These In-Between Times

Since June 19th, Schuylkill County has entered the green phase. Restaurants and bars are open—to 50% capacity. If you’ve planned a wedding, a big party, the green phase is your green light—if no more than 250 guests are involved.

In France, since June 15th, restaurants and cafés have reopened as long as a distance of one meter is respected between tables (in pre-corona times, in Parisian restaurants, it was not uncommon to rub elbows with diners at the next table). There are no paper menus, though, and servers must wear masks.

On June 22nd, French theaters reopened, along with casinos and vacation centers. On July 11th, sports fans will be able return to stadiums. France’s national stadium, Stade de France, can hold over 81,000 spectators but will be limited to a maximum crowd of 5,000 until further notice.

On June 22nd, the number of known cases of covid-19 in Pennsylvania was 86,024; the number of deaths, 6,472. On that same date in France, there were 160,377 recorded cases and 29,640 deaths. In the world, cases are on the rise.

In both Pennsylvania and France, a timid “return to normal” is underway. But after months of quarantine, “normal” feels like a shoe that doesn’t fit, and nobody’s feeling sure-footed these days.

In mid-May, watching the French evening news, I was surprised to see the state capitol building in Harrisburg. Anti-lockdown protesters were out in force to contest the measures put in place by Governor Tom Wolf. I saw lots of angry people and even some floats, one proclaiming that Jesus was on the side of protestors fighting for “liberty.”

In France and, I imagine, even in Pennsylvania, few have that kind of faith. Without a vaccine, we’re condemned to living with an invisible enemy; and common sense dictates that it’s best to play it safe. The Golden Rule as well. Not only must I protect myself; I must look out for others—because that’s what I’d like them to do for me.

The Golden Rule has come under attack in our individualistic times. What I want may not be what you want. In my village in France, there are people who scoff at the virus and consider our long confinement a government conspiracy. These are the people who greet their friends with a kiss on both cheeks and refuse to wear masks except where one is required: in hospitals, public transportation, or a doctor’s waiting room.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you? Some of those same villagers who doubt the existence of covid-19 want me to kiss them when we meet! Instead, I take a precautionary step back. This they interpret as a betrayal of friendship. In my mind, I’m being a good friend by protecting both myself and them.

In France, in pre-corona times, nothing was more natural than greeting others with a peck on each cheek. In the past, at social gatherings, I watched people circle a room to bestow kisses on the cheeks of every guest, even on the ones of total strangers. Poised between horror and admiration, I looked on. This is one French custom I’ve never mastered.

For the moment, the French feel bereft. They miss their kissing ritual. They need to touch. Avoid kissing! Avoid touching! We hear it all day long on radio and TV. It’s for our own good, public service announcements tell us, just like masks, handwashing, and sneezing or coughing into a raised elbow. But the French are not Americans. “Hi.” “Bye.” Those casual American greetings just don’t do it for them.

Every year on June 21st, since 1981—next year the 40th anniversary, the French celebrate “la Fête de la musique.” This year it was more virtual than real. In the past, there were giant concerts, all free, and bals populaires, street dances, with every kind of music under the sun. This year, there could be no more than ten dancers on the dance floor at any one time.

As for the impromptu concerts on street corners that used to make this night the noisiest of the year, amateur musicians were invited to stay home and celebrate on-line, following the example of electronic music pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre. At 9:30 in the evening French time, on June 21st, he presented a virtual concert “Seuls ensemble,” Alone Together, to fans around the world.

When will it again become possible to spill into the streets, celebrate cheek to cheek, hip to hip, as we dance the night away? Who wants to? Surely, the young, who are being deprived of the rituals of youth. In France, discothèques and clubs remain closed until September and even then, there will be strict rules to respect.

Yesterday, on the other side of a high stone wall that separates my garden from a neighbor’s, I could hear—and smell—celebration, the volleying of a birdie, an animated game of badminton, friends calling out, encouraging each other, the smell of meat on the grill. My neighbor has a big garden, you could almost call it a park. I was listening to an “in-between times” celebration, outside but in a confined space, among friends, on a perfect summer day.

Watch any toddler. It’s not easy to learn to walk. Nor is it easy to break in a new pair of shoes. Myself, I’m having a hard time learning to make my way in this post-quarantine world. I’m not ready to greet with a kiss. Even though cinemas are open, I won’t buy a ticket and go inside. I don’t even feel like going out to eat, one of my great pleasures in life.

A book, a glass of wine, and thou, to do a riff on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Add a walk through the woods, a nice homemade meal, I’d feel more than satisfied with that.

But “that” is not enough. We need people, crowds, gatherings in stadiums, auditoriums, music, concerts we share in the flesh. We need to feel the excitement, share the goosebumps. We need patience. Now is not the time.

These in-between times represent a disturbing challenge we all have to meet as we cautiously advance into a future unknown, as we remain at all times mindful of the welfare of all.

