I’m grateful for the technology that’s keeping us all safe, really, I am. And a Zoom singalong in my own living room by the fire is better than nothing.
It’s Friday night and I am sitting in our darkening living room, watching the snowflakes pick up the pace, heavier and fluffier now, and drinking a beer.
Janyce is up from her basement office —it’s close to 6:00— and she walks toward me with her laptop open, bending to show me.
“I love this one,” she says.
“Yeah, I like that, too,” I say, resting my beer bottle on the windowsill. “But it’s white and we need some color.”
We are currently feeling the pressure to do daily online shopping. The contractors are getting down to the final punch list and we have a meeting with the realtor that’s only days away. If we want our Cape Cod cottage ready for summer rental season, we’ll need to have it filled with furniture and lamps and decor before the end of March. In some ways, we are already too late, with all the other larger and seaside Chatham houses booking up months ago.
I grab my laptop to show Janyce today’s purchases. “I went with the striped ones,” I say, scrolling through the Wayfair shopping cart.
We’re going with a nautical theme, even though the house is not on the water and we’re calling it Quail Cottage, named for the residential street it’s on. The house is nestled close to others, each tucked away in the scrub pines.
“Are we having that cauliflower crust pizza tonight?” says Janyce, holding her beer glass in one hand and pushing the burgundy club chair closer to me to share my ottoman. She sits down and burrows her socked feet next to mine under my wool blanket.
“We are. And don’t forget, tonight is sea shanty night,” I say.
“Oh right, what time does that start?” she says to me, looking down at her phone. “Hey dad!” Her 88- year-old dad has figured out how to do a video chat on his phone and has called her from his hospital bed. “It’s good to see you, too!” she says, loudly and slowly into the phone. I switch my screen from the Wayfair cart to Facebook, getting it cued up for the live event we’re planning to watch in the next half hour.
The house feels weirdly empty now, and outside the silent snowflakes are piling up into a cone shape on the top of the bird feeder. Our Christmas tree, still up and decorated, has lost yet another string of lights. I guess it’s finally time for that to come down.
I spend the next fifteen minutes scrolling through my vast collection of FB pictures while Janyce talks on the phone. I miss our dog. I miss going on a long trip. I miss being on vacation with our friends, carefree and relaxed, looking for a pirate bar in the middle of the day. That time we were on a mission to have a rum cocktail and tick off another clue on the treasure map I made for Janyce’s pirate-themed birthday.
“Remember Orcas Island? I say to Janyce who has just said goodnight to her dad and shut off her phone.
“I sure do,” she says.
“Feels like we are never getting out of this house,” I say.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for the technology that’s keeping us all safe, really, I am. And a Zoom singalong in my own living room by the fire is better than nothing. But it’s also eerily sad peering into each video square and into the faces that make up the audience, voyeuristically scoping out each of their home backgrounds— the elderly woman all alone in her dimly-lit kitchen and the twenty-something-yr-old, impeccably dressed in a cable sweater and a starched shirt sitting alone at his bedroom desk mouthing the silent words. Janyce has her head on my lap starting to doze off as I bellow out the refrains of one sea shanty after another.
“I’m having a problem with, ‘blow the man down,’” says Janyce, laughing at me as I sing.
“Shh,” I manage to slip in between my hearty renditions of the chorus, slapping her leg.
“Oh and look we should set up those two,” she says, pointing to two solitary people, their zoom squares side-by-side and each belting out the words in unison. “They are really getting into it.”
“Will you stop? I happen to like this,” I say. “Don’t forget who sat through an hour of “Ursuline’s Got Talent”.
“You’re right, honey. You keep singing. And a way, hey, ho you go.”
I love your details so much- “are piling up into a cone shape above the bird feeder.” So beautiful. The pace was calm and peaceful. I felt like singing along. Thank you for the experience.