Reading post: Iola Leroy and two other novels

Another reading post: ignore if it's not your thing.

My seventh book for the Classics Challenge is Iola Leroy or Shadows Uplifted by Frances E. W. Harper, published in 1892 (24 years after the last book I read for the challenge, Little Women). I chose this to fit into category #10, "Classic About a Family." The version I found at the Bookworm was part of a volume called The African-American Novel in the Age of Reaction, edited by William L. Andrews, and containing two other novels by Black authors as well. So, after Iola, I read the other two. Together, the three novels make a powerful reading experience.

The "Age of Reaction," according to Andrews, was the time after Reconstruction when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of "separate but equal," Black voter suppression intensified, and the Jim Crow era took off. In other words, it was a pretty horrible time in our country's history. Each of these novels deals with that time in different ways, from optimism and encouragement (Harper), to sad realism (Chesnutt), to pessimism and irony (Dunbar). And finally, all three are about African-American families.

I knew Iola Leroy had something to do with a family. But when I think of a "family novel" I think warm and fuzzy, with some problems to use up the space in the novel, but ending with everyone sitting around a Christmas tree, or whatever. That is not the plot of Iola Leroy. Iola is the story of a family split apart by slavery -- split multiple times -- and how they find each other again, once slavery is abolished. It's also the story of a young woman who can pass as white but chooses to align herself with Black people instead. And finally it is a somewhat sanitized history of Black life in America from the end of the Civil War until perhaps the 1880s (exact dates are unclear). 

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, the author, was a freeborn Black woman originally from Baltimore, and later of Philadelphia, who published poetry, abolitionist works, and novels. She was active in many causes, including prohibition and women's suffrage, as well as abolitionism and then Black rights. Her concept of "fiction" in Iola Leroy is a little disappointing -- many of her characters just mouth historical facts or platitudes. It's as much a Black rights tract as it is fiction, and often Harper's goal seems to be a history lesson plus encouragement for Black people not to give up hope amid the horrors of post-Reconstruction. Also, a portion of her story is borrowed from Clotel, which in turn borrowed from Uncle Tom's Cabin, so I kept feeling as though I were reading the same story for the third time. Harper isn't a talented stylist. But she has a moving story to tell.

The first members of the family we encounter are Robert Johnson, a soon-to-be-freed slave, and Iola Leroy, the raised-as-white daughter of a white man and a light-skinned woman, who after her father's death is sold into slavery by a wicked cousin of his. Robert and Iola are uncle and niece, but it takes them a while to figure this out. They go on to search for and find Robert's mother, Iola's brother, and Iola's mother Marie (Robert's sister). The reunions are of course joyful, but what's sad is that none of them recognize each other. Iola and her mother and brother have only been separated for five or six years, so they eventually make the connection. But Robert's mother and sister were sold when he was very young, and Marie was sold away from her mother soon after. They figure out the relationships by birthmarks and such, and they recreate a happy loving family after the devastations of slavery, but they don't actually remember each other. That broke my heart and really made me think about Black families. 

 

Slavery was abolished almost 155 years ago (December 18, 1865). The oldest relative I can remember knowing was my mother's father, who was born 15 years later, in November 1880. So if my family were Black, my grandfather's parents (my great-grandparents) could have been slaves. That's how recent slavery is. I know many things about my ancestors, stretching back to the 1600s. Most African-Americans in this country just don't have that type of information, even though many of their ancestors came to this country (against their will) around the same time mine did.

Many awful things happen in Iola Leroy, but the book puts a positive spin on everything and it ends happily, with Iola choosing to identify as Black, even though she is perhaps 7/8 white. I'm a little tired of the "passing" theme, but I should note that the book also contains intelligent, successful characters who are identified as "unmixed" (Miss Delany, Rev. Carmicle), unlike earlier novels where only light-skinned characters were allowed to succeed. In addition, Harper marries a fully Black character to an able-to-pass-as-white character (not Iola), which would have shocked some of her readers in 1892. Harper was writing a vision of how she wanted things to be, post-slavery, in the face of all the bad things that were actually happening, and I appreciated that, even though it is so far from the truth.

