WHY WE STAYED HOME

Today is my high school reunion, the 50th delayed to year 51, and it is also my elder son’s 41st birthday. I will be baking a vegan, gluten-free, refined sugar-free cake later today. Our family is coming. They’ve had good reason to stay safe, isolated, and healthy. So that is the best reason for staying home. But there’s also the pandemic, which is the real reason.

We occasionally see crabs stranded by a high wave, especially in late summer. Usually it’s a big Dungeness so far up on the sand that it would bake before the tide came back in. Such crabs requiring two hands to carry back to a tide pool. We got this little guy—about an inch front to back of the body and furious at being noticed— back to a tide pool, and the tide was incoming. It probably lived.

Last year, on 17 August 2020, Oregon reported 192 new confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 cases, no new deaths, and one new case in my county. During the height of the pandemic in January, we were doing better than most of the region. On the January 10th 2021 spike, there were more than 1,723,000 cases reported in the US, but Oregon reported just 1,225 of them, 2 deaths, and 6 cases in my county.

And then people began traveling again. The other day, 17 August 2021, Oregon reported 2,941 new confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 cases, 15 new deaths, and 36 new cases in my county, our worst day so far. It isn’t just us. US Covid-19 hospitalization rates have now hit record highs for all age groups under 50.

One cause of the local and statewide spike in cases is likely people traveling. (Troop movement during WW1 are the reason the pandemic a hundred years ago spread. Today it’s tourism.) Several restaurants are shut down due to covid illnesses in the busy tourist destination six miles north of us. Waiters and waitresses unavoidably work too close to customers. That’s one of our reasons why we are still masking, grocery shopping every three weeks or so, and not staying inside anyplace for long.

It’s also a nice season for long beach walks in cooler weather. Current minus tides leave a hundred yards of sand bare to the sky. (More photos later.)

Compared to most of the PNW, we have enjoyed highs in only the 60s and 70s. An 80° day is rare here. It’s been beautiful, so I am determined to have no regrets about being home. I have messaged classmates who registered on my class reunion website. I am sorry not to see them in person, but glad to know they are around and about and doing. I would love to hear from each of them.

We realize that our concern about infection is not shared by everyone. About a hundred people feel confident hanging for a couple of hours in an indoor venue with people who are 68 or 69 and who may or may not be vaccinated. I don’t, and so we stay home, I will try to run a mile this morning, and we will celebrate with our family instead. It is our older son’s birthday.

This waterfall, even in high summer, flows to the ocean almost two miles north of us. Usually it flows all across the face of the sandstone, but lately it looks like a hose turned full on. At least it’s not dry. Our fire danger is “Moderate” while everywhere east of the coast range it’s “Extreme.”

Air quality is still an issue for many, maybe most people in the region because of fires, but not here. We have our reasons for loving the fog. We do not even mind getting wet. And averaging 90 inches of rainfall a year, we often are wet.

We were shopping in Portland the other day because Gary hadn’t actually bought runners in years. He’s not running but wanted more supportive shoes for walking and was not confident about sizing. Our favorite shoe store was open, both workers masked and helpful. Gary detected the young woman’s accent right off. “Where are you from?” She is from Tennessee, here to study at Lewis and Clark College in Portland. She’s almost finished her undergraduate education in International Affairs and means to stay on and complete an MAT. She said when she first arrived she “couldn’t see how people could manage in the weather.” Then she got herself a raincoat and has adjusted just fine.

We walk out around six in the morning, but that time will be later with coming shorter days. I am able to run without incident or pain, a mile or more every other morning so far. My goal of running (most of) a 5k after my 69th birthday in October does not look so much of a pipe dream. Wish me luck.

I am running in sport bra, tank, and leggings. My new shoes are sweet.

I dropped a glass bottle the other day on a stone floor and the cuts on my foot look a lot like this. Smaller. I saw one of these dark-ringed jellies recently beached yesterday in the rain, but I didn’t have my camera. It was about eight inches across with that two-inch dark center and a wide iridescent violet band around the outside. Really beautiful, but I had not realized before that these are likely yet another species. I will have to search.

My son and I were talking the other day about Greek philosophy. He said Greek stories are all about punishment and transformation. He’s not wrong. What I was taught about Greek philosophy was that all difficult choices result not merely in consequences but in punishment. I used to teach Sophocles’ Antigone. Antigone has the choice to follow the law of king or the law of the gods. She can allow her brother’s body to be consumed by wolves as a traitor, or bury him as a good sister should. She chooses what feels right to her, knowing that whatever she does will result in punishment from one source or the other. There is also some controversy among Greek scholars about whether her arrogance in insisting in violating the king’s directive publicly and alone indicates that she has chosen to please primarily herself, rather than making a purely moral decision. She did what she wanted to do.

Well. We do that sometimes, don’t we. We please ourselves because we feel entitled, and no matter what we do we aren’t going to be walled up in a cave to die.

So the choice to be with family rather than classmates I attended school with 51 years ago, including people I have remained in touch with all these years and those I have missed seeing . . . a choice I have made because either way I will have regrets.

Be well, be kind, forgive yourself. We all make mistakes. We’re all doing the best we can in full knowledge that sometimes we’re wrong. At least, most of us are aware of our own fallibility. Mea culpa.