Bedtime comes earlier in our house now than it did at the beginning of the COVID sheltering that started in March of 2020. As the sheltering began and as we all adjusted ourselves – our schedules, our social activities, most of our activities – Jeff and I adjusted our daily schedule, as well. Some of the adjustments were in response to the sheltering – but most not. We simply shuffled into the time of sheltering – “for how long?” we might have wondered – and our daily routine shuffled itself into something new.
We both woke to the alarm at 5:30 AM and started the day sitting together in the living room of our beautiful Craftsman house, talking, looking at the news articles online, checking our emails. And the day started with a nice cup of coffee, made fresh, cup by cup. After a while, Jeff would leave the front room where I still sat to cross the yard behind our house to his studio, where he’d spend the early morning. Each day had its own rhythm, broken only by online classes and meals together, a ZOOM call with a friend, walks in our neighborhood, and in our case, friendship time in the backyard. A few of us would sit in a circle – sometimes wearing warm coats and with scarves tied around our necks – with a small group of friends who had ventured out for some face to face time with other human beings. “We’re still alive,” we seemed to be saying to one another by our presence. In the early evenings, often, Jeff and I would get into his car and drive somewhere, a local place. Over the months, as COVID sheltering went on – did we ever think we’d be sheltering for months and months and months??? – we drove in the early evening, as the sun set, into many neighborhoods in Oakland, finding and exploring places we’d never been before, although Oakland had already been our home for many years.
Were the days long? As I piece together my memories of that time, it’s hard to remember whether time seemed to go slowing, and it’s hard to understand how we did it, those days and weeks of early sheltering dragging on, month after month. Every day, we listened to the NPR News Hour as the losses of COVID were numbered and sometimes named. Every Friday, Judy Woodruff honored five of the week’s dead by recounting the stories of their lives in a few sentences. Things were tough in Italy, in New York City, in China, we learned. After a time – when the sheltering went on and on and on – she stopped the practice of telling life stories of victims.
All along, Jeff and I went to bed early, often chatting before we fell asleep, and as often as we could as we lay awake, saying our good night to one another: “Night now.”
Another long and strange day had ended with those simple words.
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Over the years, those simple and gentle words have guided us to sleep. When our nephew Rainier came to live with us when he was a student at San Francisco State University, he listened and watched us carefully. His folks had divorced when he was a child, and he had grown up without some of the simple joys of witnessing a couple. And so, while he observed us, he too, took on some of our simple traditions. “Night, now,” he’d say to us.
When we visit Rainier and his family in Seattle now, he makes sure to end our days together: “Night now.”
“Night now” comes as a comfort to us, even now.
