Honey I’m Home
“Honey. I’m home,” I shout from the front hall.
“Hi honey,” Mary responds. Sometimes the dog bothers to get up and greet me, other times she just shrugs, thinking accurately, “wait, you just left.”
We’ve done this little routine off and on for most of our now over thirty-year marriage. A tip of the hat to what we think life might have been like for our parents, thinking that if we pretend to be Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, it won’t happen to us. In this little make-believe scene I bound in but don’t fall over the ottoman. Instead, I make my way into the kitchen to say hi and give Mary a kiss.
I’ve just returned home from work, which means a trip around the block after the day holed-up in the dining room working on a cloud platform that our agency bought into about a year before everything changed. Out and about twice a day, to keep my sanity in what’s now almost of year of being remote. I first commuted to pandemic work by walking around the block. Now I run. What had been a four-mile bike ride down Com Ave, through Back Bay and the South End into SOWA relegated to a leisurely saunter around the block here in Brookline, to separate home from work, to mimic normal life.
My walk now turned into a run, of a distance of about a half mile at the start and end of each day. To establish some separation, perspective. To acclimate to winter cold and pandemic distance. A combination of mental break and athletic disruption. My way of keeping some semblance of what we lost — I the only person on the planet to actually miss his commute, on a bike, over three hundred days a year.
“How was your day,” Mary says smiling. What did Ralph Kramden say to Alice on The Honeymooners? Archie to Edith during All in the Family? Oh wait, Archie never left the living room.
“Great!”
Tonight Mary’s making a fabulous meal — chicken, capers, lemon, pesto.
“I thought Dad was making chicken rice and peas,” Nicole says when she comes down to inspect.
“Heating and boiling” more like what I do in the kitchen. Mary cooks, consumes Cooks Illustrated like a favorite food, uses spices. I open packages and read the instructions. Poorly.
“We were, but then I just got going,” Mary answers. “We need a salad,” she says.
That I can handle.
As the days got shorter, I found it harder and harder to carve out time to jump on the bike. My way of mimicking the commute lost to lock-down, when I would ride into Boston to the top of Beacon Hill and back along the river. Now I’m on the bike a few times a week, and the rest of the days I run about a half mile past Clear Flour Bakery and back up our little hill behind the house. Enough to remind me of the exercise that I’m not getting, enough to remind my body and mind of the routine established over a summer of swimming. Just enough to be more than nothing, a couple of months attempt not to lose too much ground after a full summer of swimming and cycling.
Nothing is the same, and yet it’s all quite familiar. Days rolling into one another. Meetings now on Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Conversations limited to what we have to get done, and not the small talk that our lives used to be peppered with.
At the same time, Mary, Nicole, Lola and I move around the house in a quiet dance. Notes past to each other. Occasionally texts. A quick hug and hello.
“Don’t expect me to entertain you,” the first thing Mary said to me that first week after we learned of our new reality. “Or take care of you.”
Everyone learning to live with one another in earnest. A peek at having our own businesses running out of the house, or an extended trial run at retirement.
“I’ll take care of myself,” I replied then. And have for the most part. Becoming so fully domesticated that I find myself saying things like, “I love our new refrigerator.” And, “I got through the grocery store in under a half an hour. A record.” I even love knowing what’s in the freezer, including the dead bird Mary’s storing in a New York Times delivery bag, for scientific posterity. The feeling of comfort that comes with a well-stocked house surprises me. We are blessed to be working and able to provide for ourselves, especially as so many struggle during this period.
My run around the block won’t get me in shape to run a marathon, or keep anyone from gaining pandemic pounds. But it’s Zen. A way to remind body and mind of days lost, and new days still to come, when we will enjoy the freedoms we once did. Every week I find another article in the paper about a seven-minute workout, or easy interval training. New ways to get in shape while suck in lock-down. One can’t scroll through Facebook or Instagram without some reference to home workouts. We’ve all rebuilt our lives from scratch.
“Honey I’m home,” I say. Maybe for good, and certainly for good.