The shadows have been lifted from all their lives; and peace, like bright dew, has descended upon their paths. Blessed themselves, their lives are a blessing to others.

After reading Iola, I skipped the second book and jumped ahead to The Sport of the Gods, by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1902). Andrews, the editor of the volume, describes Sport as "grim, urban realism anticipating the work of Richard Wright," and a "chronicle of frustration and demoralization," with "themes of human futility and fatalism." This did not sound good to me. But every book can't be as positive as Iola Leroy, so I gave Sport a try.

In fact, The Sport of the Gods was less painful than I expected, because Dunbar writes well, and because I think the novel is intended to be more ironic than realistic. It's a terrible story, on the face of it -- Berry Hamilton, a Black butler who has served his white employer faithfully for 20 years, is wrongly accused of theft and thrown in prison, causing his whole family to lose their home as well. His wife and two teenage children leave their Southern town and move to New York, where one by one they are corrupted by the evils of urban life. No one back home or in New York will help the Hamilton family -- there seem to be no good people anywhere in the world. Instead of the painstaking reconstruction of the Black family in Iola Leroy, here we get the painful destruction of one. But you don't get to know the characters well enough to feel too badly for them, especially as the novel progresses and you realize that everyone, even Mrs. Hamilton, will be pulled under eventually by forces greater than themselves. Some of the problems are fixed by the end of the book, but nothing ever really gets fixed.

It was not a happy life, but it was all that was left to them, and they took it up without complaint, for they knew they were powerless against some Will infinitely stronger than their own.

Andrews claims that Sport addresses "the advantages and disadvantages of black migration from the rural South to the urban North." Another way to put it is that Dunbar implies Black people (at the time) are screwed no matter where they go. Dunbar himself grew up in Dayton, Ohio, the free child of freed slaves, though he spent time in London, New York, Washington, DC, and even Colorado. Dead at 33 of tuberculosis, he still managed to write and publish a large body of varied work before his death. At his white high school in Dayton, according to Wikipedia, he was "elected as president of the school's literary society," among other successes. He was a friend of the Wright brothers. I began to want to know more about Dunbar, so eventually I found myself back on Amazon, ordering Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow: The Tragic Courtship and Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore by Eleanor Alexander (our library only has an online version and I still can't get books from Prospector). I'm looking forward to reading it.

 

[Post-note: I read it, and it was quite interesting, but very sad. Dunbar was an alcoholic and an abuser. Now I want to know less about Dunbar and more about Alice.]

Finally it was time to read The Marrow of Tradition by Charles W. Chesnutt (1901). I was dreading this book, because I knew it was a fictionalized version of the white-on-Black "Wilmington Massacre" of 1898. I had never heard of the Wilmington Massacre until a few months ago, when I read about it in the New Yorker. And then I learned about the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, when Trump planned his unfortunate rally in Tulsa. And I thought, OK, I have to read this book. So I did. But it was just as painful as I'd feared it would be. It's worth reading, but it's so very sad.

The story's frame is the relationship between two half-sisters: the elder, Olivia, white, married to Major Carteret, the editor of the local racist newspaper, and the younger, Janet, light-skinned Black, thought to be illegitimate, married to Dr. Miller, the local "colored" doctor. Olivia doesn't speak to Janet, due to her understanding of the relationship between her father and Janet's mother, and the general embarrassment of having a Black sister. Major Carteret helps incite a political coup and riot/massacre against the Black citizens of the town (called Wellington in the novel), and at the end, after Janet's child has been killed in the fighting and Olivia needs Dr. Miller's help to save her own child, Olivia is forced to apologize to Janet and accept her as a sister.

So again, this is a book about family, but it is a family that destroys itself from within. Perhaps at the end there is a little hint of racial reconciliation, but I wasn't uplifted by it. Too little too late, as Dr. Miller says when Olivia asks him to save her child.

"Madam," he answered more gently, moved in spite of himself, "my heart is broken. My people lie dead upon the streets, at the hands of yours. The work of my life is in ashes,--and, yonder, stretched out in death, lies my own child! God! woman, you ask too much of human nature! Love, duty, sorrow, justice, call me here. I cannot go!"

