Pandemic Musings From 3 Generations Of Women
Published on April 28, 2020 by GirlieGirlArmy · 7 Comments Pin ItYour family may be zooming and texting, this family of mellifluously gifted Matriarchs are sharing poetry with each other – and us.
Meet the McQueen-Blumberg Family: Wendy Wolff Blumberg, 87, Dina McQueen, 57, and Aster Wendy Nuguise McQueen, 12
Grandmother:
Words by Wendy Wolff Blumberg, 87
Pandemic—one poet’s words
In this quagmire of a virus
That spreads like quicksilver
Over the country everywhere
Yes even before here
The world
I would write of the sadness
Concern that borders fear
Inside me
I feel with my every breath
But words are no longer
Liquid
They wrap themselves around
Tears
That speak for them
In inarticulate language
I struggle to express
In these weeks of reported
Illness
Reported deaths
Numbers fall into thousands
Thousands
Beyond my ability to conceive
This is real
I pray for them
Pray for the Light of the Universe
To surround every hospital
Every blessed one that cares
For the ill
Closes the eyes of the dead
Alone alone alone
Their families
With the rest of us
Sequestered now
At home at home
2
Every morning
I open the shutters
Of my bedroom windows
To look up
Into the sky
Is it clear or covered
With clouds
Is the distant hill
Distinct or shrouded in mist
Each day is of itself
Hour follows hour
It is as it has always
Been
One morning
I look I see
A new leaf then another
And another
On the bare branches
Of the Crepe Myrtle
It is late March
Time for new leaves
To arrive on this tree
And they do
For everything there is a season
And a time for every matter
Under heaven.
Ecclesiastes 3.1
Mother
Words by Dina McQueen, 57
Pandemic Memory #2, April 2, 2020
“When I was a child I had a fever …”
They’ve put me in an older brother’s room, the only bedroom of five that’s situated close to my parents’ room. I sleep in a dense fog that fills the room with dread. I sleep, and I sleep, and when I wake up some time long before morning, my night clothes are soaked. I hear voices, loud voices. These adult murmurings won’t leave my brain; there is nothing I can do to make them shut up and just let me go back to sleep.
I step out of the bed, tip-toeing on my ballerina feet. I am nine years old and I am sick. But I don’t really know this. What I know is that I must find a way to quiet the voices and I am too young; I have no power.
I slither out the borrowed bedroom door, my back sliding down the hall so quietly towards my parents’ bedroom. I don’t want the voices to know I’m on a mission to banish them. Slowly, quietly, inch-by-inch I finally reach the closed bedroom door where I hear my father snoring. Carefully I turn the doorknob, and silently I reach my mother’s side of the bed. The voices in my head are still raging.
I tap the pile of blankets—tap, tap, tap. My father stirs, jolts.
“What!? What’s the matter?!” He’s angry, I think. My heart is a frightened butterfly.
Mother quickly rises, scoops me up and out, where she closes her door and takes me into the kitchen just outside their room. She shuts the pocket door to give us more privacy, allow her husband to go back to sleep. In the safety of the bright kitchen in the middle of the night with my mother, and only my mother, I tell her I hear loud voices and I cannot get back to sleep.
She invites me to the square kitchen table as she moves like a spirit, from cupboard to refrigerator, to drawer. She dishes out a bowl of butterscotch pudding she’d earlier prepared just for me, the sweet comfort of my youth. I spoon cold pudding into my mouth; its taste is sweet like love.
Sitting beside me at the heavy wood table my mother tells me the voices are not real. “It’s the fever,” she says, and tells me I’m going to be okay. “Have some more pudding,” she says, spooning more into the dish.
When I’m finished she helps me change out of my damp night clothes and into a fresh, dry pair of pajamas. She takes my hand and guides me back to the borrowed bed, then tucks me in for the second time that night. I quickly fall asleep.
When I wake up in the daylight, the voices are gone.
Daughter
Words by Aster Wendy Nuguise McQueen, 12
Quarantine Life.
Life before Covid-19
“I am bored” said a kid.
“Why don’t you go watch something” said the mom.
“Yay!” said a kid.
Life during Covid-19
“I am bored” said a kid.
“Why don’t you go watch something” said a mom.
“No” said a kid.
“Why not?” said a mom.
“Because I have already watched everything” said a kid.
Life after Covid-19
“I am so bored with everything” said a kid.
“Why don’t you go watch or read something” said the mom.
“I’ve already watched and read everything!” said a kid.
“Okay” said the mom.
“And” said a kid.
“And you can go clean or do something productive” said the mom.
“You know what” said a kid, “I think I will go watch Toy Story 4 for the tenth time even though I hate it.”
Tags: coronavirus, covid19, Dina McQueen, wendy blumberg
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