retired nine years ago. I update my universal calendar with the date and day of the week each morning while I’m getting dressed. 

When I need reminding during the day, I ask myself what day it is and answer accordingly. If I’m unclear, all I have to do is wake up the iThing in my breast pocket; its wakeup screen has the time, date, and day of the week in nice big print. Nope, I usually know what day of the week it is, however meaningless that distinction may seem these days.

My problem is with what time feels like; it seems to stretch and contract at whim. A single day can last forever, or I can look back at a complete vacuum where the last week should be. 

I made a point of restarting my daily journal in early March in part because I sensed that these times would be especially slippery; I wanted to keep track of what was happening and how I felt about it. My memory for what happened and when it happened is particularly bad, so I hoped a written record would anchor me more firmly in time. Maybe it would help me navigate the stormy seas that had come to us all.

Not that I’m keeping track of how many days we’ve been in lockdown; that way lies madness. It’s going to be months if not years before we seniors can blithely head outside with no concern for contagion. I just wanted to lay down a trail of where I’ve been so I can look back on some record of my travails and accomplishments, worries and appreciations.

It has helped some, having a written record to review. But what a weird time we’re living through. The days when I was glued to televised impeachment hearings seem like another lifetime. Worry about who made the better showing at the candidate debates seems utterly trivial now.

We might have to develop new means of marking time: the last time we ate with friends at a restaurant; when we understood our age made us especially likely to die from this; when we learned what ‘flattening the curve’ and ‘social distancing’ meant; when we learned about the hotspots in nursing homes, prisons, and meat-packing plants; etc. etc.

I don’t know. Maybe the only times that matter are ‘before’ and ‘now.’

The Japanese Beatle

I was listening to the classical music station the other day, when the announcer introduced a piece by Paul Chihara. That name was a blast from my past.

In 1971, Prof. Chihara had taught musicianship to my class of music majors at UCLA. Among ourselves, we called him the Japanese Beatle. He was short, dynamic, and a bit bedraggled. His elbows were coming out of his sweater sleeves, and he wore the same pair of increasingly ragged pants most days. At the end of the year, I coordinated a class ‘thank you’ gift for his teaching by sewing leather patches to the frayed elbows of his usual sweater and buying him some new pants.

The next I heard of him was the composing credit for the gripping score to the movie I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. He also wrote the score for Crossing Delancey and many other movies and TV shows. He won many awards for his composing, and has been commissioned to write pieces for many orchestras.

Nostalgia filled me when I heard his name the other day, and I wondered if he was still alive. Google told me that he was, and sent me to his website. I left him a message reminding him of our times at UCLA. No response so far, and I’m trying not to hold my breath.

Sudden Darkness

A Metaphorical Fiction

When I wake up, I cannot see anything. OK, I keep my bedroom dark, but this is ridiculous. Only in the darkest part of the night can I see nothing in my bedroom, and this does not feel like then. My time sense tells me it’s morning, and I should at least be able to see the stripes of light at the edges of the window blinds. But no; I see nothing when I look in that direction. All right, I grab my Apple device and push the button to wake it up. I hear the click, but there is no light whatsoever.

I get out of bed and stand up with great care, mindful of the obstructions at the head of my bed and the electric cords that might be underfoot. I feel and avoid them, and grope my way to the light switch near the door. Activating it has no effect.

I’m starting to wonder if I am suddenly blind. Even on the darkest night, there is some light in my back hallway, because of the many windows. I step out of my bedroom into the hallway, and it’s still completely dark. Must be me, then.

I blink my eyes rapidly. I rub my eyelids gently to remove any sleep seed. I want to look at my eyes, to see if I can find anything wrong with them, but I can’t see anything, let alone my eyes.

I go to the bathroom as long as I’m up. Since I take this path when half asleep, I can manage it by touch.

Now what? Do I get dressed and try to get help? I can probably fumble with my telephone enough to speed dial someone.

What I’d really like is to get back in bed, fall asleep, and wake up from this bad dream. So I crawl back under the covers, but of course I’m way too agitated to even begin to relax. I grumble myself out of bed again, shuffle around the bed until I find my backrest, and heave it onto the bed. I wrestle the heavy pillow with arms into place and clamber up until I’m seated against it.

I cast my mind back to yesterday. Did I eat anything unusual? Did I stare at anything bright? Did I hit my head against anything? I can’t remember anything unusual about yesterday. Not much of anything, actually. But that’s nothing new.

OK; guess I’ll get up and dressed, and hope for inspiration. I get my underthings out of their drawer and make every possible mistake settling them into place. I grab a T-shirt from its drawer and yesterday’s pants and shirt from the chair on the far side of the bed. Hope I got the buttons aligned and the colors don’t clash too wildly. Oh well.

Should I try to call a neighbor for help, or just call 911? Lacking sight isn’t actually an emergency, I suppose. Hey, wait, now it occurs to me, I have neighbors closer than a phone call. I’ll just make my way upstairs and hope that one of my tenants can help me out.

This reminds me of how I met my next-door neighbor after locking myself out picking up my newspaper in my pajamas. Sometimes a beautiful friendship begins when one person asks another for help.  Fingers crossed.