Design Flaw?

So now this social distancing business will endure through April 30, we’re told. Might last longer than that. Darker rumors swirl. I understand it, the medical necessity of it, but I sure hope that the cure doesn’t end up being worse than the disease. But that is a problem for people far above my pay grade. I can only keep my hands busy with the task in front of me. In the meantime, I have a bone to pick with the Creator of the Universe, to wit...

What the heck is the meaning of this?? Every year its the same thing. It has literally been over two months since every other leafy tree has shed its leaves. It’s always these pathetic spindly oaks that hold out. The bottom branches hold on to their ugly, shriveled brown leaves like Scrooge McDuck holds on to his money. You cut your grass, it looks beautiful for less than 24 hours, then you wake up and the entire yard is covered with crunchy dead leaves and yet there are still more clinging to the tree. I mean, I hate to second guess the Almighty but doesn’t this qualify as a design flaw? More importantly, why does this irritate me so? Am I the only one who is disturbed by this phenomenon? Probably. 

7

Kevin parallel parked his Toyota Camry into the space on Miller Street directly in front of his townhouse with the practiced skill of someone who had lived downtown his entire adult life. The kind of money he was making meant he could live anywhere, but Kevin Rigsby wasn’t fond of change, so he still lived in the same townhouse he had rented with three others guys for three of the six years it took him to graduate from college. Once his buddies had all moved out, he had approached the landlord with an offer to buy the place, an idea which practically everyone he knew, especially his sister, had thought idiotic. Why in God’s name would you want to live in the same place you lived with three slobs from college? everyone had asked. It’s going to cost you at least ten grand to fumigate the place! But Kevin was persistent and finally prevailed with the landlord. And even Liz had to admit that once the place was his, he fixed it up quite nicely. But all the upgrades in the world wouldn’t change the fact that it was an old building in a sketchy part of town. 

During her first visit after Kevin finished the renovations, Liz had been shocked at what he had done to the place, knocking out almost every separating wall on the main floor to form one giant room that contained his kitchen, dining room, living room, and bedroom, all in one open space. There were no doors anywhere except the one that closed off the bathroom, thank God, she had thought during the tour. The other two floors of the house were virtually uninhabitable save for one guest room he had minimally appointed with a water bed, one yardsale night stand, and a flimsy chest of drawers from a thrift store down the street. All the other rooms functioned essentially as storage for all the minutiae he had accumulated over the quarter century of his life. Liz had noticed that no photographs or artwork adorned any of the walls. She added this troubling oddity to her long list of worries about her brother.

Kevin had been a computer geek since he was old enough to know what a computer and a geek were, and it started to pay off during his otherwise unfortunate college experience. He began making money buying and selling junk online, then discovered web design almost by accident when he stumbled into a chatroom of like-minded geeks. One thing led to another, and suddenly he found himself making six figures as a freelance web designer—work he realized could be done from anywhere with an Internet connection. But once Kevin finally earned his degree, he decided to stay put in Lexington. Within six months most of his college friends had moved away, and his family had begun incessantly badgering him to move back to Virginia. He had countered with the perfectly reasonable argument that he was making plenty of money, so he could fly home as often as he liked. Why, therefore, should he upend everything familiar to move back someplace he hadn’t lived in over six years? His parents had eventually stopped their pleadings, but his sister had persisted unrelentingly. He had finally slowed her advance with, Okay, sis—I’ll move back when you move back.

Kevin threw his jacket on the arm of the sofa, passing his unmade bed on the way to the kitchen. He made a quick stop at his desk, positioned to look out over the street. To the casual observer, this setup looked like the secure location of some rogue CIA operation, with three big screens, two keyboards, and a host of metal storage containers stacked randomly on the expansive work surface. He tapped out a series of letters and numbers on one of the keyboards, then walked back towards the kitchen. By the time he had twisted the top off his beer, the aggrieved voice of Tom Petty and his Heartbreakers filled his house with the travails of unrequited love.

He sat down at his desk and saw fifty unread email messages, all less than a day old. He marked the important ones to read later, picked up his cell phone and checked for texts from Angela. There were at least a dozen. In the minds of most, particularly Liz, Angela would technically qualify as his girlfriend. They had been seeing each other for several months, getting along reasonably well and enjoying each other’s company. But Kevin had no intention of informing Liz until he was absolutely sure it was an actual relationship, and with each passing day, she was beginning to annoy him more and more. It was mostly little things: the incessant texting, her inability to resist picking up after him around the house, her relentless optimism. But she was beautiful and engaging—a combination Kevin had thought himself unable to hope for in one person. Half the time he couldn’t believe his luck. He felt like the beneficiary of some grand cosmic mistake, and soon God would stop being distracted by man’s inhumanity long enough to realize his error, and she would be gone.

