Use What Ya Got

Emilie is at my Mom’s house in Portland trying to complete her Senior year of high school. I speak to them, WhatApp them and we trade funny tidbits and photos. So I’m staying connected to all those who I care about. Friends are sending me some of the funniest videos from around Spain and I’ll share a few with you over the course of our quarantine.

The long days mean we have time to contemplate what we might otherwise not. And we’ve been talking a lot about feeling helpless. What can you do to help others when you can’t interact with them? I mean, being linguistically challenged on a normal day is tough. Creating community while isolated from everyone is completely impossible. So I started thinking. This situation has got to be tough on older people who are most at risk, or those with kids. And people who are trying to work from home at the same time. It’s just the two of us in this rambling mansion of an apartment, after all. Ha! If Jeff called it El Compartimento before he’s wishing is was that vast now.

I’ve had limited success in doing something unbidden for our neighbors here in Valencia – see the great Christmas cookie fiasco of 2018 – but I decided we must move forward undaunted. Desperate times call for desperate measures. We need to stick together. So to that end I made up a flyer and posted it on all the doors in our building.

I have two legs and can do the shopping for anyone who needs it in the building and can’t get out during the limited times that the stores are now open. It’s especially important for medical prescriptions. So tomorrow we will be taking the orders I receive via WhatsApp today, and we will gather all the things they might need. Who knows – maybe I’ll do what Amazon Fresh used to do for me when we had Big Radish Status and ordered from them back in the US. A new bone for the dog upstairs. Some chocolate for the kids downstairs. Some flowers if they’re available for the old couple a few floors down. It should be fun. And hopefully, we won’t have freaked everyone out like last time.

We all have gifts to give – even in the middle of a quarantine. Even if its small. Time to fill in the gaps where we can. At a healthy social distance – of course.