The book contains various subplots related to these characters and their friends and relations. None of the white family members distinguish themselves. One recurring event is the destruction or suppression of wills (old Mr. Delamere's, Olivia's father's, perhaps Miss Ochiltree's), which I found very upsetting, since in each case Black people would have benefited from the true wills. At the end we watch as the massacre destroys the town and many of the people we've come to know. The one and only satisfying part of the book is when Captain McBane, one of its most odious characters, gets his comeuppance. All the rest is desolation.

But of the three novels contained in this volume, this is the one I'd read again. The Black characters are interesting and nuanced, as are some of the white characters. The book gives the clearest picture of the times and the clearest analysis of white people's heinous beliefs and acts. Andrews claims the book ends with hope, and maybe in 1901 Charles W. Chesnutt did have hope that race relations and the lives of Black people could improve. But reading the book now, in 2020, I see only the roots of the racism that continues today.

So that's it for my exploration of the literature of Reconstruction and its terrible undoing. These books were hard to read, but I'm glad I made the effort. The next book I plan to read for the Challenge was published in 1928, so it will be interesting to see how it differs from what I've read so far.

The days go by, the weeks go by

I don't want to alter my weekly blogging schedule -- I look forward to the chance to write a post each week -- but I'll be darned if I can think of anything to write about these days. This past week I had exactly one thing on my calendar: pick up my library holds on Wednesday at 2 pm. That was a thrill. I drove to the main library, put four returns in the slot, and picked up my four holds (three movies and a book). This coming week there are two things on the calendar: a medical appointment on Tuesday and another library pickup on Thursday. Whoop-de-do.

Of course, every week there are things I don't put on the calendar, but look forward to nonetheless:

• changing the sugar water in the hummingbird feeder (twice a week)
• trash pickup (and either recycling or compost) (Friday)
• milk delivery (Friday)
• takeout/delivery for dinner (usually Saturday)
• and of course blogging (usually Sunday, sometimes midweek too)

And then there are the weekly things that I don't especially look forward to:

• the kids' laundry
• my laundry
• grocery shopping
• paying bills (but I'm glad I have the money to pay them)
• allowances (but two other people in the house very much look forward to this)

There are many daily things I look forward to:

• breakfast
• reading the morning paper
• the Daily Solitaire Challenge
• the mail 
• the PBS NewsHour
• talking to Rocket Boy in the evening
• reading to the kids at bedtime
• reading to myself before my bedtime
• (a walk should be on the list, but my right foot hurts too much -- that's what my dr appt is about next week)

And there are daily things I don't look forward to:

• dishes, dishes, dishes
• cleaning the cat's litter box
• cleaning anything, everything, whatever
• making dinner (which I really should go do, like right now)

Unpredictably, but quite often, a package arrives -- sometimes with the mail, sometimes separately. Aided and abetted by a friend who gave me a large Amazon gift card for my birthday, I have been buying things for (almost) the sole purpose of having packages arrive every few days. These have included

• Barbie doll clothes
• tiny little hangers for Barbie doll clothes
• Barbie dolls to wear the clothes
• and of course books

I have also been buying necessary things -- but are they really necessary, or do I just like having packages arrive?

• two dresses and a top for me from Kohl's
• flip flops for the boys from Crocs
• shorts and pajamas for the boys from Carter's

I also make little shopping trips around town, as needed (in addition to the weekly grocery store run). For some reason there were a lot of those trips this week:

• Target for new undies for someone who shall remain nameless (it wasn't me)
• Trader Joe's for high-calorie snack food that we really didn't need (and some food to help me make dinner)
• the Bookworm for some used books, just because
• PetCo for cat food and litter

I don't mean to complain about the boredom. Every single day, multiple times every single day, I say thank you for being able to stay at home -- for HAVING a home -- and not being sick and not having any other problems. The coronavirus death toll as of this afternoon is 146,747, up more than 6000 from a week ago, so we'll probably hit 150,000 by Friday, at least that's my best guess. What a horrid thing to guess about. I can hardly bear to read or listen to the news about what it's like elsewhere in the world. Like Yemen, where 97 medical professionals have died of the virus even though supposedly only 469 people total have died. It's obviously a lot more than that, but they probably have almost no testing and I know their healthcare system has been destroyed by the civil war. And then there are the countries in Africa that have lost their crops to locusts.

