When you spend a lot of time lost in your thoughts - as many of us do, these days - you might find yourself going back in time to your past. Traveling back in time to our yesterdays might be our brain’s way to self-preserve. If we concentrate on the past, we have less time to worry about the future. And Lord knows, the uncertain future is not a place where we want to dwell nowadays. You may be asking yourself, “What happened to the world we knew? When we would dream and scheme and while the time away?” Sing it, Stevie.

Those memories crop up at unlikely times, and about things I didn’t think - at the time - were all that important. For example, I have been thinking about a phrase a friend from my first-job-out-of-law-school taught me. She once asked if I was a “police person” or a “non-police person”. She went on to explain the meaning of the categories and the descriptions of the people who line up under the two columns. I think a friend of hers wrote about this in an article in some hip NYC-indy magazine. The concept obviously struck a chord, because I remember it more than thirty years later. Anyway, a police person is a person who is always bothering about what other people are doing. “Get in the right lane”, you might yell out - from the safety of your closed windows - as you drive by someone. “Why can’t he pick up after his dog?” “What’s the deal with my neighbor letting his kids stand out in the yard and have tantrums? Take those tantrums inside!” You are always, but always, on duty as a police person. It’s an endless chorus in your head, although sometimes, you say these police things out loud. A non-police person, on the other hand, doesn’t even notice what the rest of the world is doing. He just goes about his day, blithely ignoring the imperfections around him. It must be a really nice way to live. I wouldn’t know. I think those of you who know me know I line up squarely in the police person column.

Why think of this now, you ask? Actually, I think you know. The Covid-19 pandemic is making police people out of many of us. I have to try really hard not to belittle people in my head for their Covid-crimes like refusing to wear a mask or creeping too close to me when I’m out for a run. I see one of my neighbors agrees with me.

I hope those aren’t bullet holes in the sign. You just never know.

Sting was ahead of his time.

Recently, our mayor’s “Safer at Home” directive turned into a “Oh, Just Get Out There and Cross Your Fingers” phase. Restaurants are opening up (at 75% capacity), bars that serve food are welcoming folks in (and yes, a fried bologna sandwich qualifies as food), and stores can open up with some limitations. This decision is on shaky grounds, from a public health perspective. It also gives the police people in our family much too much work to do.

Many of you have asked me whether folks in Nashville are respecting the rules when it comes to staying safe. Like most places, in Nashville there is a big divide between the rule-followers and flaunters. We have some mask-wearers. We also have a whole lot of freedom fighters who want to put up signs applauding health workers/heroes while simultaneously shopping without distance or masks. Am I being too cautious? Is it time to open up some restaurants? And if I question myself on the safety score, am I just a victim of gaslighting? If you don’t know the term “gaslighting”, it’s a form of psychological manipulation; a person torments you by making you question your perceptions. Poor Ingrid Bergman, in the movie Gaslight, thought she was going mad when those lights were dimming. It turns out her husband set it all up to make her think she was going crazy. Here’s The Dixie Chicks bringing it up-to-date and giving it a Southern twang.

Remember when people boycotted The Dixie Chicks because they criticized President Bush and the war in Iraq? Those were different times. Nowadays, celebrities are expected to keep us posted on a regular basis on which side of the political tracks they stand on. Unlike much of the entertainment world, Merle Haggard came to the defense of The Dixie Chicks. I love this mural, on a warehouse near the train tracks.

So what else can we talk about today besides the virus? Usually, the weather is a safe choice. But lately, the weather news has also been grim: A cyclone in India. Flooding and a burst dam in Michigan. And let me tell you what we have encountered here in Nashville. It turns out you are far from safe at home, in the springtime, in the South. After experiencing our first tornado in early March, I thought we were good to go, at least weather-wise. But it turns out Mother Nature had more in store for us. Much more. If we don’t feel out-of-control enough, the weather has to turn the anxiety temperature up just a few more degrees. Roz Chast knows what I mean.

“These are the days it never rains but it pours.” Exactly right, Queen and David Bowie.

