A few years ago, my good friend Tim wore a t-shirt that caught my eye. It showed an image of Shakespeare with the words, “This shit writes itself.” I told Tim and his wife Laurie how much I loved the t-shirt and they bought one for me. In 2018, Sara and I spent a weekend at Fire Island with Tim and Laurie. With no words spoken about it in advance (“naturally”), Tim and I both packed our Shakespeare “shit” shirts. We proudly posed together with them at the beach--and on a bench reserved for Senior Citizens.
This quiz isn’t exactly writing itself--but sometimes, it can feel that way. Maybe it’s the fact that I am not commuting to New York CIty so have an extra two and a half hours in my life each day? Maybe it’s because I need something to do in my stay-at-home mornings that’s not office work so I don’t end up feeling like I’ve worked all day because my job responsibilities don’t begin until afternoon and don’t end until midnight? Maybe it’s because my maybe-manic reaction to stress, anxiety and the possibility of death is to take note of all the incredible things that seem to happen to me each day--despite the sad sea of life-altering events around me?
All of that brings me to Monday afternoon, April 13th. One month since the President declared a national emergency for the coronavirus outbreak and one day after Easter. I spent my morning as I usually do in the new routine that Sara and I have fallen into for the stay-at-home pandemic. I can’t sleep and get up first. Monday, it was 6:31AM. I took the dogs down, let them out, took my temperature, took my blood pressure pills, made coffee, emptied the dishwasher and waited for Sara to come down. I’ve worked on dialing myself back in the morning and on Monday, we sat and talked, still in the afterglow of what was a good Easter Sunday. By 8:15AM, Sara went up for a shower. It was raining so I skipped my dog walk and went into my room to write up Monday’s edition of the coronavirus quiz from my Sunday notes. I submitted the draft to Sara and, wiped out, by 11AM, I was out for a nap.
Once a day, there is a voluntary, video check-in meeting for members of my small team at work. We all work different shifts throughout the day and across the week so the time for the check-in meetings rotates. Sometimes, it’s in the early evening, other times in the late morning. I’m usually awake or on and for the last month, I’ve checked in at every meeting except for one last week when I was off. Monday, I was wiped out and slept in.
Just before 1:00PM, I woke up and within 15 minutes, there was an explosion of events that I took note of and which, for me, tell my story of the coronavirus for Monday, April 13th.
First, there was a text message from my boss. She’d noticed that I’d missed the check-in and just wanted to make sure my family and I were OK. I told her I’d just been napping and would be ready for work by 1:30. The concern was real and genuine. This is a frightening time. It’s hard not to work--and it’s good to check-in.
Before I went downstairs for lunch with Sara, I checked my phone to see the news.
There was an alert about the President’s plans, per sources, to open up the economy by May, hopefully with a “big bang.”
I walked down to the kitchen for lunch with Sara. Sara told me she was making soup for her lunch and suggested that I heat up my own can. To cut down in dishes, we’d use the same small pot and she went first. When it was my turn, I pulled on the pull-tab on top of my soup can and it broke off in my hand. I uttered an expletive and Sara asked what had happened. I explained that the pull tab had broken off. She explained that I hadn’t washed off the top of the can--her normal procedure and especially so with the coronavirus--and it was a good thing that the pull tab had broken off. I cleaned the top, got out a can opener and made my soup, telling Sara, “That’s the way God works!” Sara knows that is my standard refrain when something happens that seems to be a bad thing at first--only to turn out to be a good thing. I don't think that we’re all actually following God’s plan--there are things like free will and really stupid people doing really dumb things. And yet, when you look back, even in the small moments of preparing lunch in a pandemic, you can tell yourself a story that God is somehow looking out for you. If you're looking for that story, connecting one incredible thing to the next--and I am everyday as I write this quiz--you come to see that maybe there is a reason the tab on the soup can broke.
John was in the kitchen, making dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets that Sara had made for him as a child and which John had been able to find in his trip to the grocery store for us with Will two weeks ago. We laughed with John about how much this quarantine sucked. I asked John if I could have a piece of the chicken. Sara said she didn’t think he would share. He did. It tasted great.
John had his phone out at lunch and told us about the announcement from New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo that he and other governors in the region were announcing plans to form a coalition to map out “a reasonable reopening.” Eating lunch, we sat there and tried to piece together what a reopened world might look like--and how and when we might get there. I said it was just too soon to tell, but Sara, uncharacteristically, called on me to put it to a bet. When would things be back to normal to the point where we would both be able to go to the office again? Spurred by the prospect of a bet, I said Memorial Day. She said June 1st. I said they were the same thing. She pointed out they were a few days apart. What were we betting? We agreed the payoff would be a trip for ice cream to the local Dairy Queen.
Lunch over, I went up to my office when there was a text from Annie. She’d seen the news from Trump and Cuomo and wanted to talk. I called her and she spoke to me from her office as a psychiatric social worker in Queens. She wanted to know how anyone could be talking about reopening the economy when 638 people had died from coronavirus in the last 24 hours in NYC. It did seem like a giant leap from Easter day and word that we still haven’t hit the top of the peak for deaths. I reminded her to have faith in Cuomo, that he’d shown good leadership as her governor and talking about coming up with a plan was different than announcing that plan. The story would explode later that night when President Trump declared at his evening briefing that he—and he alone—had the authority to “re-open” the country.