Although he would never admit it to anyone, Kevin had turned into a Facebook junkie. He had resisted the siren call of most social media platforms but found himself opening a Facebook account to learn as much as he could about Angela. She was a huge fan and had insisted that he would love it if he gave it a try. She had been right. He now opened his page and began browsing through his notifications. As usual, Angela dominated. Here was a picture she had posted of the two of them having drinks at O’Toole’s, and there she was commenting on something he had posted a few days ago. He looked at the smiling face of her profile picture. God, she was beautiful!

He had met her on one of the worst nights of his life. He had just flown back into town after the worst Christmas imaginable. His dad had been a complete mess. Liz and David were overcompensating with forced cheerfulness. It had been a dark, emotionally menacing week, even worse than September. At least then everyone was free to fall apart. Three months later at Christmas, nobody knew how to breathe around each other. Kevin had felt powerless and inadequate as both a son and a brother. When he landed back in Lexington, it dawned on him that it was almost New Year’s Eve, his lifelong least favorite day of the year. After this realization, he had driven straight to O’Toole’s to drink, the prospect of going back to his empty house seemed out of the question.

He saw her the minute he walked in. She was sitting in a booth with two other girls—two of the most plain, featureless females he had ever seen. Angela’s striking beauty seemed magnified by the proximity. He felt a bit guilty for thinking such thoughts. He was sure that these two girls were perfectly lovely human beings, and to punish them for not measuring up to this Hollywood angel was misogyny at its most piggish. Still . . . he settled in a booth across the aisle and tried not to stare. After an hour or so and several strong drinks, the girls looked close to calling it a night. Kevin had watched them walking toward the door, Angela hugging each of them and sending them on their way, then looked on in amazement as this stunning woman glided across the aisle to his booth, dropping herself in the seat across from him.

“Hello, I’m Angela . . . and you have been checking me out for over an hour now. Is there anything I can help you with?”

Kevin had actually started to feel drunk, but her miraculous appearance in his lonely booth sobered him up like a gallon of black coffee. 

“No, actually, I haven’t been checking you out for the past hour,” he had managed to say. “But, your two friends? Now, I have to admit . . . I might have been checking them out a little.”

It had been the most out-of-character, incongruous sentence he had ever spoken. Angela’s face had gone blank, as if she couldn’t believe what he had just said to her. For a moment, Kevin wasn’t sure whether she might suddenly slap him. But then, almost magically, her face relit with radiance, and she burst out laughing. Two hours later, he had a date for New Years. 

The problem with Angela was simple enough: he didn’t deserve her. Here was this beautiful, smart, well-adjusted woman with a promising future and a shining personality, free from any of the creeping darkness of his own. What did she possibly see in him? One night, he had asked.

“Well, for one thing, you’re adorable. But I guess what keeps me coming back is . . .”. She had paused dramatically, choosing her words with great care. “. . . I think you need me.”

“So, you’re saying I’m needy?”

“Well, maybe. Ha! I know that’s usually a negative thing, but from the first time I saw you at O’Toole’s, you looked a bit lost . . . adorable, but lost.”

Kevin had quickly changed the subject, worried that if they continued with this sort of examination, Angela might discover just how right she was. He had told her nothing about his family, but with each passing day the subject was becoming harder and harder to stonewall.

He flipped through her texts and read the last one: We need to talk. Then one from Liz: You see that email from Dad? We need to talk.

Kevin rubbed his unshaven face in his hands. The two most consequential women in his life both needed to have a word with him. Great.

A Resumption of Hostilities

Many people are taking advantage of all this social isolation to devote themselves to a whole host of self improvement projects, yet another unintended consequence of the Coronavirus. I’ve seen the pictures on Facebook and have been quite impressed with the vigor and industry on display. People are baking like never before. Cross-stitching seems to be making a comeback. Attics are being rummaged through, long-delayed yard work is being attacked with pent-up vengeance. It is all so creative and inspiring...so much so that I have determined to renew an old passion of mine as well...