Coronavirus Time

While I was still teaching at Université Paris 8, located outside of Paris in the suburban town of Saint-Denis, at the end of class I’d day, “See you next week.” And I’d often add, “Inch Allah.”

In a town where today about 40% of the population is Muslim, this would make students smile. Yes, we’d see each other next week, God willing, but so much could happen between now and then! We could step into the street and get hit by a car, hop on a flight to Tahiti, or come down with the flu. But then, one week later, we were all back again.

That was 2019. In 2020, who knows what’s next? Since the beginning of this year, how many plans out the window, how many trips cancelled, how many tragedies, how many deaths?

Decidedly, the future is no longer the future, at least not in the pat way we used to think about it: We did the planning; the future conformed to us.

In France, we are gradually moving out of confinement. A week ago hotels reopened. On June 2nd, the French will once again be sitting at sidewalk cafés. Most businesses are open. Masks and dispensers of hand sanitizer are everywhere.

Yet—and this is a big yet—the future remains uncertain. Somehow we’ve been humbled, deprived of that illusory mastery of future events we took almost for granted when we used to look a day, a week, a year down the road.

Confinement has given me a lot of time to think about this and as it comes to an end, rather than rush out for a haircut or a new pair of shoes, I head to my garden. That’s where my new future is taking place.

At the end of March, when greenhouses and garden stores were closed, I went to the local supermarket and stocked up on seeds: tomato, cucumber, watermelon, zucchini, radish, pumpkin, eggplant, hot pepper, lettuce and red beet. I had a plan. I was going to take all the little plastic pots I’d saved from previous years when I bought young plants in a greenhouse and this year start my own.

I’d never done this before and I planted my seeds with great care, taking my time, doing things as best I knew how. Soon I had dozens of small pots, each one carefully marked with the name of the plant I hoped would grow.

The dining area in my kitchen, bright and warm, became my green house. The little courtyard outside, the daytime home to my pots. Each evening, after watering, I carried them back inside. And I watched and waited, ardently hoping for future plants I could put into the earth.

Lettuce came quickly, almost too quickly. I had sown the seeds in a planter and the young sprouts were battling for space and light. As temperatures rose in mid-April, I went ahead and separated the plants, transplanting nine of them to my strawberry bed. On a gardening site on-line, I’d read that strawberries and lettuce enjoy each other’s company. I also seeded rows of radishes to form a border around the strawberry plants.

Soon, they were covered with white flowers, future red sweet strawberries. Yes, the presence of lettuce did them good, and in a matter of days, the radishes were sprouting! Much sooner than I imagined, I’d be savoring the rewards of my hard work.

Then one morning I went outside and the lettuce plants were either wilted or gone, all nine of them. The radishes that had so quickly grown plump and red, were reduced to a thin strip of white. Gone, all gone, my plans for an early harvest down the drain.

At first I blamed slugs and snails, major enemies, but stepping gingerly among the strawberry plants, my foot sunk into the ground. A hole opened, an underground gallery. The enemy was neither snail nor slug. It was something else.

I know about moles. I live with them. My garden is mined by them and I’ve come to appreciate the soil they turn up while burrowing. Every time I see a molehill, I attack it with a trowel, removing the topsoil and transferring it to my vegetable patch. I know those moles are destructive, but I let them work for me. And I know how to distinguish between a molehill and…something else.

Then one evening, looking from my bedroom window into the courtyard where, because of a nighttime rise in temperatures, my plants were “sleeping” outside, everything having sprouted according to plan, all doing well, I saw a little creature, brown, furry, and cute. It looked like a cross between a mouse and a hamster. It was a campagnol. I looked up its name in English: a vole. The word meant nothing to me, but the definition sent chills down my spine: a field mouse, highly destructive to crops.

Nine heads of lettuce, my radishes, not bad for one night’s work.

I next set about trying to find means to combat it. Mine is an organic garden. I wanted no poison and I feel queasy about traps. I found a solution, on-line once again. I put long metal poles in the ground each time I came across a hole. On top of the pole, I placed an empty bottle of mineral water. The critters have very sensitive ears. The wind shakes the bottles and the clatter resonates in the ground. This is enough to make them move somewhere else.

They also can’t stand the smell of elder. I scoured the countryside for elderberry bushes and brought some branches home, along with bags of ferns—to keep away the snails.

Today the pots are no longer in my courtyard. The plants are in the ground! All those seeds I bought two months ago have “grown up.” I have 17 tomato plants and for the moment, they are doing very well.

The eggplant and hot peppers are in wooden planters in the courtyard—they would not appreciate the east wind that sweeps across the garden. Only one (so far) of my potimarron, a French pumpkin with a chestnut taste, has been eaten by a campagnol. And my strawberries are red and delicious—the fern branches spread around the plants seem to keep snails and slugs away.

At the end of summer, will I have a harvest? Inch Allah! Coronavirus and my garden have humbled me. I’ll keep working hard. As for the future, who knows?