Jessie & Polly, A Love Story

 I did not expect to write again before the year ended. I did not expect to be stuck at home yet again. Our uninvited houseguest has returned.

We had planned to leave for Virginia on Tuesday to spend a few days with Will, Darice, and their family. Monday afternoon Nate called me from upstairs, "Dad, I can't smell anything." Ugh!

So, we sent Nate to the doctor for a COVID test. The results came back positive the next morning. Disappointed as we are, I am so glad I didn't hear him announce this from the back of the van hours into our drive to Virginia. We are also glad that his case is even milder than Ben's. Nate has only lost his sense of smell and felt a little more tired than normal after playing tennis with Ben both Saturday and Sunday, which he may have attributed to being fairly inactive after the cross country season ended.

While there's no way to know for sure, we have a pretty good guess as to where Nate picked this up. Still, I am scratching my head as to why he caught the virus now and not when he had the most ideal opportunity to do so when Ben had it over Thanksgiving.

It is actually a bit easier this time around. Ben has the magic 90 day immunity from his round with COVID so he can keep Nate company with little fear of reinfection and since the quarantine rules don't apply to him he can run errands for us. We didn't have that before. Nate should be able to return to school on the 6th (the student's first day back is the 5th), and if I test negative over the weekend I can go back to work on the 5th. In all this I can't help feeling like I have a 50 ton weight hanging over my head ready to drop at any moment.

To tie up a loose end from the last time I wrote, our phone and internet service came back up that day but it was spotty and unreliable. Sunday afternoon it was all back down again for several hours. Everything has been running fine since Monday, but placing phone calls was hit or miss most of the day. Sort of like when the lights go out, it is amazing, and maybe a bit scary, to see how much we have come to rely on network connectivity in so many areas of life.

Shifting to more pleasant news, we were able to enjoy with the Jones family, if virtually, a final Christmas gift that was most special. Here's the story on that...

From the time Vicki was a teenager she was aware of the existence of love letters exchanged between her parents before they married. Vicki's dad, Jessie, was a native of Camden, Tennessee, but had moved away seeking work in the San Diego area. He served in the Navy in World War II, returned to California, and eventually moved to the Chicago area where he worked for General Motors. In 1963 Jessie was 45 and still a bachelor. On a trip home to visit family a really cute and tall girl caught his eye.

In 1963 Pauline was 30, single, and still living at home with her parents near Camden. She worked as a seamstress at the HIS garment factory in Bruceton. That June her father, a farmer, was laid up with a broken leg. One afternoon Jessie and his brother came to visit Pauline's dad. Of course, Jessie just might have known that Mr. Phifer had a cute daughter.

Jessie and Polly started dating. Jessie came back to Tennessee as often as he could, but since he lived and worked near Chicago most of their dating was done via letters. They had phones, but long distance calls were so expensive the letters practically flew back and forth. Their courtship was fairly quick. They married in November of that year.

So Vicki knew about the letters. She had stumbled across them one day after the family had moved back to Camden. Pauline would never let Vicki read them, but always promised, "When I’m gone, y’all can read them." Ten years ago when we were cleaning out Pauline's house Vicki found the letters, in one of the last corners of the house we cleaned, I might add. Will and Vicki decided it would be best that Vicki keep the originals but that one day when the kids were all old enough we should make copies for all of them. Looking forward to that time Will and I scanned all the letters.

This year the youngest grandchild, Emily, is 16. Back in the fall Vicki and I discussed it and with two of Pauline's grandkids about to marry we felt the time was right. So we went secretly to work making sure the letters, all 106 of them, are in chronological order. We then imported all the scanned letters from 11 years ago into page layout software, wrote a short introduction, added Jessie and Pauline's wedding pictures and made a book. What was very helpful for the introduction is that we found a cassette tape where Jessie and Pauline both tell the story of how they met. The transcript of that recording very neatly sets the stage for all the letters.

In the end we wound up with a 470 page book. We used a print-on-demand service to have hard cover copies made for everyone in the family and they were delivered a couple of weeks before Christmas. Vicki and I opened the boxes when the kids weren't home and we were so pleased with the result. I haven't read all the letters, being more concerned with book layout, but from the ones I have skimmed they are a beautiful picture of the love that grew between the two of them and I think a fine example to set before their grandchildren since they never got to meet Jessie and lost Pauline 11 years ago.