Yes, I have for too long now neglected the menace that is the squirrel population in my back yard. During the winter, I usually cease hostilities due to the fact that there is nothing left for them to destroy. The temporary armistice starts around Christmas and ends around Mother’s Day. But, thanks to COVID-19, I am determined to open my Spring campaign early this year, hopefully catching them napping. Lucky for me, after four months of peace, the little tree rats have gotten extraordinarily cocky and as a result are over confident. My Daisy-35 is fully loaded and I am ready to once again turn my back yard into the squirrel killing fields. On a related topic, I certainly hope that the CDC is exploring what role squirrels may have had in the spread of this virus. Although I have no scientific data to back up this claim, anecdotal evidence is everywhere around us, not the least of which is the very expressions on their little pinched and drawn faces. Nevertheless I will do my part despite the lack of concrete evidence..out of an abundance of caution.

6

It hadn’t taken Jack long to figure out that coming to Maine without Evelyn had been foolish. The place was practically a shrine to her. What was he thinking? It was as if everything he did, every decision he made, revealed itself as perfectly ridiculous in hindsight. But this wisdom never manifested until after he’d executed some ill-advised plan. 

Jack sat in his recliner, staring across the lake at nothing, feeling worse than he had in months, when his cell phone rang. Bobby Landry. While ordinarily this intrusion would have provoked an eye roll, Jack found himself answering with surprising eagerness.

“Hey, Bobby. I suppose you want to schedule our ‘state of the cottage’ meeting . . .”

“You read my mind, Mr. Rigsby. How about I come over a little later this morning?”

Jack was about to agree when another oddball plan hatched, fully formed and of questionable origin. He heard himself saying, “Bobby, instead of you coming out here, how about we meet at the Midcoast Café in about an hour?” 

“Well, sure Mr. Rigsby . . . but we always meet at the lake so I can show you stuff I’ve done and stuff that needs doing, you know . . .”

“Yes, I’m aware of what we normally do, Bobby, but this year is different. So if you want to have this meeting, I suggest you meet me at Midcoast in an hour.”

“Okay, Mr. Rigsby, you’re the boss.”

“One more thing, Bobby. How long have you been my caretaker? Ten, fifteen years now? Enough with this Mr. Rigsby shit, okay? My name is Jack. I don’t call you Mr. Landry, do I?”

“No, you don’t. That’s a fact.”

“So from now on, I’m Jack. I’ll see you in an hour.”

Jack placed his phone on the coffee table and marveled at the words that had come out of his mouth. He marveled every minute of the twenty-minute drive into Camden, then parked around the corner on a side street by the library and waited for Bobby’s truck to appear. When it did, he briefly entertained the idea of bolting, standing him up, driving back to the lake. But then he found himself walking in the door and hearing the cheerful voice of Emmett Waller—owner of the Midcoast Café, home of the best pancakes in central Maine. Said so right on the sign above the door.

“Well, if it isn’t Jack Rigsby! What in the world are you doing in my place in April, for God’s sake?!”

“Hey, Emmett. I just had to have me some of your pancakes, couldn’t wait another day. You got any country ham?”

Jack spotted Bobby at a table in the back overlooking the bay, acknowledged him with a wave, and listened to Emmett complain about the price of ham or bacon or something. Exchanging a quick smile and a handshake with Emmett, Jack then pulled up a chair next to Bobby, who looked as nervous as he’d ever seen him. In that moment it occurred to Jack that he knew virtually nothing about the man he’d employed for over a decade, other than the superficial exterior stuff he’d picked up from other locals—his Social Security disability dodge, his epic gossiping powers, and his marginal skills with small engines and carpentry. Was he married? Did he have a family? As Jack sat down, he looked closer, saw the nervousness clearly now. 

“Bobby, relax. You think I’m going to fire you or something?”

“Well, it had crossed my mind.” Bobby glanced at the front door expectantly. “. . . Ms. Evelyn be joining us?”

“No Bobby. Evelyn is dead.”

It was the first time he had ever spoken the words. For the past seven months, it had been implied. But here he was, in a Café overlooking the Penobscot Bay, speaking those three words for the first time with a virtual stranger. Bobby’s face registered the shock with strained wrinkles and a quivering lower lip.

“Holy shit, Mr. Rigsby . . . what happened?”

“She was murdered by a drug addict while I was buying beef jerky . . . and remember, it’s Jack.”

