3.23.20
Sheltering in Place
Day Four
My grandfather John Molloy, a 29-year-old Irish immigrant living in Boston with his wife and two children, was killed by the flu in 1914.
I write “killed by the flu” and not “died from the flu” because it is more precise, more accurate.
The flu is a killer. It is an aggressive, mean-spirited pathogen that will take your life if you do not take it seriously.
After our week-long, cross-country sojourn, we are in self-imposed quarantine on our farm ever-mindful that the virus could have hitched a ride with us anywhere along the way.
If we dodged the bug on our trip then we are in a good place. There are only 68 people per square mile here. Sixty eight is the state average, we live in a very rural area, away from our state’s few population centers. It is easy to self quarantine here.
Our second son is a chef who lives in Brooklyn where the are 37,137 people per square mile. He and his girlfriend are also sheltering in place. It is not so easy to hide from the virus there. They are good souls; they are cautious and will not come here to hide out because they might infect us. They are young, better able to fight off the bug. Still we worry about them.
My grandfather came from nothing in Ireland and died with nothing in Boston. He was the second John in his family. John the first died as a kid and was apparently reincarnated several years later as my grandfather. John and his six surviving siblings grew up in Duleek, a Meath village north of Dublin. They lived in a shack on what was then called the Commons. In Vermont, back then, the Commons equivalent were known as the Poor Farms. Every Vermont town had one before they were abandoned in the mid 1900s. Ironically we own the old Poor Farm in our town.
John, his siblings and his father and stepmother fled the Commons. To live there you had to work at a nearby hospital for lepers. They all emigrated one or two at a time after the turn of the century. His mother Ann died back in Ireland before they left and is buried in a paupers grave in nearby Drogheda.
John lived in Dorchester and Roxbury, worked as a laborer and later joined the army. He was in the army when he died. This led my mother, who was very young, to tell us that he died of the Spanish flu. But she was not correct. Soldiers returning from the war in Europe in 1918 brought the Spanish flu home in their bodies, their rucksacks and their duffles.
My grandfather was killed four years earlier but it was a different flu, lethal nonetheless.
The flu left my grandmother with nothing and in quick succession she remarried, had three more kids, lost another husband and turned to the bottle. Eventually an earlier version of child protective services intervened and the kids were separated and passed off to other family members or remanded to state custody.
The flu did this to my family. Can you imagine how bad it had to be at home in 1919 or so for the state to intervene? My mother had no childhood. The flu stole it from her. She never spoke of it.
Much later my mother became a nurse and when flu shots became available we would have one every fall, administered by mom at the breakfast nook in our kitchen. The flu was not going to ruin our childhood as it had hers.
Now at 71, I am part of a target rich environment for the latest flu: Covid-19. I’ve read that one in seven in my age group who get the virus are killed by it.
I am my mother’s son. I am not giving into those odds. Here is what self quarantine looks like in my house.
I get up by 6:30, feed the dogs, make a coffee and read the news, email and text for an hour. Next it is out to the barn to feed and water the sheep and laying hens. We have pigs, turkeys and meat birds in the summer but now our barn is relatively empty. The sheep are due to lamb in early May; they are scheduled to be shorn in early April. Shearing requires assistance, lambing is a negotiation between the ewe and us. The ewes generally get it done but I have pulled lambs from their mother. They survive usually but not always.
After chores I write for a bit, have a second coffee and then take a three mile walk along a deserted gravel road. After lunch it is more writing, more news reading on my iPad, emailing and texting and perhaps a bit of Netflix viewing. I do not look at my retirement accounts; it is too scary.
There are afternoon chores, dinner to make and eat, dishes to wash and more news and Netflix or its streaming siblings Amazon, HBO etc.
This will repeat itself for the full two weeks. We have plenty of food. What we do not have but need, we make. Toilet wipes replacing paper, for example, enough said on that subject.
If the flu wants us in these two weeks, it will have to come get us. We will not go looking for it.
If it comes to us, we are ready for its assault; one bottle of home-made hand sanitizer at a time.