It was our intention to all open the books when we were together in Virginia, but I had this nagging doubt in my mind about that trip. I had to sell the idea to Vicki but we wound up gift wrapping the books for the Joneses and shipping them to Virginia as a precaution. So glad we did.

Last night the six of us (including Nolan) and the six of them (including Cameron's fiancée Jessica) gathered in our respective living rooms (well, Nate sat in the foyer where he could see us) connected by FaceTime and opened the books.

I think everyone was touched by their copy of the book. They all seemed to be when we opened them together. If there was anything that might backfire about this gift it is that most of the kids cannot read cursive handwriting. At least Jessie and Pauline both had very legible hands, but I can understand how this would be a challenge for them. Still, I hope they will take the time to try to read those letters.

So, this is how 2020 wraps up for us. We celebrated the first day of this year with a visit to Universal Studios in Orlando. We certainly had no idea what all we were in for, so it is only natural to wonder what 2021 has in store. One of the most common phrases in Scripture is  some varient of "and it came to pass," so here's to looking forward to better days for all if us.

Joe

A Christmas to Remember

We have had a great Christmas at our house, which I will save for last to end on a good note, but the holiday has been most typical of this atypical year.

In starting, I need to touch on the news with Kenny and Lori's family. The good news is that Jimmy and Morgan's daughter, Piper James, was born healthy and whole back on the 16th and we are so happy for them. Then, pretty soon after Morgan and Piper came home from the hospital Morgan had a toothache that required a trip to the dentist. But that was small potatoes when last Friday (the 18th) Kenny had what is probably best called a minor heart attack. The artereogram revealed a 95% blockage in the main artery with multiple other blockages. He had bypass surgery Wednesday and is now on the road to recovery. Praise the Lord for that!

The pandemic had long scrubbed the community Christmas Eve Eve party that Kenny and Lori always host, but with Kenny's bypass surgery any lingering hopes of our traditional brunch were, of course, shelved. We had our own brunch here in honor of the long standing tradition, but when we started cooking we discovered we had far fewer eggs on hand than we thought and had to cut all our recipes in half. We still had plenty to eat, but had a near miss with disaster when Nate was passing a small glass bowl across the table to Jenna, dropped it, and it shattered all over Vicki's plate. Glass went everywhere! Fortunately none of it went into the casserole that had just been pulled out of the oven and placed on the table nearby.

Around 6:20 Christmas morning, downtown Nashville was rocked by an explosion that was felt as far away as Hermitage. This is a developing story and while most of you reading this live near me or are keeping up with the news, I am going to briefly tell this from scratch for the benefit of those who may read this in the future.

Apparently someone parked an RV full of explosives on 2nd Avenue near Commerce Street. The police were alerted to trouble because it was playing a countdown and warning to stay away loudly enough to be heard outside the vehicle. Unable to get into the RV they went into action and ordered residents of the area to evacuate. The good news is that only three people sustained minor injuries in the explosion, though the structural damage to property may be significant. Had this happened on another day when activity would have been more normal this story would have been tragically different. Praise the Lord for that!

The bad news is that this happened very close to the AT&T data center (the iconic Batman Building) there in Nashville. By midday we began to experience a near total telecommunications blackout. Our only means of any contact with the greater world from our house is over-the-air TV and radio. If we want to call, text, or use the internet we have to travel somewhere that is not using AT&T's infrastructure. (I am parked outside of Historic Perk in Springfield using their guest wifi to send this out.)

This is a minor inconvenience for us. What is truly concerning is that numerous 911 call centers across Middle Tennessee and Western Kentucky are down. Thousands, if not millions of people have no way to call for help in an emergency right now and AT&T can't yet get into the damaged area to begin making repairs, nor can they estimate how long it will take for them to restore service.

Of growing concern, should this outage be prolonged, are the number of people who are quarantining due to the pandemic. They are dependent of being able place orders for supplies online and either have them delivered or schedule a pickup. If they are in our boat, they are facing some unexpected challenges for an unknown period of time. Also, how many stores can't run a credit/debit card transaction because their internet and cell service depend on the AT&T backbone? I won't pursue this line of thought any further here, but the wide-spread effects of this event are most sobering.