More wrinkles, more lip quivering. Jack recognized sincerity in Bobby’s tortured face, felt his empathy, and it startled him. Still, he forged on.

“It happened in September. All of us are trying to recover from it, with varying degrees of success.”

Bobby leaned forward and cupped his hands around his coffee mug. “A drug addict, you say? A worthless piece of human scum like that killed your Evelyn? Mr. Rig . . . Jack, I don’t know what to say. Your wife was a beautiful person . . . I hope that punk rots in jail for the rest . . .”

“Nope, afraid not,” Jack interrupted, newly eager to share the story. “The bastard cheated the hangman. The police killed him in a shootout at a roadblock just a few hours after the murder. So, although he is no doubt rotting somewhere at the moment, it’s not in jail.”

Emmett placed three steaming pancakes on the table in front of Jack, along with a small plate stacked with fried country ham. He poured coffee into Jack’s mug, looked at Bobby, and asked, “Sure you don’t need anything to eat, Bobby?”

“I’m good, Emmett.”

Suddenly, Jack discovered that he had an appetite. He looked at the food in front of him and realized he was hungry enough to eat it—all of it—ravenously. He started with the ham, carving off a healthy piece and shoving it in his mouth, overwhelmed at its salty perfection. He hastily spread butter between each pancake, then smothered the stack with maple syrup—the real stuff, not the knockoff Aunt Jemima grocery store stuff. Mid-bite, he glanced up at Bobby and noticed his eyes, wide and brimming with tears. Jack put his fork down and picked up a napkin to wipe the syrup from the corners of his mouth, suddenly embarrassed by his own behavior. Apparently, there was more to Bobby Landry than met the eye. 

“I’ve never known anyone . . . never had a friend to get murdered.”

“Me neither, Bobby.”

“How are you holding up?”

Jack had been asked this question a thousand times and had answered each inquiry with something disarming and perfunctory like, “I’m hanging in there,” or the even more meaningless, “about as well as can be expected.” But sitting in the Midcoast Café, looking into the wounded eyes of his caretaker, Jack tried honesty.

“Actually, Bobby, I’ve been going through the motions. Most of the time it feels like I died along with her. Since she’s been gone, I’ve just gotten out of bed each morning and searched for a life to live—a new one, really, because my old life isn’t coming back.”

Jack gathered himself, sipped his coffee, surveyed the ancient, moss-covered rocks surfacing at low tide, watched the birds balancing on the rocks, sunning themselves, teetering in the morning breeze.

“I thought I might come up here early, recapture some magic from her favorite place in the world. But the thing is . . . this was always her favorite place. I had forgotten that part until I got here. That’s the thing, Bobby—I’m not thinking clearly when it comes to Evelyn. Any fool could have told me that coming up here was the worst possible move, since all it would do is remind me that she’s gone. But I didn’t think it through. It seems like I don’t think anything through anymore. So here I am, eating pancakes at Waller’s place in freaking April, having our annual ‘state of the cottage’ meeting at a café ten miles from the cottage. Ha!”

Bobby studied Jack Rigsby as if he were a total stranger. He had no idea who this man was. He preferred the old Jack Rigsby—the guy who held him at arm’s length, who patronized him a little but was fair, even generous. He liked to know where he stood with his owners, hated the ones who tried to act like they were old pals, who pretended to care about him, always asking about the family and whatnot. He never had to worry about that sentimental crap with Jack Rigsby. Jack was strictly business, with a sharp wit and a refreshingly sarcastic attitude. But what was Bobby to make of this new man across the table? He even looked different, his face drawn and colorless, his eyes bigger somehow and fixed on one thing at a time instead of darting all over the place like before. Now, after admitting how lost he felt, he’d attempted a joke? What the hell?

“ . . . So, what’s new with Loon Magic?”

Wait . . . what? Were they supposed to talk about the cottage now? After all of this? Bobby hadn’t even begun to comprehend that someone as sweet and lovely as Evelyn Rigsby had been murdered, and now he was supposed to discuss their leaky faucets? 

“Listen, . . . Jack, this is a lot to take in at one time. I don’t even know how to talk about cottage repairs after hearing this terrible news. I . . .”

“It’s okay, Bobby. I understand.”

Jack returned to devouring his breakfast. Bobby, more uncomfortable with each passing minute, desperately sought a way to excuse himself, but his brain didn’t work like Jack Rigsby’s. He wasn’t quick-witted, could never mitigate awkwardness with clever remarks. 