I read an article about how we may look back at this situation next year and beyond and think, ah, the good old days, when the Bookworm was still in business, and there was plenty of food at the grocery store, and the economy hadn't completely fallen apart. Maybe the kids who graduated from high school and college this year had it the best instead of what seemed like the worst, since they got almost a full in-person education. My sister and niece have been talking about how awful school will be this fall for kids in kindergarten and first grade, who are supposed to be learning to read. How can you learn to read on a Zoom call?

The Boulder Valley School District is currently planning to go back to in-person learning part-time. My kids will go to school either Tuesday and Wednesday OR Thursday and Friday, and do distance learning the other three days. Weirdly, the current plan has them taking only two classes at a time, in four week blocks, over the course of a 16-week semester. So, for example, maybe in October they'll do nothing but Math and PE. Very odd. But I'm not fussing -- I'm really not -- I'm just waiting to hear how it will all work out. One of my goals these days is not to fuss much. Since almost everyone in the world has it worse than me right now, I figure one thing I can do is not fuss (except about Trump, and people who refuse to wear masks, but that's just doing my civic duty).

I guess that's it for this week's blog. I'll probably have a reading post in a few days, something for me to look forward to.

Summer moving fast

It seems funny to say anything is moving fast in the heat of summer, other than the coronavirus, but it's July 19th! We've got slightly less than two weeks of July left and then comes August. Of course, school starts late this year, not until August 20th, if they stick to the planned schedule. But who knows what's going to happen. We'll find out this week whether or not we get any in-person instruction this fall. I've decided I don't really have a dog in this fight. Whatever they do, I can live with it.

Rocket Boy is planning to come back and visit us for another week in August, but I don't know just when that will happen. He's in the process of buying a car, a 12-year-old Toyota Highlander hybrid, looks something like this photo (I think this is the right color). Even though it's old, it's in good condition and should last many more years. He likes big cars and he wanted a hybrid, so it seems like a good choice.

Once he has it, he will have two cars, which will be a problem because there's almost no parking available on his street. So he's planning to drive his 25-year-old Montero back to Colorado, spend a week with us, and then fly back to St. Louis, leaving the Montero parked on the driveway. Sigh. Once he moves back to Colorado permanently, assuming the Toyota is still functional then, he promised me we can get rid of the Montero, since the Toyota will also be good at hauling things. I am not going to hold my breath on that one.

Another upcoming purchase: new gutters for our house, which mostly doesn't have gutters, and those that it does have are either packed with gunk or too small. We should have done this years ago, but OK, we didn't. Better now than never. It's not proving to be easy to arrange, though. We have gotten one quote so far: for almost $3000. That sounds like a lot of money for one small house, though it is from a very reputable company. Neighbors have made recommendations for other companies. We're checking them out. It's all very unpleasant, even though Rocket Boy is doing most of the phoning. I had to walk around the house with the guy doing the quote and I did not enjoy it. I am not a gutter expert.

Here's a more fun topic: yesterday was Chester's 8th birthday! We celebrated in grand style. I had gotten a "creamsicle" flavored cake at the grocery store, not good at all, but of course cats don't usually like cake anyway. Pie Bear probably would have eaten it, but he had more of a sweet tooth. Chester would have perhaps preferred a meatloaf cake, with a rich gravy icing. Chester came to sit in my chair while I got things ready, but when I struck a match to light the candles, he was gone in a flash. So the twins and I sang happy birthday to an absent cat and blew out the candles for him (he came back later when I opened the cat treat container).

