“Choose the least important day of your life. It will be
important enough.”
--Thornton Wilder, Our Town
For the most part, social isolation has been respite and
retreat from the oh-so-urgent endeavors that consumed much of my life before
Gov. Mike DeWine, Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton, and our
must-be-obeyed daughter ordered us to stay at home.
Eighty-some successive, quiet, uneventful days leave me hard
pressed to recall exactly what I did with the hours I have now for Netflix and
cooking. I savor this sabbath time, and, at some level, dread the one fine,
Covid-19-free day when outside demands return—if such a fine day ever comes.
For a little while last Friday, I glimpsed re-entry darkly,
through the glass of self-isolation, and, for the first time, could see myself
stepping out there again.
I was making lunch when my friend Joy phoned to say she had
delivered some items to the local homeless shelter, where she serves on the
board, and saw a young black man walking down the street with a Black Lives
Matter sign. On impulse, she parked her car at the UDF and approached him to
ask if she might walk with him for a while. He welcomed her company, and as
they walked, she discovered that she had taught some of his cousins. This is a
small town; connections abound.
They’d gone only a short way when a white guy slowed down
his pickup truck and began shouting at them, the upshot being that they were
racists. The pickup driver made the block, shouted some more, then parked and
took his screed to the middle of the street, where he was soon joined by
another white man, who let fly with his own verbal abuse of the young black man
and white grandmother.
The incident ended when Joy took out her phone to make
pictures. Pickup guy made a beeline for his truck, that bore no plates, front
or rear, and drove off while sticking a license plate out the window (see above
photo), his parting words, “I’m eighteen, and I’ll do whatever I want.”
Once she returned to her car, Joy called to ask how to post
the picture on a closed Facebook group we belong to. She was still a little
rattled, so I invited her over to debrief and have a mask- and
distancing-compliant lunch on my deck, distinguishing her as the first
non-family visitor to join us for a meal in going on three months.
All in all, Friday, May 29, 2020, in Wilmington, Ohio, was
what I think Thornton Wilder meant by a least important, yet important enough
day. American Covid-19 deaths had surpassed 100,000, peaceful demonstrations
and violent riots overwhelmed our cities in the wake of George Floyd’s murder
by Minneapolis police, SpaceX Dragon was still earthbound, Joy acted on her
convictions, and Chuck and I celebrated our wedding anniversary.
In my first “Raw Data” blog, I shared a favorite recipe
(which, incidentally, was what I served Joy at lunch on the deck). This time, I
offer the May 24 Zoom stage reading of Wilder’s Our Town that shook me out of
my social-distancing reverie and re-oriented me to the extraordinariness of
every ordinary day.
Produced to benefit a private school for special needs
students in the Los Angeles area, the reading features a professional cast,
including John Michael Higgins as the Stage Manager; Annie Potts as Mrs.
Gibbs; and Amy Brenneman as Mrs. Webb. Here’s a link to the recorded live
performance:
Wilder wrote, “There are some things we know, but we don’t
take them out and look at them very often.” I’m trying to work on that.
Mary Thomas Watts lives in Wilmington, Ohio. She is a
veteran journalist and adult theological educator. She and her friend Joy are
founding members of the Clinton County Alliance for Compassion and Truth,
organized following the 2016 election.
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