In early May, we met our first derecho. I didn’t even know that was a weather “thing” until now. But during a family Zoom call, we saw a storm blow in with crazy-high wind and rain cascading down the windows as if we were stuck inside a carwash. We promptly picked ourselves up and continued the call from our “safe steps” in the middle of the house, our only window-less retreat. It’s probably for the best I had those familiar family faces on my iPad to distract me from what we later learned were 70 m.p.h. winds. Enough is enough, I thought when I also read about the many folks who had lost power. Haven’t we lost enough power over our lives without literally having to lose electrical power, too? Seriously. We are stuck inside and now we won’t be able to email and Zoom and keep the nighttime anxiety at bay with Netflix? This is not helping me feel “safe at home”, Mr. Mayor.

The morning after the derecho - and you are not alone if you think it sounds like something you would order as a side with your fish tacos - there was a lot of this going on in our neck of the woods.

With that derecho behind us, I thought it was safe to go outside. And then the very next night, we were hit by another “highly unusual” weather system, a “wake low”. It seems that in the wake of a storm that brings your anxiety to the tingling stage, a low can come in to level you. I’ll just tell you the near-constant lightning was enough to convince me our move here was a big mistake. But that clap of thunder at about 9:30 p.m. that shook the house was the icing on the cake. I would have thought I was having a bad dream, were it not for the people on Twitter who also heard what I heard. The weather guy I follow on Twitter, NashSevereWx, tells us what is heading our way weather-wise. He has become my new best friend here. O.K. my only new friend here.

My weather guru has that rare combination of scientific knowledge and a sarcastic way with words that make me admire him even during the worst of weather.

“'Til forever, on it goes
Through the circle, fast and slow
I know, it can't stop, I wonder

I want to know, have you ever seen the rain?”

I think the guys in the Creedence Clearwater Revival band may have been weather-obsessed, too. They also wrote the hit, Who’ll Stop the Rain? I wonder that, too.

I think my fear of severe weather began back when I went to summer camp. When summer storms popped up, there was always a mad dash to get out of the open fields and back into the bunk. Seeing my grown-up counselors - who I now realize were only teenagers themselves - running with fear on their faces made a lasting impression. It was every person for herself as we sprinted back to safety. If even “adults” were afraid of thunder and lightning, it must be scary.

Sometimes I think I’m not really that old. Then I look at old-timey photos from my childhood and I realize, wow, you are ancient. I’m sad for all the kids who won’t get to go to camp this summer. It was so much a part of my childhood. Note that my m… — Sometimes I think I’m not really that old. Then I look at old-timey photos from my childhood and I realize, wow, you are ancient. I’m sad for all the kids who won’t get to go to camp this summer. It was so much a part of my childhood. Note that my mom cut my bangs. I could use her help with them now.

I’ll have to learn to ignore the crazy weather here, or just pretend it away. There are times when burying your head in the sand is a useful survival strategy. I know I overuse it, but my skill in denial has come in quite handy during this pandemic. When I find myself looking towards the future, off I go for a run or a walk. When I start to dwell on all the things that are uncertain, I bury myself in the details of what we will have for dinner. Come on along on one of my runs and into the sand.

These photos were taken in the neighborhood known as The Nations. It’s an odd name for an area in which the streets - Michigan, Illinois, Georgia etc - are states, not nations. Nowadays, it does seem like our states are operating like separate nations, but these streets were named pre-pandemic, so I’m left without a good explanation for you.

Answer key for those not sure about the faces on the walls: Dolly, Kobe Bryant and his daughter, and a young Patrick Swayze.

Learning Dutch and tutoring in English has made me think a lot about idioms. “Burying your head in the sand?” We say these things without thinking, but when someone new to the language is confronted with one of these phrases, no wonder they are confused. I think this one comes from ostriches hiding their heads when faced with attack from predators.

But who came up with that phrase in the first place? These are the kind of things I wonder about in order to take my mind off of you-know-what. The Dutch have a lot of great idioms. One of my favorites is, “Nu komt de aap uit de mouw!” which literally translates into, “Now the monkey is coming out of your sleeve.” It’s similar to “Let the cat out of the bag”. You use the phrase when you suddenly understand the real truth about someone or about a situation. Apparently, magicians used to perform tricks which worked because they had monkeys up their sleeves who were helping out. And at the end of the performance, they would let the monkey climb out. Does that explanation even make any sense? No wonder I had such a tough time learning Dutch.