I put a little bit of cake in his dish, plus 10 cat treats (it was supposed to be 8, but two more fell in). He happily ate all the treats and left the cake, though this morning I saw that the cake had been disturbed. Maybe a moth or a spider tried it. We didn't have any presents for him, but we did give him some catnip later in the day. And of course he had his regular three meals, fresh water, and LOTS of hugs and kisses, far more than he in fact wanted. Everyone loves Mr. Fluffy.

And that's my news for the week, though I will note that we are now at 140,000 coronavirus-related deaths in this country, up another 5000 from last week, even though I am blogging a day earlier. So I can assume that we will hit 145,000 by next week, and 150,000 by the end of July. Huh. It's really scary. Colorado is still doing well, but that could certainly change. Which reminds me, I need to make the kids more masks.

It's hot

Last summer wasn't so bad. In 2019, we had a very cool and rainy June, and the heat never really got awful in July and August. But now it's 2020. And because it's 2020, of course, the heat is awful. Nothing about this year is good!

I thought about getting a swamp cooler installed this year, but Rocket Boy didn't seem interested and I let the idea drop. Now he's back in St. Louis and oh, it's so hot in Colorado. In the 90s every day, and last night it only got down into the 70s or so, which is not low enough to cool off the house with a fan. Today it is currently 97. There's a chance of rain, which is good since rain has been scarce recently, and we've already had one very brief storm, around noon, but it was mainly hail. The garden didn't even get wet. Fortunately the hail ended quickly. Nothing like a good hailstorm to destroy everything you've got growing. I hope we'll have more rain later in the afternoon, but I don't know. I can see a lot of blue sky.

Anyway, it's hot. Not like Ridgecrest, though! I don't know if Ridgecrest actually got to 113 yesterday, but it was forecast to. Today it's only 109. Death Valley is supposed to be 123.

When we lived in Ridgecrest we had a swamp cooler.

Anyway, I'm nattering on about the weather because I don't really have anything else to say. The heat lays me low. It lays the boys low. To keep the house "cool," we spend the day sitting in the dark, staring at screens. Or at least they do. I stare at screens too, but I also attempt to do other things, like the dishes. It doesn't go well. Today so far (it's 2:30 pm) I have (1) emptied the dishwasher, (2) put away the towels that were in the dryer from some other day, (3) started a load of the kids' laundry, (4) fed the cat twice, and (5) done the daily Solitaire Challenge. Also I am (6) writing this blog post. There are about 15 other things on my to-do list, and some of them will get done, but most won't.

One thing that will get done, I'm almost certain, is (7) Lexia. Lexia is a program that helps kids improve their reading. Kid A uses it in school and has access to it over the summer, so I decided to buy the homeschool version for Kid B, since he hates to read and this will at least give him some practice. It's a little pricey ($175 for a year's license for one kid), but that's less than the cost of one week of day camp. Day camp is cancelled this year, so we're doing Lexia three times a week for 20 minutes. The kids complain, but 20 minutes is a pretty short time, all things considered.

What else? When Rocket Boy was here, we set up the front porch so that I can sit out there and read, and the kids have now set up chairs for themselves so that they can sit with me and bug me. But it's too hot! It doesn't get cool enough to sit out there until after 8 pm, at which point it starts to get dark. Yes, that is a box of old sewing patterns next to my chair on the blue table, and no, I don't really know why they're there. There's also a container of DEET-free bug spray, because mosquitoes love me, yes they do. Yes, Kid A parks his bike on the built-in bench at the end of the porch, so no one can sit there. Ergo, chairs. At the other end of the porch is my hummingbird feeder, and while I wouldn't say it's wildly popular, it does get visitors. No way to know if my babies are among them, but I like to think they are.

I haven't made use of most of my birthday presents yet -- except the cheesecake, lol -- haven't taken the sewing machine out of its box, haven't read any of the books, haven't used the Michael's or Starbucks gift cards, haven't made the puzzle. I did spend just a little of my Amazon gift card on some new Barbie clothes. Here are the Barbies and Kens (and the Justin Bieber doll, who hangs out with them), dressed more or less appropriately for the weather. The dolls on the lower shelf are more mature, so they're wearing pineapple picker outfits and would be wearing masks if I had gotten it together to make some. The dolls on the higher shelf are less mature, and so they're all headed for the beach, social distancing be damned. (Not that we have a beach, here in Colorado, but the Barbies and Kens live in an imaginary world where there is always a beach.)

