Social Distancing with Gramma

By Sally Franz

My grandparents had a cottage on Deep Creek Lake in Maryland. As kids, we spent most of the summer there. And the one thing I remember is how mellow the days were. No one, I mean no one, took meetings, phone calls, watched a screen or had appointments. Here’s what we did. Wake up, eat breakfast, clean our rooms, swim, sail, waterski, or hike, lunch, mandatory naptime (probably so the adults could have one hour without high pitched shrieking — with cousins there were nine kids ages one-16), more outdoors stuff like climb trees, supper, games by the fireplace, and bedtime. Repeat for five weeks.

No one missed what hadn’t been invented. Most of the cures to small maladies were simple. Gargle with hot salt water for a sore throat, iodine for cuts, and clear nail polish over chigger bites. We went to town on Saturday afternoons to grocery shop and stopped at the Dairy Queen on the way home. My older sister always got a coconut milkshake. I always got a chocolate-chip mint cone. Right before the Fourth of July, we took the outboard motorboat across the lake to a place where we could buy sparklers and caps. Then we set them off on the dock for the Fourth. That and a hot dog was the entire celebration. Along with my Aunt Sally’s traditional American flag sheet cake for 40 with strawberries and blueberries.

My Gramma would take me on nature walks and we would gather wild blueberries, wintergreen, and sassafras roots. We always cut through a field with Black Eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace to watch the butterflies and then pick a bouquet for the table.

Sometimes we would stop by the farmer’s field and glean the remaining green beans after the harvester went through. Then my Gramma would schnitzel the beans (cut on a diagonal) and that with lasagna was dinner.

Until the quarantine, I hardly noticed how ridiculous my life, even my life in the mountains, had become packed with trivia and minutia. The good news is I have stopped shaming myself if the only thing I do all day is take a walk, eat, and read. Granted, I am retired so I have that luxury. I’m not a hermit. I did just become ordained (albeit online, which seemed weirdly like joining the Moonies) so I can wed eloping couples in the mountains. That new venture was supposed to launch in April. So was our electric bike tour company. So there you go. Man makes plans, God laughs.

If I let it, life in self-isolation seems more like a river than a road. I am willing to go with the flow. Before Covid-19, I had the bull by the horns. Now I am happy to walk behind the bull avoiding the cow pies.

Slowing down the pace has brought a newfound joy and peace and energy to fight for what matters. I feel strangely renewed by being set aside from the fast energy of the whirling world. We even stopped watching four hours of news and instead watch the late-night comedians and then decide if we want to hear the actual news story from a network.

Maybe Gramma, who lived to 98, had something going there. I am turning off the TV to walk down an empty road and remember J.R.Tolkien’s words: “Not all who wander are lost.”

Sally Franz and her third husband live on the Olympic Peninsula. She has two daughters, a stepson, and three grandchildren. Sally is the author of several humor books including Scrambled Leggs: A Snarky Tale of Hospital Hooey and The Baby Boomer’s Guide to Menopause.