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