I'll just say a few words about the current state of the nation: I'm getting scared again. A week ago when I posted, 130,000 people had died from the virus. Now, 135,000 people have died. Today, Los Angeles County has a 7-day average of 2651 new cases. Harris County in Texas (Houston) has 1253. Miami-Dade County has 2490. Maricopa County in Arizona (Phoenix) has 2550. Some of those are probably not serious cases, but in many places they still won't even test you unless you have symptoms. So most of those are probably really sick people.

I've been saying all along that I want the kids to go back to school, in person, in August, but now I'm starting to wonder -- is that a good idea? Boulder still has a very low rate of transmission, with the CU students mostly out of town, but what happens when they come back to town? The main point of in-person college, from the perspective of many undergraduates, is to hang out with friends and meet people. How can CU possibly keep the virus from spreading? And how can the Boulder Valley schools? If I get this, I am not likely to do well, given my weight. And then what do the twins do? I've started to look at my cupboards again, thinking about stockpiling. What should I have a good supply of that the twins can fix themselves? Oysters, crackers, and ramen ramen ramen. Popcorn. Cereal. Cheese.

I'm just not having a good feeling about how things are going, nationwide and worldwide. I guess that's where I'll leave it. It's too hot to think.

I'm 60 years old

Yesterday was my birthday and I am now officially 60 years old. I have lived in the world for six decades, five 12-year cycles, four 15-year chunks, three 20-year chunks, two 30-year chunks... Sixty is kind of a cool number, divisible by so many other numbers.

That's partly because it's a REALLY BIG number. I am REALLY OLD. And I'm totally psyched about that.

I had a nice birthday, very low key. Around 3:30 pm or so I told the kids it was party time, so they put down their stupid iPads, came out to the living room, and watched me open a box from Aunt Baba. It was full of fun stuff -- mysteries and a jigsaw puzzle from booksorting, a Starbucks gift card, and a bunch of old family papers to look through. I also received two other gift cards (Amazon and Michael's), a beautiful turquoise necklace, and a bouquet of flowers from our next-door neighbor, Arlene. Also, I'm told that a new sewing machine is on its way. I was very well-remembered.

Then we opened up Aunt Nonny's funny present, a gigantic Cheesecake Factory cheesecake (12 pieces, four different flavors). I put six candles on it, lit them, sang happy birthday to myself (the twins hummed along), and then tried and failed to blow all six candles out (captured photographically by Kid B). I have so little wind!

I served the twins each a piece of chocolate mousse cheesecake (their choice), and watched to see how they did with it. When Kid A gave up after a couple bites, I took over his piece -- and couldn't finish it either! It's very delicious, but very rich. Kid B didn't make much of a dent in his piece either, so it went in the fridge. Today I tried a piece of white chocolate raspberry and that was a little easier to get through. But I think we are going to freeze several pieces for Rocket Boy's next visit home.

I always say I absolutely won't cook dinner on my birthday, I won't do housework, whatever. But when it came right down to it, I didn't feel like getting takeout, and I certainly didn't want to eat at an actual restaurant. Nor did I want to nag the twins to make pancakes. So I made dinner -- just a simple pasta dish with veggies. It was fine. I also cleaned up the kitchen. That was fine too. Maybe that's what age 60 is going to bring to me -- a little more equanimity.

I planned for my birthday to be a day of reflection, but it was actually just a day of messing around on the computer and not getting much done. It was another Ozone Action Day, so I didn't drive to Barnes & Noble to get the book for the book group. I just hung out at home being lazy.

The reflection, what there was of it, happened during phone calls. When Nonny called in the afternoon, she expressed her displeasure at my turning 60 -- because it means that in a couple of years SHE will turn 60, which I have to admit seems a lot weirder than me doing it. I also kept thinking about how funny it will be to be 60 and have children in middle school. My parents were 54 when Nonny graduated from 8th grade. That's MUCH younger than 61, which is how old I'll be when the twins do the same. And then there's high school. When the twins graduate from high school (assuming they do), I will be 65 and Rocket Boy will be 71! Ack!

