Day 22, self quarantine: And so starts week four of self quarantine.
Yesterday, I turned to Gary and said incredulously, “Do you realize this is the longest time we’ve ever spent one on one together, despite being a couple for like half a century?”
He stared at me and I could tell he was about to contradict me but then realized he couldn’t. Even when we were teenagers, we went to school and had jobs. The longest vacation we’ve ever had together since we graduated school and started working is two weeks. I had a couple of months maternity leave but Gary didn’t.
So instead of saying anything prolific, Gary just opened and closed his mouth a few times and let it sink in. Finally he just said, “Wow.”
“Yeah, I know. Week four and we haven’t killed each other yet,” I said, smiling.
“I’m enjoying myself so far,” he said.
“Me, too. But I’d enjoy it a lot more without the threat of death by choking on my own mucus.”
I didn’t say it, but we’d also enjoy it a hell of a lot more if we were actually retired, not thinking about our jobs, and could actually go out and physically do things.
But yeah, so far we’re doing okay. We’re getting through it with food and music. Which is exactly how we get through any day normally but this time we’re super conscious of it seeing as we can’t really do anything else.
Music is everything. After our miserable first few days navigating bad dead celebrity daytime television, we switched off the tv and began listening exclusively to wxpn radio, which is our local public radio station out of the University of Pennsylvania. Their program director is also a rabbi, who by the way married Eric and Natalie.
Anyway, wxpn plays eclectic music, a lot of the stuff we loved as teens through now, and they also feature the top 20 NPR hits in heavy rotation, playing them at least twice a day.
These top 20 hits have subliminally become our quarantine soundtrack.
I’m pretty stoked to be hearing great new music from artists I really didn’t know about. Early James. Marcus King. The Lone Bellow. Nicole Atkins. Who knew? I can’t fucking wait to get to a record store. (One hopes.)
I’m obsessed with The Lone Bellow at the moment.
Gary and I will never be able to hear any of those tracks without remembering this strange, scary time in our lives. We’re deeply connected by and to music, we’ve got a musical milestone for everything.
When we were first married, the song Baker Street was a huge hit. We had a bright red MG convertible and to this day, I can’t hear Baker Street without remembering the warm sun on my face and my hair whipping crazily around in the breeze, feeling like Gary and I owned the world and no one had a better life than we did.
(I still feel that way.)
The song Moonshadow by Cat Stevens was playing in the delivery room when I gave birth to Julie. Gary and I get choked up every time we hear it.
When Eric was six years old, he was home sick from school and he requested I put on some music. He’d just gotten his first real drum set and climbed behind the kit. I put on Eric Clapton’s I Can’t Stand It, and looked over at Eric as he naturally and brilliantly played along, and I know it’s crazy, but in that moment, I saw him clearly as an adult, and knew his future. I hear that song, it’s 1993 and Eric is a a six year old superstar in-waiting.
I also have an entire soundtrack from Eric and Natalie’s wedding.
And for my own. Oy, I have a whole story about my honeymoon and All the Young Dudes but that will have to be its own separate post.
Anyhoo...
I’m just hoping I get to look back as happily on this soundtrack.
