Month: March 2021

Tomorrow

/ Jeff Crow / Leave a comment

I have been on lockdown since February 20, 2020. That was the last day I spent any real time in the outside world. I had a small medical procedure the next day, spent a week working from home. By the time I was supposed to go back to the office, we were on temporary work from home duty. That 30 day order turned into 60 days, into 90 days, into…well, I pretty much just work from home now.

I realized the other day that I have not been into a Target in more than a year. I haven’t been to Disneyland, which may be more of a miracle if you know me. Last week was the first time I’ve eaten at a restaurant, and then only because we had to take our littlest to an appointment several hours from our house.

We have been extraordinarily careful over this time. We’ve wiped down groceries, changed clothes and taken showers, washed hands, limited shopping. We’ve closed a business and looked at ways to change our life. All in the name of keeping ourselves, and our families, safe and healthy.

I want my children to grow up to have long and healthy lives; so a new virus comes up with unknown long term effects, I want to keep them safe. I want to dance at their weddings, graduations, have dinners long into the future, so I’ll keep myself and my wife safe. I want my parents to be around for more than their parents were, so I will do what I can to keep them safe.

I understand that not everyone will agree with my viewpoint. The world is big enough for a lot of different people and their own ideas. But I will do what I need to do to keep my family safe. And if that means following government recommendations, and wearing a piece of cloth, and washing my hands, and not licking poles, and limiting my contact with other disgusting humans, then fine. We can do that.

All of this to say, I am so tired of this. I don’t miss going out. I never really liked it to begin with. What I miss, is the possibility of it. I miss the ability to go to dinner. I miss the ability to go to the movies, or to go to a store, or to see my parents. Or, really, to go to Disneyland.

The last year has been hard. Well, to be fair, the last four haven’t been a cakewalk, but the last year has been especially hard. And now, here it is, the precipice of tomorrow.

My wife received her first vaccine last week. My parents are waiting for their second shots. Initial tests on my oldest’s age group looks promising for the fall. And I have my shot tomorrow.

We always have tomorrow to look forward to. No matter how bad yesterday was, no matter how low we are today, tomorrow is just around the corner. The injustices of the world, the slights of fate we endure, or the pains and trials we go through…they will all fade in the promise of tomorrow.

Until next time my friends…stay safe, stay healthy, and good luck.

The Joys of Working from Home

/ Jeff Crow / Leave a comment

My entire life, I have always thought, “Ah, to work from home.” The dream was to wake up, stroll downstairs to enjoy coffee on my balcony, watching the rats scurry to their offices while I caught up on the days events from NPR. After a breakfast of soft cheese, toast, and fruit, I would wander into my perfectly appointed office to begin the labors of the day. I would occasionally stop to refill my coffee mug, to make and enjoy a leisurly lunch, and perhaps even pop into the backyard to work while the children quielty frolicked in the backyard. At the end of the day, I would turn off the computer, content with the amount of work I had accomplished, free of the distractions and politics of an office environment, and pour myself a glass of wine to get a start on dinner.

Every single part of that dream was a lie.

I have been incredibly fortunate to have a job the last several years that is is work from home. When 2020 struck with the warning and shock of a tsunami, I was fortunately prepared. I had everything I needed to be a fully encapsulated worker bee in the comfort of my own home. I had worked from home for the previous 18 months, and felt prepared; how much was life really going to change for me. Oh boy…

I was not prepared for the new frentic energy of Pandemic Life in this household. With four humans and two canines trying to share a 2-bedroom apartment, the chances of someones toes getting stepped on or fuse being lit is un-erringly high. There are four different schedules, naps (sadly, not mine), homework, phone calls, training meetings, clients, emergencies, homework, meals, changes of plans, and also homework.

The average day does not involve what could be described as a dream. Upon waking up, usually from a night’s sleep that involved getting various children and dogs back to sleep, I get up in time to rush through my morning ablutions and plop myself down in my chair for a meeting. Sometimes I can grab coffee before, but usually not. After the meeting it is work until, hopefully, my wonderful wife has had time to get some food on a plate for me while trying to herd the sacks of cats that I swear are impersonating our children.

Then I blink and it is time for the littlest to take a nap, which means that the room that has been my office reverts back to being the kid’s room, and I have to find a new place to work. I try to time this around my lunch, but sometimes there are meetings, or calls, or emergencies. Through all of this, the 1st grader is doing his school work.

I’m not sure I remember much of my 1st grade experience. I have vauge recolations of learning to tell time on an analog clock, of reading, and…of not liking my teacher very much. My child may share a few of those memories. This has to be a difficult time for him too; out of a classroom, home all the time, not really understanding the reasons for this life-changing event. But also, why can’t we just do 19+17=? and move on with our lives? Or why can’t you just copy the lines, or read the story, or…ugh.

Then there is my wife. She is holding this house together with her bare hands. She has a business she is trying to keep going, despite a global health emergency that has essentially shut down her industry. She is teaching, and developing ways to continue to push her students forward. She is doing the shopping and the lion’s share of the cooking, and keeping our son on track with his schoolwork and…she just does it. We try to split the chores we can, and each help to get the have-to’s doene. Without her, we would be sunk. And with only two or three breakdowns to her credit, I am damned impressed!

Yes, working from home was the dream, but that dream is very different from the reality. That isn’t bad or good, it just is the reality we are living in right now. Eventually the older one will go back to school, the other will have their own room to nap in. My wife will be able to do what she always expected to do, and I will have that perfectly appointed office. In the meantime, we are alive, we are healthy, and we have everything we need to live, survive, and to keep moving forward. And, for now, that is all we need.

Until next time…stay safe, stay sane, and good luck.