I talked to Rocket Boy two or three times during the day. He was obviously sad not to be with us. Last week, before he left, we had a tiny pre-birthday celebration -- went out to eat at IHOP and he and the kids gave me cards. One, a 60th birthday card, said, "If ever there was a time to laugh and celebrate and dance the night away..." (then you open the card) "...it was about 10 or 15 years ago." I laughed out loud, but since we were IHOP's only customers, no one minded. (The photo is actually from the Great Scott's patio, not IHOP's, but same difference.)

Finally I talked to Baba, and we reflected together. She is 70, but just as disturbed to have me turn 60 as Nonny is. She reminded me that our father was 67 when he died -- that seems so young now! And then I thought about our oldest sister, who was 61 when she took her own life. Now *that* seems young. Crazy crazy young. And yet, at the time, almost 15 years ago, I remember thinking she was pretty old, she'd lived quite a bit of her life. Something that I do not feel about myself at age 60. I have so many more things to do.

Of course, I have 12-year-old twins. It's really important that I stick around a lot longer to raise them. In 20 years, when they're 32 and I turn 80, I can be old. But not now.

It's a very weird time to be alive -- 130,000 deaths from Covid-19 in America as of today. So many more to come. I am trying not to be one of them. Having survived so far makes me feel very lucky to be 60 years old.

Hummingbirds and marriage

Well, Rocket Boy is back in St. Louis and I'm feeling the letdown, though I'm trying not to let it take over entirely. It was wonderful to have him here for so long -- 39 days in all -- and I'm trying to focus on that and not on the fact that he's gone. We figure we'll bring him back for a week in August, so that's something good to look forward to. I almost made him a new reservation this morning, then figured I should talk to him about it first.

The day he left, the hummingbird babies started to fledge. At first there was one in the nest and one sitting on the edge of it. Then that baby was brave enough to fly to the next branch over.

This morning there was no bird in the nest, but one baby was flying carefully nearby, peeping like mad. Our next-door neighbor and I watched it as it flew from branch to branch, down to the ground (where it seemed confused) and then back up into the tree. I don't know whether the first one was already gone and this was the second one, or just what exactly happened. All I know is that they are both gone now. My darlings! I hope they will come to my hummingbird feeder (I saw a bird there twice today, probably the mom) and to all the flowers we planted.

And Rocket Boy is gone too, and the house is quiet. Although it was so nice to have him here for so long, I have to remind myself that there were downsides. Because he took over the office (our 3rd bedroom) for work, I felt as though I didn't have a "place" in the house. I use my desk (and computer) as a jumping-off point for all the other things I do. So, the whole time he was here I felt displaced and antsy. I tried to relocate, but it didn't work. The kitchen, for example, is not my place because that's where I have to cook and do the dishes (both highly dispreferred activities). If by some miracle he manages to move back to Colorado permanently, I hope he doesn't have to work at home fulltime. I like having my place.

Another downside was sleeping. For the last 18 years we have slept in a small double bed (our bedroom is too small for a queen). Rocket Boy finds its saggy old mattress uncomfortable, so he puts a foam pad under the mattress pad (I remove it when he leaves). The foam pad sticks up a couple of inches and is a little more than half the width of the bed, so I get a little less than half the bed to sleep on, even though I am the wider person. He suggested I get a foam pad too, but I've tried sleeping on his and I don't like it. I suggested we get a new mattress. He was open to it, but it didn't happen on this visit.

Also, I like to sleep with the window open and the shade up, while he likes to sleep with the window closed and the shade down. A compromise: we went to sleep with the window open, and at some point each night RB closed it. So when I woke up each morning the room was hot, stuffy, and pitch black, even if it was, oh, say, 9 am. It's easier to sleep together in the winter.

This morning I woke with the sun, but a little earlier than I had planned, because of an insistent little peeping sound coming through the open window. It was the baby hummingbird! Tomorrow morning, though, the little peeping sounds should be gone.