Just before dinner, Sara texted me a New York Times article from Jen A. Miller, called “Why You Should Start a Coronavirus Diary” At dinner with Will, she admitted that she hadn’t read the article but had laughed at the subheading, “It’ll help you organize your thoughts during these difficult times, and may help educate future generations.” Will groaned at that last line and I raised my arms in triumph.
When I went back upstairs after dinner, I read the article. It began with suggestions on how to write down and organize your diary. Just take short notes in a convenient way. Don’t worry about putting them together. Just write them down. That’s something I already do. I use the Notes on my iPhone and Mac to take dozens of notes each day, just 2- and 3-word phrases of things I want to remember. (See the photo.) At different times, I copy-and-paste my notes together into themes when I see how different events from different days might hang together. As you may have noticed from my notes on Monday in the photo and in my writing above, there really was no pattern or theme from Monday. They’re just my random observations on a Monday, five weeks now into my stay-at-home life.
But then I read the rest of the article. In the end, Miller advocated that people keep journals of these crazy times so those journals can help future generations understand what it was like in 2020. She referenced a March 16th tweet from author Ruth Franklin advocating that people keep coronavirus journals. Franklin closed that tweet by writing, “Later, you will want a record.” I had not seen Franklin’s tweet but had written my first coronavirus quiz on March 14th. Miller ended her article with this, “Who knows, maybe one day your diary will provide a valuable window into this period. “I have faith it could be useful even if I don’t know exactly how,” said Ms. Franklin. She pointed out that people today collect old postcards and black and white photographs, and that the senders or takers of those things probably had no idea they’d become collectibles. “I envision a yard sale 60 years in the future. I’m gone but some kid picks up my corona journal and flips through it,” she said. “He says ‘Hey Mom, here’s a notebook of someone who was in the coronavirus epidemic.’” I copy-and-pasted this quote as a screengrab and texted it to Will and Sara who was in the next room, watching TV.
And then it hit me: Tim and the Shakespeare “shit” shirts. Tim and I are both the historians in our respective families. Ten years ago, I converted my grandfather’s slides to digital, sharing the files and written notes on each slide from my grandmother with each of my children, my siblings, and my nieces and nephews. I don’t know if any of them could find the files or my notes, but I know that I have them, tucked away and ready for someone to take a look some day. My father’s cousin actually had old film from the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s that she dubbed to VHS decades ago. A year before my father died in 2016, I played that VHS tape for him and recorded his audio as he described the scenes from his life on that old film. Tim, who has AVID editing equipment at home, then married my father’s narration to the old family films. Tim has told us that he’s recorded his own video histories in interviews with family members who are now gone. He’s also shared the files with children and countless cousins. At our every-other-month dinners with Tim and Laurie (Remember going out for dinner?), we often talked about why we both had focused on family history. Tim’s said--and I have agreed--that we’re throwing it out there for the future. We don’t know who will find our stuff and we don’t know how they’ll find it--but we’re just hoping that in 60 years, some young descendant, related to us in ways unknown, will stumble onto what we have gathered and preserved. We’re just telling a story--in the end, this is just one man’s encounter with the coronavirus on Monday, April 13, 2020.
I don’t know where it will end up and I don’t know who may read it, but today’s quiz also comes with a footnote. I typically write my daily quiz the morning after, in this case, Tuesday, April 14th. This morning, I’d settled on the theme and title, “Shakespeare,” before I opened my email. In my email, I read today’s “Understandably” newsletter from Bill Murphy Junior entitled “Brave New World.” Murphy, in reflecting on his own adventures in self-isolation, observed that Aldous Huxley wrote his most famous novel after a 3-month period of self-isolation in France. The title comes from Shakespeare and Murphy highlighted a disputed, historical theory about some of Shakespeare’s most famous writings. He may have written “Macbeth” and “King Lear” while quarantined in London during an outbreak in 1606.
I’m not saying this is Shakespeare, but sometimes this shit just writes itself.
Editor’s Note:
After I posted this quiz, there was some feedback from Tim and Laurie. They say they didn't give me the t-shirt. What do the facts say? Read the follow-up in the “What did NOT happen question for Quiz 43. Sorry Seagulls.
What did NOT happen?
A. I could not find the pictures of Tim and me in the Shakespeare “shit” shirts in my photo archives. I asked Sara if she had them on her phone and she texted them to me;
B. When I texted Sara the screengrab from the NYT about the kid finding the coronavirus quiz 60 years later at a yardsale, she texted back, “OMG;”
C. I texted Sara, “Thanks. You are my inspiration;”
D. Sara texted me a thumbs-up emoji;
E. Will texted, “We should have seen this coming.”
Want the answer?
If you’re a subscriber, the answer will be sent to you as a separate email when the question is published.
Want more?
Here’s the next quiz in the series: Quiz #29. “These Things Happen.”
Here’s the previous quiz in the series: Quiz #27. Good Monday
Here’s the first quiz in the series: Quiz #1. Stella and Social Distancing, March 13, 2020
The quiz is explained here: Steve’s Stay-at-Home Coronavirus Quiz.
Here is an archive of all the quizzes.
Want to let me know how I’m doing with this quiz?
Please let me know about any typos or misspellings.
Comments, corrections and confessions welcome.
Thank you and good night.
Thanks for reading.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for commenting.