“ . . . Looks like you might have to put some new tires on the dock, the old ones have dry rotted.”

“You warned me about those last year, didn’t you?”

“I may have said something about them, yeah. They lasted what, twelve years?”

“Ten years. But if they need to be replaced, then replace them.”

Bobby took another sip of coffee, glanced out the window at the birds. “The kids planning on coming up in July?” It felt easier having this conversation while looking at something else . . . anything else.

“I imagine they will, yes. I haven’t heard from them definitively on the subject, though. What would you do if you were them?”

Bobby felt a strange wave of panic rising in his heart. How to answer such a question? Why was he even asked in the first place? 

“Oh, I don’t know . . .” Bobby began cautiously, ready to stop on a dime and deliver a new opinion if his answer distressed this suddenly bizarre man eating pancakes in front of him. “I would think that Liz and Kevin would want be at the lake, especially this year. I imagine it would be comforting, ya know?”

Jack picked up his napkin to wipe his mouth, then emptied his coffee mug. “See . . . that’s what I thought. I thought that exact same thing. I thought that if I came up here and spent some time at the lake, it would be just the ticket to get me over the hump . . . that being up here at that house surrounded by nothing but good memories would do the trick. But you know what I’ve discovered, Bobby?” Jack leaned forward, placed his elbows on the table, and redirected his glare from the birds to his mystified caretaker. “Those good memories don’t belong to me anymore.”

Jack snatched the check from the table, glanced at it, dropped a twenty-dollar bill, then stood and backed away from the table. He reached out to shake Bobby’s hand, muttering something about seeing him again before he left, and then disappeared out the door without looking back. Bobby lowered himself into his chair. He scanned the bay for the birds, but they had flown away. 

Bobby sat for the rest of the morning, trying to understand what had just happened. Poor Ms. Evelyn. Bobby had always had a soft spot in his heart for Jack Rigsby’s wife. She was everything that Jack wasn’t . . . kind, big-hearted, and approachable. He remembered the year when it had rained so much in July that one of the skylights in the master bedroom sprang a leak. Bobby had gone out on the first clear day and re-caulked it while the rest of the family was in town for lunch. He’d been surprised to find Evelyn there. She hadn’t felt well or something and decided to stay behind and oversee his work, greeting him with a characteristic smile and immediately offering to fix him something to eat. 

“No, I’m good, Ms. Evelyn . . . but I will take a cup of that coffee.”

They spent the better part of the afternoon chatting about everything that came to her mind, which was a lot. As he busied himself with his work, she expressed her adoration for Maine, the lake, and her wonderful house. She asked him all about his life—his family, his health, everything. Bobby remembered how easy it was to answer her questions, how little effort it required to talk with her. After an hour of conversation with Evelyn Rigsby, he would have confessed his deepest, darkest secrets if she’d asked. Then, her voice changed, became melancholy, as she began to talk about her husband.

“I just wish Jack could learn to love this place as much as I do. He bought this place just for me because he loves me, but he doesn’t love it like I do. He just can’t let go of things and relax, you know? His mind is never here—right here in the present. He’s always thinking about what’s next. For Jack, it’s always the next big adventure out there. I guess that’s why he’s been so successful. He’s really quite driven, my Jack.”

Bobby had been astonished at her honesty, but it wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable to hear. She was just discussing what she cared about . . . with a caretaker she hardly knew. When he had finished up, she walked him to his truck. 

Suddenly, the last thing she’d said to him that day resurfaced in his memory: You know, I’ve always said that I hope Jack dies first, because if I die first, he would be a disaster without me. Ha!

Bobby left a couple dollars on the table, glanced out at the bay one more time. The tide was coming back in. The rocks had disappeared under the sea. 

Friday Rant

Ok. It’s Friday and time to rant.

Let’s get something straight. When we come through this Coronavirus in a few months—and we most certainly will—it’s going to be important that we remember who the stars were. Who exactly was it who saved our collective asses?? Here is a partial list of those who didn’t save anything:

Donald Trump

Nancy Pelosi

Mitch McConnell

Chuck Schumer

Bernie Sanders

Joe Biden (remember him??)