I was struck, on this long visit, by how much I enjoy Rocket Boy's company, even though I also often get cross with him. Primarily, I enjoy talking to him -- especially about politics, but really about anything. His mind works so differently from mine that it's very interesting to bounce things off him. Colorado's primary (for Senate, House, CU regent, etc.) was yesterday, and we both voted early (by mail, like all of Colorado) after discussing each race at length. We also discussed the PBS NewsHour each night and whatever was in the paper each day (the Daily Camera which is delivered to our driveway and the New York Times which I subscribe to online).

I try to talk to the twins about these things, but it doesn't go well. Politics is the worst, most boring thing imaginable. They're only interested in the coronavirus if it's mentioned on stupid TikTok.

Rocket Boy and I had many conversations about books and movies, as well. A few days after he arrived we finished Tuck Everlasting, and since he hadn't gotten to choose a bedtime book since last year, we gave him a turn. He chose Zotz! by Walter Karig (we own my parents' old copy). Zotz! was a really strange choice, seeing as how it was written for adults, not children, it takes place during WWII, so it's full of references that the twins didn't understand, it's both sexist and racist in a 1940's sort of way, its humor is mostly about bureaucracy, all of which the twins missed entirely, the novel's climax -- if I can use that term -- involves the main character's erect penis, which I had to explain to both the twins and Rocket Boy, and it's written in a convoluted style, long intricate sentences (like this one!) that I had trouble reading aloud and everyone else had trouble parsing, and it's 268 pages long, so we spent basically an entire month reading it, one or two boring chapters per night. RB had also purchased a DVD of the movie of Zotz! and had it sent to the house, but he hid it until we finished reading the book. If anything, I thought the movie (made in 1962) was even worse than the book. The movie has almost nothing to do with the book, but that didn't bother the twins since they hadn't understood the book.

During the month of Zotz!, Rocket Boy and I read up on Walter Karig and learned that he had also written three Nancy Drew mysteries (under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene, of course), including one of the few I had actually read, Password to Larkspur Lane. So I paid a visit to the Bookworm and found a copy of that magnificent tome for $3. But then we learned that Walter Karig's Nancy Drew books were substantially revised in the 1960s. So, I ordered a 1932 copy of Password from Abe Books for $15, and it arrived the day before Rocket Boy left. We took a break from last-minute projects to lie on our small, uncomfortable bed and compare old and new Nancy Drew mysteries. It's really hard to reconcile U.S. Navy captain Walter Karig with sections like this:

The girls accordingly enjoyed themselves by admiring each other's dainty lingerie, choosing the stockings which would best match slippers and frocks, and so for a time forgot the mystery. Helen was in ecstasies over Nancy's powder blue evening gown, which made her look like a quaint little princess. Nancy was as sincerely complimentary of Helen's rose-colored frock with its deep yoke and bertha of hand-made lace.

This is not in the 1966 version!

After we finally finished Zotz! it was my turn to pick, and I chose By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder, because Laura is 12 during most of the book and of course the twins are 12. Although it was never one of my favorite books in the series, possibly my least favorite, the twins are enjoying all the parts I didn't like. I keep hearing that kids like to read about bad things happening -- well, I certainly didn't -- but the twins do. Anyway, this choice of book led to many late night comparisons of Silver Lake and the fascinating annotated version of Wilder's Pioneer Girl, published a few years back. Rocket Boy would say, "Did xyz really happen that way?" and I would pull the large and heavy Pioneer Girl out of my bookcase and look it up. And then we would look up something else and something else and something else.

I don't mean to imply that there was anything so

terribly special about these conversations -- we're not literary geniuses, our language is not brilliant. But I wonder -- and maybe I'm selling American manhood short with this idea -- but seriously, how easy would it be for me to find another man as willing and eager to discuss all these random topics?

So, despite the fact that I wish he would let me keep the window open all night, I'm struck by how much I still enjoy our marriage, after almost 18 years. And maybe the distance, the separations are making it better, not worse. But I still wish he lived with us.