Erin's Journals

Monday, March 30, 2020

Just a thought… The two most powerful warriors are patience and time. [Leo Tolstoy]

Here we are together again, you and I, as I wish you a gentle Monday and hope that you’re faring okay. Not much new here except work as usual (more recording, editing, writing and so on). But the highlight of our last few days came when Rob and I had another blessed grocery delivery – this time from a friend who’s just moved nearby from up island (as we call it).

I could have cried just to see her face, so many metres from our front door. I still don’t think that other than for groceries, we’re going out when this self-isolation ends on Friday for us. Most Canadians appear to be listening and doing what we’re supposed to do.

Maybe it’s the fact we don’t have the luxury of strolling around a grocery store – something none of us will take for granted for a long while after this – that’s put food in the forefront of my mind.

When Louisa brought that precious grocery bag on Friday it contained not one, but two bags of potato chips. I can’t even tell you when I last had them in the house, but now I have to have them.

I dug into our cupboards yesterday, pulled out a tin of Bird’s custard powder and made a dessert that included several tablespoons of dry cocoa, so desperate is my craving for chocolate these days. Again, there’s no good reason for it, except that I can’t have it.

Heaven help me, we have a delivery coming in the next few weeks from Costco and it includes two big bags of Peanut M & Ms. You know, the ones in the so-called “resealable” sacs? Uh-oh. It’s going to take some serious won’t-power, or I’m going to be this gal.

Yes, I laughed aloud at that when I saw it (and posted it on Instagram @erindawndavis) yesterday. I hope you got a chuckle too.

I wonder: when this is over, will gyms look like the first Monday of the new year?

So many questions – bigger questions – and right now there appear to be few answers. A lot of people will be wondering how to make their rent payments on Wednesday and while the provincial governments are helping out in various ways, it’s still a matter of how and when.

And so we wait. For those of us who have the blessed luxury of not being the heroes on the outside helping the rest of us to make it through these hard and dangerous times, it’s a matter of doing our part by doing very little.

Thought of these words to the Beatles’ “Fool on the Hill” as I noodled yesterday on the piano looking out the windows toward the oceans and mountains:

Day after day

Alone in the house

Trying so hard to stay sane,

And just annoying my spouse

Nobody comes to see us

Or can talk to us at the door

‘Cause we can’t answer

Just the Fools on the Hill

Watch the news going down

And the eyes in our heads

See the world spinning round….

I’ll be back with you here tomorrow. Thanks for contributing to my sanity by sharing in these thoughts each day. It means a lot.

Rob WhiteheadMonday, March 30, 2020