Any Celebrity 

Any Athlete

Any CEO

Any Hedge Fund Manager

Any political pundit or talking head on television 

Any Journalist

I’ll tell you who the heroes of this story were:

Emergency room doctors

Nurses

Hospital workers

Grocery store clerks

Pharmacists 

Truck drivers

Cops

Food banks

Teachers

Volunteers who kept free lunches coming for needy school kids

Moms and Dads who didn’t incessantly whine on Facebook about having to be cooped up with their kids for a few weeks as if they were living at Auschwitz

Pastors, Priests, and Rabbis who kept encouraging us via technology

Kind neighbors who looked after that old couple down the street.

Hard-pressed millennials who chose to tip extravagantly whoever showed up at their door with a delivery

Ordinary people everywhere who took the threat seriously without resorting to panic and fatalism

Everyone working in the trenches to see to it that our electricity and internet continued to work.

In other words, the heroes are those all around us who didn’t have time to fear monger, pontificate about the politics of pandemics, or grandstand on Social Media from the comfort of their 20 million dollar estates...because they were too busy working their fingers to the bone saving the day.

Learning A Few Things About Myself

I have lost track of the days, the month of March having slipped into a timeless warp, one day indistinguishable from the next, the workweek and the weekend having been melded together. The only reliable, and for me significant marker, has been the hours that the markets are open and the hours when they are not. So, at 4:00 in the morning Wall Street sleeps. Maybe that’s why I gravitate to this hour.

Like all of you, I have learned a few things about myself during this extraordinary time, some good and some bad. I’ve discovered that I’m a lot moodier than I thought. There are many days when I wake up imbued with great optimism, itching for a fight, ready to battle this thing. But other days I have to fight the temptation to curl up in a ball in the corner. Luckily I am able to overcome that defeatist inclination quickly, there being no future in surrender. 

I have learned how much I crave order and routine, now that it has been taken from me. For three weeks now I have been denied admission to American Family Fitness, thus ending a nearly 17 year run of three workouts a week at that reliable institution. I cannot tell you how much I miss it.

My office has been transformed from one of the most comforting, familiar places in my life to a place of great heaviness. It’s hard to explain, this heaviness. When I am there I feel a weight descending. Normally my office is where great foolishness and mayhem happens, most of it courtesy of my childish pranks and incessant trash talk. Consequently, it's great fun to be there. My colleagues are exceptional people, very much like a family. March has changed the dynamic, made it a place of great seriousness. A sober realism has come to visit. There isn’t an ounce of panic in the place, but anxious concern is palpable. Its heavy and at times suffocating...an inescapable gravity.

I have been disabused of the naive assumption that in my 62 years I had built a secure life impenetrable by the vicissitudes of life. I had started to take on the conceit that I had somehow shielded myself and my family from most of the dangers of life by my commitment to industry and ingenuity. It turns out that there were more than a few weaknesses in Fortress Dunnevant. While I am far less vulnerable than most, I am not safe. None of us are safe.

I have also learned how important other people are to my well being and happiness. I suppose this isn’t a new realization, but it has become much clearer over the past thirty days. My children, my wife, my brother and sisters, my small group from church, my closest friends, my clients, all of the people who have populated my life are suddenly so dear. I find myself suddenly so much more solicitous of my neighbors, so much more aware of the man across the way from me at the gas pump, or the lady behind the cash register at the drug store, even the anonymous customer service voice in Des Moines. How are they holding up, I find myself asking...not as polite small talk but because I sincerely want to know. Is there anything I can do to help, I wonder? In a raging sea of bad outcomes, this is a great blessing. Humanity, empathy and compassion are making a comeback. 

I have also relearned something I’ve always known. I picked the right woman. I come home every day to her. She is always here, busy doing something useful and practical, reassuring me that this will eventually blow over, reminding me...sometimes against overwhelming evidence...that I am a good man and that she is proud of me. Her steadfast love redeems the day.

She is right. This storm will blow over. We will come out the other side. When we do, hopefully we will be better people than the ones who stumbled into the COVID-19 battle full of pride and arrogance.

Another Day in Paradise

Woke up at 3:00 with a start from an anonymous dream. As my head cleared I heard the steady roar of the rain. Made my way downstairs, rain coming down in buckets, a dreary 43 degrees out. Perfect. Weather straight out of central casting, my 60 hours of freedom over. I stood at the back door and watched the downpour. Maybe everyone would stay at home today, never turn on their televisions, refuse to take in more bad news. Maybe they won’t call today, I think, knowing that they will. They always do on Mondays. Its always worse after a weekend of breathless, caterwauling from the Barbie and Ken dolls that fill American television screens with the latest dispatches from the apocalypse. The latest news this morning is the failure of the Democrats and Republicans to agree on a relief plan. The collapse of weekend talks is supposed to be a horrible thing. Maybe. Maybe not. But oh, they will call alright.