Quick timeout to get your mind off of difficulties like Dutch idioms. I used to love baking, but took a five year sabbatical from it when we were in Amsterdam and my oven was actually the size of my Easy Bake Oven I loved as a child. Here are some of the treats Rachel and I have made in the past few months: challah, Blackberry Crumble, and some chocolate chip cookies. Oh, and there’s a photo of my old Easy Bake Oven.

Would you like to spend more time with me burying your head in the sand? Humor is a huge help. It’s the go-to survival strategy for our family. And music is another. You liked the Sonny and Cher number in my last post, so I think you will like this gem. I was obsessed with this song when I was a kid. And with her haircut!

A lot of people are finding joy in gardening. When you garden, you can bury your hands in the soil and your head in the sand. I’m finding joy in looking at the gardens around town.

I thought it was unusual to find a cactus in Nashville, but a neighbor found me staring and explained (from a big, safe distance) this variety is native to Middle Tennessee. He told me it will be covered in yellow flowers in a few weeks, so now I have something to look forward to besides what to have for dinner.

He also told me this bottle tree - made by his father, a welder - was used in “parts of Africa” to ward off evil spirits. Not that I didn’t believe him, but I did Google it as soon as I got home. The idea is thought to have originated in the Congo. They are very popular in the South. I’m hoping those bottles can also branch out from their evil spirit job to help ward off the virus.

Here’s our own private gardener.

Reading is another way to bury yourself in the sand. I just finished a book, The Glass Hotel, by Emily St. John Mandel, in which several characters, including one loosely based on Bernie Madoff, imagine alternate versions of their lives. They call those versions the “counterlife”. In the imagined counterlife - an alternate, more rosy reality - things turn out fine, or at least not disastrous. At one point in the novel, the Bernie Madoff-ish character is wandering around in his counterlife from inside the walls of the prison he is spending the rest of his real life in. He thinks, “It isn’t his fault that his days are so similar that he keeps sliding into memories, or into the counterlife, although it is troubling that his memories and the counterlife have started blurring together.” Amen to that! I have an active counterlife these days. There is no virus. We are healthy. We go out to restaurants. We travel. What’s doing in your counterlife?

I love this little bit of San Francisco color I found in Nashville. How can I be expected to find out what’s doing in the houses around town when everyone keeps their shades down? I miss spying into people’s living rooms, like I did so often in Amst… — I love this little bit of San Francisco color I found in Nashville. How can I be expected to find out what’s doing in the houses around town when everyone keeps their shades down? I miss spying into people’s living rooms, like I did so often in Amsterdam. Open up those pearly gates and your shades so I can see what kind of reading, baking, and Netflixing is going on in there.

As I wrap up, I’m going to poke my head out of the sand for just a moment. It’s time for me to think for just the briefest second about the future. Maybe the future will be like a good cover of a favorite song: we’ll take what we had, revise it, and make it special, even if it’s different. I know that patience will be a part of that future. On my best days, I’m not known for my patience. But I’m trying. We just got word the James Taylor concert we were so looking forward to has moved to June 2021. Talk about having to wait patiently. You might long for a future that looks just like the one we used to imagine. And you might wish I had given you the Fleetwood Mac version of Landslide. But Stacey Kent took this much-beloved song from my high school days, and made it sound really good. Can we handle the next stage of our lives? I hope so.

I waste a lot of time looking at screens, but in between all the nonsense that pops up, there is also some joy. I’m grateful for the hard work by so many talented artists and comedians that keeps us all from losing our minds.

Well, here is something to talk about besides the weather. Peter finished taking certain medications and is now allowed to enjoy a glass of wine. That is cause for celebration. L’chaim! Add sports to the list of things we look forward to, someday. I took this photo at a Vanderbilt game way back in February (a million months ago).

Let’s end with this song about…well, I’ve never quite been sure what it’s about, but I love it just the same. I think it’s about time moving on, and being able to change, and wanting to see the world. This song makes me think back to all our wonderful trips over the years. I’m looking forward to the times when those trips are part of our real lives, and not just our counterlives. “There’s such a lot of world to see.” I’m also looking forward to hugging family members and friends, catching up over delicious food, and living with less worry. And doing all those things with quiet weather outside all our windows.

One of our best trips ever: to the Dolomites in Italy. Someday, we’ll be back. Until then, we have our yesterdreams.