In the middle of all this we did have a good Christmas. I am tempted to feel guilty when I say that, but then I also know it is important to be resilient in life. People have celebrated life in hard times throughout history. Mom and Aunt Mar's stories of growing up in the Great Depression and World War II still ring in my ears. I don't know how the current day truly compares with back then, but the lesson for me is to keep living and be grateful for what you have. So, this has been a good Christmas.

This year is the last year we celebrate Christmas as just the five of us, and that made it special. We love and enjoy Nolan and look forward to him being fully part of the family next year, but it was nice to honor this as the last year for our family before we grow. By the way, Nolan and his family left Christmas morning to spend a few days in Gatlinburg. We did enjoy hosting his parents for dinner Wednesday evening. Nolan also learned how to make the boiled custard this year.

I don't want to ignore or be disrespectful of Mom here, but as the year has played out and we know how isolated she would have been from us this whole time, I am most grateful that she has missed out on all this. This brings me peace that I have not had for several years.

So, we had a great Christmas. I think we all got what we wanted. I know I am primed with reading material to last a few weeks, though without the online distractions or the ability to work from home I may burn through it all much faster than I suspect. The important thing is that we have been together in a home where love abounds. That is, by far, the best Christmas one can hope to have. Praise the Lord for that!

Joe

Six Days to Christmas

 The good news is that we have survived quarantine and no one has gotten sick. As I wrote last time, Ben was given a clean bill of health and returned to Cookeville back on the 6th to finish out the semester. We are very glad that all his symptoms had completely disappeared by that time and that his senses of taste and small had returned.

So here we are on the back side of our quarantine and the five of us (got to count Nolan since he was exposed to Ben) have all been well. I'm not trying to look a gift horse in the mouth, but it just seems odd to me that we have been some combination of not sick at all and/or asymptomatic. None of us went in for a COVID test, opting to just let the quarantine period expire naturally, so we don't know if we were infected. Still, it is just strange to me that it has played out that way. Of all of us I would have thought Nate would have been the most likely to have shown symptoms.

Ben is also baffled as to how he contracted it. He said that he and everyone he is around at school have been diligent to keep their distance or mask when they can't. Like us, he and his housemates have not worn masks around each other at home, but none of his housemates have shown any signs of the virus either, nor have any in their larger circle of friends. So, where Ben got it and why it has expressed itself the way it has with us is a mystery to me. I wish that everyone's experience with COVID was the same as ours.

We just wound school up for the semester around here. Jenna and Ben are both on their Christmas breaks and glad to have a few weeks off. Nate had his mid-term exams to go this week and now has one more semester of high school to go.

I've laughed about going back to work on Wednesday because it was the first time this month I had worn long pants or shoes. I may be an introvert, but it was really good to get back to work and see people.

Life around here has been about as normal as it could be. Lori introduced Vicki to Instacart which delivered a large order of groceries for us. She's thinking that service is worth every penny to stay out of the store even if there were no pandemic. She and Jenna have also been getting used to Walmart pickup. Makes me wonder what permanent changes to shopping there will be after the threat of illness is over. Will this be another nail in the coffin for smaller grocery stores and retailers while at the same time opening the door for more niche market stores that will offer a social experience to fill a void?

Speaking of filling a void, I've taken up one interesting project this fall. About 15 years ago I started digitizing all our home movies that we had on VHS and miniDV tape and burned them to DVDs. I have 38 discs on our bookshelf as evidence of my efforts. Jenna has particularly enjoyed getting these out and watching them over the years. All this came to an abrupt halt when we got a camera that recorded straight to digital and later smart phones. Still, I have been keeping all this media backed up to external hard drives all along.

This summer I got to purchase an item that has been on my wish list for some time; a network attached storage device (NAS). This box is a large external hard drive (well, four in a RAID) and is accessible to all the computers on our home network. Additionally, it has a streaming media server (Plex) on it which I have set up and begun to load our home movies on. Now we have our own private streaming media channel available here at home. So far I have loaded all our Christmas videos from 1993 through 2008, our wedding video, and the videos we shot when renovating the house back in 1995, plus a few other odds and ends. Boy, did we look young then! And funny how country we sounded then compared to now.