I will tell them what I know of our strange new unknowable world. They will ask me what they should do and I will answer based on my education, training and experience. It is all I can do. I will tell them what I believe is true. I will council patience and calm. I will ask them not to act out of fear, but it is hard to hear, harder to do. Then the phone will ring and I will do it again. In between I will scan the universe of information at my disposal, trying to make sense of conflicting sentiment. I will sort through the latest data looking for both confirmation and contradiction. I cannot give in to stubborn rigidity at a time like this. I have to be willing to change horses even in the middle of so turbulent a stream. If the weathermen are right, the heavy rain will submit to a driving drizzle by afternoon.

I will come home for lunch. My house is only a mile and a half from my office. I will make myself some lunch and eat it while listening to Colin Cowherd on I-Heart radio. He’s a sports talk show host and I have found it mildly amusing listening to a sports talk show host do his job when there are no sports happening anywhere. He still finds things to yak about for three hours everyday. He’s a professional.

After lunch, I go upstairs and sit in my recliner and worry about my kids for a while. I put some music on in the background and try to rest my mind and body for thirty minutes, an hour if I’m lucky. Then, I will go back to the office and start returning calls and making a few of my own. There will be new headlines to decipher. The markets will take turns skyrocketing and swooning over rumors. When the bell finally rings at 4 o’clock I will do my best to either ponder the remarkable rally or survey the damage from another relentless sell-off. My resolve will have been tested, my faith challenged, my nerves rattled. Then I will make the quick drive home, get the mail out of the mailbox, go inside and immediately wash my hands while singing Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes, there beneath the blue suburban skies.

I will check in with my friend who has endured the exact same day as I have...while recovering from nine months of cancer and recent  major surgery. We will commiserate, exchanging war stories, understanding completely what the weight of responsibility feels like during this crisis. At some point, I will attempt to lighten the burden by cracking jokes. Sometimes they make her laugh. Other times they fall to the ground and burst into a million pieces.

Incredible...

With the Coronavirus dominating this space for the past couple of weeks I haven’t talked about how my friend is doing. I still talk with her every morning, still tell her stupid jokes, still try to keep her spirits up. Imagine for a moment how you would be handling this Coronavirus thing if you were weakened by cancer, recovering from a painful and invasive surgery, and worried sick about your hundreds of clients losing money in the stock market? Yeah...I can’t even...

So, a few days ago, she was understandably distraught. She has good days and bad ones like the rest of us, but her bad days are made so much worse by her weakened condition both physically and emotionally. She was telling me how she was feeling and she used a certain phrase that I had never heard from her. It’s sentiment startled me, alarming me like nothing she had ever said. So, as is my unfortunate tendency, I unleashed a stern rebuke:

“Listen to me carefully...YOU WILL NOT GET SICK AGAIN. I mean it. This may slow down your recovery, but you are not going backward over one stupid bear market caused by one lousy virus. I will not stand for it. Do you understand me? You have endured too much, conquered too much ground to turn back. I have had quite enough of cancer and so have you...so I don’t want to hear you say that ever again. Ok?? I don’t mean to be ugly about it...but I don’t want to hear that type of negativity from you. If you speak that way you open the door for it. You need to speak positive thoughts into your life. That’s what I have been doing for you for nine months now and for the most part you have been amazingly positive. Negative words and thoughts lead to negative outcomes.”

I immediately felt guilty for the tone of the remarks and apologized. She thanked me for my honesty and said she needed to hear it.

