JUNE IS BUSTING OUT ALL OVER

 
Dear George, 

 I’m confused about where we stand with the pandemic. Some days the news sounds like it’s almost over, even though the disease will continue to be around for the indefinite future. Other days infections and deaths are reportedly on a sharp rise. Our own lives are about halfway back to normal. We’re been going to the Symphony and the Linton chamber music series again with no masks required. Aside from doctors’ offices, most places have dropped a mask mandate. Maybe 10% of people I see on the street are wearing a mask. We’ve also started going out to eat more than we have in the past two years, though we’ve yet to return to the movies. As an older person with a finite number of years left, I’m eager to be doing more in the world and am simultaneously cautious about taking risks. we recently learned that a long-time friend, a few years, younger than us and fully vaccinated, came down with Covid for the third time, was hospitalized for two weeks, and is currently in a nursing home. Gives one pause. 

 One of the best things for us is that OLLI (the university-sponsored Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) has resumed in-person classes, and Katja and I both enrolled this term, having taken a break in the winter. Katja is doing a cooking course on spices, a poetry workshop, a literature course on spies and detectives, and a course called “Let’s Do Lunch” which meets at restaurants around the city on Fridays. I’m taking Advanced Poetry for about the eighth time and a course called “Learning with Laughter through Improv.” I signed up for the Improv course with high hopes that it would offer dramatic personal change, helping transform me to become more open, uninhibited, and spontaneous. So far it’s not as life-changing as I wished, and I’m nowhere near as amusing as I imagined myself to be, but still it’s good for me. My poetry class has pretty much the same people each quarter, we know one another well, and the atmosphere is supportive. We’re not the world’s greatest poets, but everybody appreciates one another’s efforts. 

 Last week Katja couldn’t find her purse. She’d last had it when she went to visit a friend in a nursing home, but she was certain that she’d brought it home with her. I helped look. When she comes home she normally puts her purse in the kitchen, or, if not, she takes it into the solarium. We both searched the kitchen, then the solarium. Then both of them again. The foyer, the living room, all the upstairs rooms. In grocery bags, underneath furniture, behind doors, etc., etc. Every square inch. Katja began to worry that her purse was stolen. I constantly nag at her for living the kitchen door unlocked with her purse in plain sight. Maybe this time my fears had come true. Katja called Visa and American Express to report her missing cards. The next morning we drove to the nursing home, but no luck, and we stopped at all the other places she’d been: The Framery, Whole Foods, CVS. Still no luck. Fortunately I’d made a list of all the cards and documents in her purse. Katja prepared to start calling while I took one last look around. I went into the solarium. There, leaning against the vacuum cleaner near the table, was Katja’s purse. In plain view. We couldn’t believe it. I guess we don’t look near vacuum cleaners. We were very glad that the thief hadn’t gotten it, and we plan to be more mindful about where we put valuable stuff. 

We’ve rarely gotten together with friends since the pandemic started, so we were excited when a poetry class acquaintance from OLLI invited us to a riverboat party on the Ohio. Her daughter had given her the boat cruise as a Mother’s Day gift, and she invited 16 OLLI friends to join her and her partner. It was a lot of fun. The boat was equipped to hold about two dozen visitors. It took off from Newport and cruised up and down the river on both sides of downtown Cincinnati, along with a side trip up the Licking River for a quarter mile or so. Everybody brought tasty food, and we nibbled along the way. I’m not the world’s greatest party-goer, but it was an enjoyable occasion. Katja, on the other hand, is the world’s greatest party-goer so she had the best time. 

 I went down to the kitchen for a midnight snack last Saturday night, and, when I turned the light on, there was a mouse scurrying about the kitchen floor. Then on Sunday night Katja also saw a mouse. Maybe the same mouse, maybe his twin brother. I baited two mousetraps with peanut butter on Monday night. Two little dead mice on Tuesday morning. They were cute creatures with beady black eyes, and it made me sad. I hoped that I’d solved our problem with Mr. and Mrs. Mouse, but I put the traps out again anyway. Two more dead mice on Wednesday morning. Then two more on Thursday. To make a long story short we’ve caught two mice every night for a week. Do all these mice live in our house? Are there a hundred of them? When I was a teenager I used to enjoy catching mice in our kitchen on the river bank, but now it’s a grisly affair, and it’s more unpleasant every day. I’m not sure who’s going to run out of steam first. Me or the mice. 

Love, 

Dave