What Good is a Helmet on Handle Bars

Otter
... water colour by Wyona Bates ...

Our ward has a Facebook page that I check day to day.

Les Stehmeier commented that since church has been cancelled, (pandemic restrictions on having meetings with more than 50 people occurred), he has been noticing that one day blends into another and it is hard to tell which day is Sunday.

I agree with him, though I don’t know if it is for the same reason.

Every day I have the feeling that somehow Sunday has just past.

Twice in this week I received a Newsletter from my ward.

I received another message from the Stake, inviting me to join a Regional fireside with Fiona Givens and her husband.

Once there was an email telling me about 3 Friday Forums, one of which has Yogi Schultz talking about Mormons in cartoons. I shall surely attend, having read Mormon cartoon books in the past. If Yogi doesn’t point to any new ones, I will still enjoy the same cartoons again.

I had a message telling me about the lockdown at the church building – no more basketball there, or meetings, or parties, no funerals, no weddings.

I had two messages from Colin Steele, our Stake President. A message from him sent and then re-sent. I have written a few of those myself. I am helping Natalie Woodruff Berg as she gathers material for the ward newsletter. I can tell you that every day seems like Sunday to me.

So when the real Sunday came, I decided to see what it was that I really did on Sunday. Here is that list.

I emailed Catherine Jarvis to see what time their family was having church. The time is flexible. It depends on what time her 3 teen-agers to wake up. Yesterday the time was extended by the wait for the last one to get out of the shower.

1235 Red Train
... water colour by Wyona Bates ...

My son came over to plant my sweet peas.

This may have been his Sunday act that pointed to the scripture “this is religion pure and undefiled, to help the widow”.

Or maybe he just did it because he wanted to.

I had done what I could to prepare the earth.

I can’t bend down to put those little seeds in one by one. He spread his arms out wide, signaling to me to stand back.

No hovering.

I watched this  6 foot 7 inch man kneel on the ground and plant each one of those seeds, 6 inches apart. I watched his large work-worn hands working carefully, even tenderly placing each seed in the earth, as if he had been breaking bread for the sacrament. He gently gave them another drink of water, then covered them with rich black earth before starting with the nasturtium seeds in a row just in front of them.

I had picked up a rake by now.

 A three-point landing.

 Usually it is my two feet and a crutch. But I can get mobility with a rake as well. He took his broom to the front of the house and to the middle of the road. He swept the loose gravel to the curb so that in the near future, when the street cleaning machine rolls by my house, it will pick up that gravel. I shouted out to him as he swept. Talking felt good and social distancing feels good as well, even at 30 feet.

“Why did you do that,” I queried. “You have never seen me swept the road in front of my house.”

“Oh neighbour shaming,” he called back to me from the road, still sweeping.

He didn’t need to say anything more.

I got it.

The neighbour to the other side of him does this to the road that goes by our house.

Yes.

Neighbour Dave. As well, when it is winter, Dave clears his sidewalk with a shovel first, and then he takes a broom and sweeps the sidewalk. There is never a day that I might walk by his house and slip on the sidewalk. He is the ultimate caretaker of the hundreds who will walk down our street in normal times. We live on one of the feeder streets to the university which could have 20,000 people driving or walking into it on any week day, given ordinary times.

As Richard was sweeping with that big industrial broom, a young boy on an iridescent blue bike rode by, his helmet swinging from one of the handle bars. “Better put on that helmet,” Richard shouted out at him.

“Yah, OK,” said the boy as he swung around Richard and to the curb, now one foot of the boy with thick black hair resting on the cement, the other still on his bike, putting on his helmet, then shoving off and riding down the middle of our deserted street again.

I hadn’t heard the yell out. I had only seen the boy stop and put on his helmet.

“Did you yell out at him.”

“Yah,” said Richard, laughing. “What good is a helmet on handle bars.

We stopped working outside. Richard closed it down telling me, that was enough work for an old woman to do. I might have worked two or three more hours out there, but I went back inside.

Back inside to Zoom Church.

Zoom Church at the Jarvis’s home in Montreal. George and Kathy Jarvis had zoomed in from Edmonton as well. Another family came via telephone. Norman gave the lesson. Norman is Thomas’s friend from university and is staying over there during the pandemic. It was Norman’s day to give the lesson. Norman talked about only 2 verses from Mosiah, saying because he is of a different faith he doesn’t know the back story to these verses, nor what comes after, but as he tried to parse out Mosiah 5: 1-2.

As Norman talked about a political leader who changed the hearts of people, I thought about what it would mean to believe in the words of a political leaders, so much so that I would have a change of heart and participate  in words that promised the saving of lives.

I thought about how hard it is to believed political leaders. I thought about washing my hands for 20 seconds, every time (maybe all 40 times I get my hands in water), not just a few times a day. I thought about how hard it is to stay separated from my loved ones whom I like to eat meals with, to stay separated from those at the grocery store when I shop. I am social. I do stop and talk to someone who is pulling an item off the shelves that I would like to use, but don’t know what to do with. I really miss all of that. I miss meeting with my writers group. I miss going to the theatre at night – not that I don’t watch Metopera, National Theatre, Stratford Theatre, and Broadway non stop. I haven’t had time to go out to Netflicks or Primevideo, I have been so busy with watching other outlets. Now that I think of it, if I were younger someone would be telling me, “less screen time for you”.

Tamsin Greig as Malvolia
in Twelfth Night

Well, to come around full circle,

I can’t tell which of the above events was really Sunday.

I did close out the evening watching Simon Godwin’s joyous production of 12th Night, which is on National Theatre for a few more days.

Last night was my fourth viewing– yes with subtitles, since there is no other way to watch Shakespeare if I want to “get” what is going on.

Having gone out to the internet through my electronic magic, and listen to Tamsin Geig talk about the character of Malvolia (formerly Malvolio) I have been thinking a lot about what it is that happens when gaslighting is done to someone. Maybe there is a better set of words – what happens when people with power give wrong information to others and cast then into a dark room. I haven’t quite captured this set of ideas – those who have watched the show will know by the words making someone “yellow stockinged and cross-garterd”. At the end when Malvolia climbs the stairs and the gift of cleansing water falls on her, I feel water trickling down my cheeks.

Well, as I said at the beginning – Les said, it is hard to tell which day of the week it is on any given day.

Arta