So, this is a huge project that I can break up into small chunks and work on for years to come. And the good thing is that this makes our memories much more accessible and easier to pass along to our kids down the road. After trying to go through my mom's pictures and things I have a new appreciation for making those memories easily accessible and consumable. For now, I'm having fun when I can snatch an evening here and there to work on this. And if you come to visit I promise I won't make you watch hours of our home movies, but if you want to see how it works I'll be glad to give you a short tour.

Jenna has been busy now that she is on break and our quarantine is over. She has built up a customer base over the years with her pies and peanut butter balls. These funded several trips to Haiti in the past. This year they are helping pay for nursing school. So far this week she has made 19 pies and 2075 peanut butter balls and still has a few more orders to go.

It seems surreal to be less than a week from Christmas now. Lot's of things are different in this abnormal year, but we are able to be together and that's what matters. Now that Jenna is engaged we know this will be her last Christmas at home. Next year will feel more like a homecoming since both boys will be in college. With Mom's passing the last of the old guard is gone for us. Even though I will miss our normal social activities this year, I am glad for the opportunity to enjoy the time with just the five of us before our family starts to grow and change. This year just seems like the time to pause, reflect, and catch our breath before moving forward and that's how I plan to celebrate this Christmas.

Joe

The Uninvited Houseguest

 Here we are the week after Thanksgiving and we find ourselves playing host to an uninvited and unwelcome houseguest—COVID-19. Looking back the signs were a little hard to see. Ben came home from Cookeville last Tuesday. We had our Thanksgiving meal last Wednesday afternoon and began decorating for Christmas that evening. Ben mentioned on Thursday morning that he had been feeling run-down the day before but said no to all questions when we ran down the list of other symptoms one should look for. Each subsequent day he said he was still run-down but improving. He usually experiences this sort of thing annually.

Davidson Academy, which had gone virtual with the high school before Thanksgiving is back to in-person classes now, so Nate and I went to school Monday morning. I filled out the daily health screening form in good conscience that I had not been around anyone who was COVID positive. Vicki texted me in the middle of second period to say that Ben had lost his senses of taste and smell and was going for a COVID test (not the rapid test). Nate and I left after I threw together some last minute sub plans for my remaining classes. On Tuesday Ben's test results came back positive. He is feeling pretty much back to himself, and his senses of taste and smell started returning today.

So here we are stuck at home for the duration. For those of you who have never seen our house, it is a comfortable size for a family of five under normal conditions, but the design is not really conducive for all of us to isolate from each other. The boys share the one climate controlled room upstairs, so Nate is hosed. On top of that, we only have the one bathroom, so it is inevitable that the infected among us have to come into the common parts of the house.

Ben is actually the luckiest of the five of us. He only has to isolate for 10 days from the onset of his symptoms. The nurse from Tennessee Tech gave him clearance to return to campus by Sunday. The rest of us have to isolate while Ben is here plus 10 days after his period of isolation ends, so through the 15th. Of course, if any of the rest of us develop symptoms then that whole clock is reset, extending our quarantine.

Before I neglect Nolan, he is having to quarantine as well as he spent the night here in the boys room last Tuesday ahead of our Thanksgiving meal. He has just started a new job. Fortunately, the rules dictate he is paid for his time off in isolation. What's very hard for him and Jenna is being apart. Jenna's quarantine will last longer than his because she lives in the same house with Ben, constantly pushing back her end date, where Nolan has a closer end date right now unless he or his parents develop symptoms. Jenna is trying to isolate even more to shorten that for herself per the instructions from her nursing professors.

While this is unpleasant for now, it will pass; hopefully sooner rather than later. It is, as I call it, the risk of living. I'd like to pass this time with some time together in the evenings as a break from the workday now that my home is once again my office and classroom. Alas, as much as we love each other, none of us really want to be together all the time under the same roof. At the risk of sounding callous, I am so thankful Mom is not still living through this. What a year 2020 has turned out to be!

Joe