WFH? Give me another 4 weeks.

~ Live & Learn

Week 2, Work-From-Home, which today in work parlance is WFH.

No early commutes in, or exhausting rides home. No hiding your iPhone to play Words-With-Friends during slow meetings. Had enough? Just turn on ‘Do Not Disturb’, close your eyes, lean back in your chair, and drift away for a few moments.  Or turn to your Kindle app and read a few pages from Yiyun Li’s Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. “Can one live without what one cannot have,” she asks. I pause at this, and Wonder. Can I?

And WFH here, involves Father and his 26-year Son.

Both suffer from immune deficiency disorders of differing severity levels. Both hunkered down to stay out of the path of COVID-19.

Father in his make-shift office. Anchored to his chair, desktop computer, internet phone, headset and a notepad to scribble. Many days, not more than 1300 steps all day, most to run down to the Fridge. Potato Chips. A fix (or two) of Talenti Gelato. A handful of pistachios. Then, a short run back upstairs to calls. Up 6 lbs since WFH has commenced, and unfazed. Could be worse.

Son prefers to work from his bed. Two laptops running, iPhone on his bed, playstation cued up, ear buds to take his calls. He’s sipping from a tall glass of water. No junk food here. He’s lean, fit, a full head of hair and sits in his shorts and tee-shirt, sock-less, while the morning sun beams in. When did I get so old?

I sit next to him on his bed. Nudge him over. “Come on, give me a little room.” He grunts, and moves over. I lean into him while we check messages on our iPhones.  Illya Kaminsky, that word magician, describes the moments. “…but something silent in us strengthens…

And then we have lunch.

And then we sit and have dinner, and we argue over the madness in the 6pm White House Briefings.

And the next day, we repeat.

COVID-19? Give me another 4 weeks. I’m going to remember this.

Art: Kendall Kessler, Clyde and Alan

46 thoughts on “WFH? Give me another 4 weeks.”

    1. Smiling. It will Beth, your comment remind me of a wsj.com article titled “A Coronavirus Great Awakening” by Robert Nicholson:

      “Today the world faces another moment of cataclysm. Though less devastating than World War II, the pandemic has remade everyday life and wrecked the global economy in a way that feels apocalyptic.

      The experience is new and disorienting. Life had been deceptively easy until now. Our ancestors’ lives, by contrast, were guaranteed to be short and painful. The lucky ones survived birth. The luckier ones made it past childhood. Only in the past 200 years has humanity truly taken off. We now float through an anomalous world of air conditioning, 911 call centers, acetaminophen and pocket-size computers containing nearly the sum of human knowledge. We reduced nature to “the shackled form of a conquered monster,” as Joseph Conrad once put it, and took control of our fate. God became irrelevant.

      Who will save us now that the monster has broken free?

      “Men may live to a great age in days of comparative quietness and peaceful progress, without ever having come to grips with the universe, without ever vividly realising the problems and the paradoxes with which human history so often confronts us,” Butterfield wrote. “We of the twentieth century have been particularly spoiled; for the men of the Old Testament, the ancient Greeks and all our ancestors down to the seventeenth century betray in their philosophy and their outlook a terrible awareness of the chanciness of human life, and the precarious nature of man’s existence in this risky universe.”

      The past four years have been some of the most contentious and embarrassing in American history. Squabbling over trivialities has left the public frantic and divided, oblivious to the transcendent. But the pandemic has humbled the country and opened millions of eyes to this risky universe once more.

      “Sheer grimness of suffering brings men sometimes into a profounder understanding of human destiny,” Butterfield wrote. Sometimes “it is only by a cataclysm,” he continued, “that man can make his escape from the net which he has taken so much trouble to weave around himself.”

      For societies founded on the biblical tradition, cataclysms need not mark the end. They are a call for repentance and revival. As the coronavirus pandemic subjects U.S. hospitals to a fearsome test, Americans can find solace in the same place that Butterfield did. Great struggle can produce great clarity.

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      2. I see more and more why the Swiss are maybe a bit maliciously smiled at because they (some) are quite traditional in their views and ways, BUT we are hugely privileged to live here in relative safety, comfort, security… We don’t need AC, we open the windows, we have birds singing in the trees, we HAVE trees…. we are a (unreservedly, probably) blessed people.

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  3. Papa, you outdid yourself with this post. I give you easily 11 out of 10⭐….
    You describe what, in similar ways, I tell my friends on the phone. The time HH and I spend together, no stairs, which make the trip to the kitchen even less challenging. No ice cream either, we left the freezer in our house in France. Just a micro-tiny freeze compartment w/space for a few ice cubes and grated cheese… sharing 3 meals a day, unheard of! I said to mum that I’ve seen HH more in the past 2 weeks than in the 22yrs before! If it wasn’t such a privileged situation, I would we all about, bragging… But we can’t forget the incredibly difficult global and economical situation… so the joy is marred somewhat. And I start worrying that I really must soon find some t.p. to buy…. 😕🙃

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  5. This time with Eric will remain in your bones, and fortify them when the commute involves Grand Central, some weariness and people to observe. You are truly making the most of sheltering in place – with an awesome co-worker. Enjoy the gelato – you’ll have ample time to walk it off in a little while.

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  6. I missed you, DK. I will be having plenty of time, to read your enlightening and entertaining, highly Inspiring words once more.
    There IS, beauty to be found even in the midst of … this. And Thank you, for continuing to write. many smiles 🙂

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  7. Beautiful, Dave. My biggest challenge these days is trying not to feel guilty about how comfortable I feel being completely home-bound with my husband and our 21-yr-old son (who also works on his online college classes in bed). We will come out of this closer and stronger. Stay safe, friend.

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  8. Love this post, pal, and delighted that you are enjoying precious time with Eric, despite the precipitating factor (and additional pounds). I think this experience is going to be a clarifying agent in many ways. Stay safe and enjoy your together time….

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  10. David. Your words shimmer with the exquisite beauty of that ‘something silent’.

    This moment in time feels as if we are 7+ billion trapeze artists frozen in the moment of letting go of one rung to grab hold of the one flying towards us. In this long frozen moment of being suspended in the billions of postures we’ve all contracted into, our bodies suspended in gravity held up by nothing but air, the only safety net beneath us is Love.

    In this suspended moment, the possibility of better for all the planet exists.

    In this moment, the possibility of a better human race encompasses all the world.

    In this moment, right now, we hang suspended on the fragile thread of possibility that we can all learn to breathe together and reach for the next rung as one human story. That possibility hangs suspended with us in this moment, right now, with its eternal question of, Are you willing to let go of fear and choose Love?

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  12. What a fantastic post, David. Your words, the link to that book (dammit, how many books have I bought because of you, so far?) and the comments from your fabulous followers – so good.
    I don’t know how I’ve managed to keep the extra poundage off with the way I’ve been cooking. I am relishing our family meals together, my boys and me. They are loving having their mother cook for them, too. Stir-craziness is starting to take over my eldest so, hark! things I have been asking for since we moved in are getting done! Woo hoo! I will take EIGHT more weeks of this! Plus, maybe within that time, I’ll figure out who I want to be when I grow up and get that happening… so I don’t have to return to the service industry.

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