Be safe!
Sheltering in Place
Day Four
My grandfather John Molloy, a 29-year-old Irish immigrant living in Boston with his wife and two children, was killed by the flu in 1914.
I write “killed by the flu” and not “died from the flu” because it is more precise, more accurate.
The flu is a killer. It is an aggressive, mean-spirited pathogen that will take your life if you do not take it seriously.
After our week-long, cross-country sojourn, we are in self-imposed quarantine on our farm ever-mindful that the virus could have hitched a ride with us anywhere along the way.
If we dodged the bug on our trip then we are in a good place. There are only 68 people per square mile here. Sixty eight is the state average, we live in a very rural area, away from our state’s few population centers. It is easy to self quarantine here.
Our second son is a chef who lives in Brooklyn where the are 37,137 people per square mile. He and his girlfriend are also sheltering in place. It is not so easy to hide from the virus there. They are good souls; they are cautious and will not come here to hide out because they might infect us. They are young, better able to fight off the bug. Still we worry about them.
My grandfather came from nothing in Ireland and died with nothing in Boston. He was the second John in his family. John the first died as a kid and was apparently reincarnated several years later as my grandfather. John and his six surviving siblings grew up in Duleek, a Meath village north of Dublin. They lived in a shack on what was then called the Commons. In Vermont, back then, the Commons equivalent were known as the Poor Farms. Every Vermont town had one before they were abandoned in the mid 1900s. Ironically we own the old Poor Farm in our town.
John, his siblings and his father and stepmother fled the Commons. To live there you had to work at a nearby hospital for lepers. They all emigrated one or two at a time after the turn of the century. His mother Ann died back in Ireland before they left and is buried in a paupers grave in nearby Drogheda.
John lived in Dorchester and Roxbury, worked as a laborer and later joined the army. He was in the army when he died. This led my mother, who was very young, to tell us that he died of the Spanish flu. But she was not correct. Soldiers returning from the war in Europe in 1918 brought the Spanish flu home in their bodies, their rucksacks and their duffles.
My grandfather was killed four years earlier but it was a different flu, lethal nonetheless.
The flu left my grandmother with nothing and in quick succession she remarried, had three more kids, lost another husband and turned to the bottle. Eventually an earlier version of child protective services intervened and the kids were separated and passed off to other family members or remanded to state custody.
The flu did this to my family. Can you imagine how bad it had to be at home in 1919 or so for the state to intervene? My mother had no childhood. The flu stole it from her. She never spoke of it.
Much later my mother became a nurse and when flu shots became available we would have one every fall, administered by mom at the breakfast nook in our kitchen. The flu was not going to ruin our childhood as it had hers.
Now at 71, I am part of a target rich environment for the latest flu: Covid-19. I’ve read that one in seven in my age group who get the virus are killed by it.
I am my mother’s son. I am not giving into those odds. Here is what self quarantine looks like in my house.
I get up by 6:30, feed the dogs, make a coffee and read the news, email and text for an hour. Next it is out to the barn to feed and water the sheep and laying hens. We have pigs, turkeys and meat birds in the summer but now our barn is relatively empty. The sheep are due to lamb in early May; they are scheduled to be shorn in early April. Shearing requires assistance, lambing is a negotiation between the ewe and us. The ewes generally get it done but I have pulled lambs from their mother. They survive usually but not always.
After chores I write for a bit, have a second coffee and then take a three mile walk along a deserted gravel road. After lunch it is more writing, more news reading on my iPad, emailing and texting and perhaps a bit of Netflix viewing. I do not look at my retirement accounts; it is too scary.
There are afternoon chores, dinner to make and eat, dishes to wash and more news and Netflix or its streaming siblings Amazon, HBO etc.
This will repeat itself for the full two weeks. We have plenty of food. What we do not have but need, we make. Toilet wipes replacing paper, for example, enough said on that subject.
If the flu wants us in these two weeks, it will have to come get us. We will not go looking for it.
If it comes to us, we are ready for its assault; one bottle of home-made hand sanitizer at a time.
Be safe!
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