The open window

...is a tough thing in winter.

3/9/21
Sometimes I open
   the window
Before I sit near it
   to write these
   little morsels.
It’s for your mom.
It’s for all of us.
Another little layer
   of protection.
But sometimes I don’t.
In the winter,
With any wind,
It’s tough sitting near it.
And your poor mom
Never remembers
   why it’s open
   why she has to be cold.
Never understands
That your vigilance
   is keeping her alive.

This poem from Every Day, Luv brings back visceral memories of one the most challenging parts of living with Covid—living with it in winter. In a New England winter the ability to go inside, to escape the bitter cold and wind and snow and ice, is paramount for having any semblance of joy during those five frozen months.

One of the things you obviously don’t do very often is open a window.

Our loveliest window (not open and not in winter)

In the spring and early summer, an open window can be a godsend. Letting in some of that moist delicious air, welcoming the perfumes of warmer weather to take over the room. They gently nudge the stale air out, sending it on its way to a well-deserved Malibu vacation.

But in the winter in New England, an open window is largely unheard of. Largely unwelcome. Except in 2021, when I was writing this book, and writing this poem. In the winter of 2021 in our house, an open window was a lifeline. A level of insurance, a level of protection against the potential of Covid, which was trafficked in and out of the house every day as masked caregivers came through to make sure my mother-in-law had everything she needed, everything the wife and I were not able to provide all day, every day.

We were well aware of the need for the open window, for the consistent blast of cold air into the kitchen, the living room, my mother-in-law‘s bedroom. Gigi, sadly, was beginning to lose her faculties just enough to regularly forget why the window had to remain open, why she, who was always cold in any situation to begin with, was sentenced to be even colder in the place she now called home.

And, for the most part, it worked. Covid stayed out of our house for a long time (until our little one brought it home from some sneezy kid on the athletic field).

What unusual precautions did you or your family take to keep Covid at bay?

See you Friday at 12:30pm for our live show with Deborah Sosin, queen of the micro-memoir. :)

❤️
Adam