Black and White

/ Jeff Crow / Leave a comment

I grew up watching old movies; film noir, musicals, westerns, mysteries, Hitchcock thrillers. We didn’t have cable, but we had a VCR and a membership to the local video store. My parents played films that they had watched on Movie of the Week growing up, or whatever happened to catch our eye. It was a time when video stores, really good ones, hadn’t caught up to the latest fad or Hollywood Blockbuster. It was the best the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s could deliver. Maybe, if the mood struck us, we would wander into the 1960’s, but mostly we stayed in the slightly hazy and always black and white world of the pre-World War II era.

Some of my favorite actors continue to be from this era. Bogart and Bacall, Spencer Tracy and Kathryn Hepburn, James Cagney, who wasn’t always my favorite but I almost always enjoyed his movies. The character actors of Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. Above them all though was William Powell and Myrna Loy; the stars of six Thin Man films, they had wonderful chemistry and sparkled in every way.

These films served as an introduction to the world; the era had a look that was plainly not reality. It was so far removed from time or place that I knew, it was impossible to be understood as reflecting reality. I had never met a detective, no one wore a hat or trenchcoat or a suit. No one owned a 1940 Ford, or kept a pretty good bottle of rye in their pocket. But it gave something else.

It was like watching a play every weekend. It was theater, pure and simple. You saw many of the same actors, playing similar roles. You knew who was the bad guy, you knew who was the femme fatale. You knew the good guy always had a heart of gold under the rough exterior. The guy always got the girl, and the home team won and the Allies won the battles against the evil Axis Powers. It was pantomime, but with a great budget.

It gave an appreciation for lighting, for making due. It allowed me to see how acting styles changed and how costumes and sets evolved. It allowed me to tell if something was an A- or B- or C-picture, which part of the reel it would come on, and how the actors were valued. I learned the best directors and how they influenced who would come after. Why John Williams scores are so moving, and where he learned it.

I’ve never seen Gremlins, or Goonies, or Alien. I can’t quote The Termininator, and I probably can’t name a John Hughes movie off the top of my head. But I know the films that influenced those ones, and I spent years learning their language. I appreciate filmmaking and storytelling, because we didn’t have anything else.

Now, it’s late and I’m tired, so time to turn on The Thin Man Goes Home, pour the rest of the wine, and enjoy. So, until next week, good night, and good luck…

Is it 2020 or 2021? Or was that 2022?

/ Jeff Crow / Leave a comment

We humans like to divide our lives up into cozy little boxes. From our genres on Netflix, and taxinomic labels for animals all the way down to who we are and see others. We like to force time into little boxes too; a 15 minute box for a call, a 60 minute box for food, a work week and a weekend, four of those to a month, how has it been a year.

What does a year mean, past the rotation of this rock around a pinpoint of light. What does it mean to us as a people? A year older, a year of accomplishments, or of opportunities not taken. A year of waiting; of waiting for news that doesn’t come or of news that came too late. A year of work to get ahead, only to fall apart. A year means no more than deciding that this earth-worm is a Lumbricus terrestris or that film is definitely a dark comedy; we’ve decided that.

The waiting though, that is what will get to you. Waiting to start the next step, or waiting to stop this program, or waiting to pack another goddamn box. It’s easier to stop waiting, and just settle into the regular rhythm of life in a box in a corner of a cube in a block of a town in a county in a state in what is left of a country. One year wasted, what’s the difference of another.

The Dream

/ Jeff Crow / Leave a comment

There are a multitude of accounts on Instagram which advertise cheap homes. You can even further narrow that list down to accounts which show cheap foreign homes. I mean, foreign in an American sense. I suppose to the people which live in those countries they are local. Anyways, I happen to follow an account called @yourcheapdreamhome. They specialize in homes under $100K in far away lands.

They have shown everything from apartment living in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, to balconied Grecian villas. From sunny Italy to snowy Sweden. And I always look at them and think, “Yeah, that would do for me.” But not really. That isn’t The Dream.

Sometimes you let yourself believe that you’ll have The Dream; that it will become real and you can live it. But most of the time, it exists as just that, a dream to reflect on and think about. A fantasia to fall asleep to, and a smile when you awake. But it is always there.

Mine appeared in one of their posts. It was a small cottage in the Liore Valley of France; a 2-bedroom stone cottage, with a garden and wood-beams. A place to live a quiet life, filled with bread, books, wine, and the sound of a fire in the hearth. I began to fill my head with those places; riding my bike to the bakery, speaking to shopkeepers as I bought what we needed for supper, writing in the little stone building. Sipping ice cold pinot grigio as I watched butterflies flit about in the garden.

If this year has taught us anything, it is that we can get by with far less than we thought we needed. The things I need are a cup of coffee in the morning, a glass of wine at night, health, food, and company. I have been fortunate to have all of those. I have been fortunate to have a job that I enjoy and is possible to do from home. I have heat in the winter, air conditioning in the summer. I have my health, and am happy with that.

Of course there are things that I wish I had; a more walkable/bikeable place to live, and a good grocer nearby. More time to write, and a good place to do so. But there are also things that are harder to place. I wish I had a good place for my children to play safely. I wish I had a community. I wish I had time.

Most of these items would not be fixed by picking up and moving to France, even for a cottage that only costs $107,000. I would be moving kids and dogs and a wife, however willing she may be willing to go. I would be making it a two-day trip back to see my parents, and having to navigate a foreign country where I only vaugely speak the language. And I still would not have time.

This is what makes The Dream so hard to pin down. By the time you can have that cottage in France, your list of things that the dream is fixing has changed. Perhaps you can no longer ride a bike, or your children playing safely is no longer a concern, or the tax burden is no longer worth it. The winters are too cold, and wine gives you heartburn.

The Dream is unobtainable, but that doesn’t mean we should stop dreaming. It means we have to keep working.

Until next time, stay safe and keep dreaming my friends.