Fast forward to yesterday after the end of another brutal week of losses on Wall Street. It was around 5:00 in the afternoon and I was really down. This time it was my turn to let loose with a string of negative comments. Throughout this past month I have stayed relentlessly positive, not to offer false confidence to my clients but because its how I actually feel, what I actually believe in my heart—that this is a temporary setback and we will all recover and that recovery will be both swift and eventually—complete. But I’m also a human being and as such I am susceptible to despair. Yesterday was a low point and I couldn’t hide it from my perceptive friend. Her response to my negativity was breathtaking:

“I think sometimes someone needs to cheer the cheerleaders. You’ve been strong through all of this and I know the Lord will see us through. Our Lord knows what we are going through and for me its my third storm in 2 and a half years. Do you know what the Bible says to do when we face trials?...PRAISE him in ALL circumstances! Start praising God that he’s working all things out for good! I know its hard to do but I have to tell you I did it when I thought I was going to lose my daughter, I did it on days when the chemo was peeling the skin off my hands, I did it on the days when I was so sick and humiliated by the cancer I couldn’t even move. But, the Lord needs to know that you trust him no matter what. You and I and your clients know that we have no control over what has happened. So, put on some praise music and praise God through the storm! PS...I’m not fussing at you, I’m just telling you like it is. You can do this Doug! I’m an old fashioned woman and I believe the Bible. The mountaintop experiences are for our joy, but the valleys are for our maturing.”

That this woman who has endured such a grueling ordeal could say such things to me was astonishing. But her words steadied me. After all, if she can keep the faith, if she can find joy amidst this nightmare...we all can.

Ready For A Fight?

I’ve come a long way in a month.

There are a whole host of factors that contribute to the establishment of a world view. Education, training and experience are certainly three of them. Then there are the more subtle factors like personality, family, religion, how much and what you read etc..For me, all of these influences have produced a deeply ingrained suspicion of not only government but authority in general. To my parent’s eternal frustration I was the kid who questioned everything. I refused to accept their word for things, very seldom gave anyone in authority over me the benefit of the doubt. Gatekeepers of information were especially suspect. For me, Journalists weren’t people who reported on events but rather ideologues who pushed an agenda. Government officials weren’t civic minded public servants, but feather-bedding bureaucrats interested in nothing quite so much as self preservation and power. Enter the Coronavirus.

My initial reaction to COVID-19 news was annoyance. Here we go again, another media created frenzy...we’re all gonna die unless we revoke the Bill of Rights and give the federal government more power!! Then my instinctive biases took over...what the hell, it’s the stinkin’ FLU for crying out loud. where’s the fire??

My world view has benefited me in ways great and small. A healthy mistrust of government has proven throughout human history to be a quite rational and justified suspicion. Questioning authority has produced many of the most beneficial advances in human history. However, at times it can be an impediment to receiving and processing the truth. Since the early days of this crisis, I have voraciously consumed a wide variety of news from every source imaginable. As time has passed I have forsaken most news organizations entirely in favor of scientific and medical organizations. What I read there is much more boring, far less sensationalized, free from grandstanding and the competition for eyeballs and ratings. By doing so, my understanding of events, while not foolproof or by any means complete, has changed dramatically. I no longer dismiss the reality of what we are facing. The Coronavirus is a substantial threat to our country. The deaths that it will bring will be significant, the damage it will do to our economy and our own personal fortunes is considerable. 

But, there is a reason why I have not given myself over to despair. It’s another result of that world view thing. Here’s what I know about the world in general and America specifically. Human beings are a resilient bunch, and Americans are the most energetically inventive and creative people in the world. We have thousands of brilliant people working heroic amounts of hours trying to beat this thing back. Scientists, doctors, researchers and entrepreneurs are grinding away trying to get a grasp on it, figure it out and find a way to overcome it. They will. That’s what I’ve learned about my country in 62 years. We are an unholy mess during peace time, a nation of feuding tribes who spend most of the time at each other’s throats. But when existential threats appear, the ranks close quickly. Our collective attention gets focused on the threat and not on each other. And that’s when magical things start happening.

When the histories of the Coronavirus are written it’s going to be about that woman in the lab in Maryland who figured out X, and that guy from Detroit who did that amazing and gutsy thing that turned the tide. It’s going to be about the nurses and teachers, the garbage men and cops, the truck drivers, the pharmacists, the shelf-stockers. We will look back and marvel at the work done by churches and food banks, and the thousands of community organizations who held life together.  We will be amazed at the thousand kindnesses that passed between strangers. What the doomsayers predicted would destroy us is going to be remembered as perhaps one of our finest hours.

So, yes. I’m still suspicious of authority. I still distrust government. But I have chosen to put some of that aside in favor of being part of the solution...and part of the solution is using this blog to remind all of you of who we are. We are Americans...stubborn, self-obsessed and petty most of the time...but ferocious and heroic when cornered. We will beat this thing. We will win this fight. 

Count on it.