Daniel, Who Is My Neighbor — Spread Love Not Germs
“If it’s easier," I say to Daniel, who is my neighbor, tell me about life in your house during the pandemic because it didn’t end with 2020—it's still with us.” As we distance ourselves from that fateful year, I expand my original question.“I could tell you a long story about that,” Daniel says. “2020 was very eventful. My dad has a degenerative brain disease that they have a lot of challenges pinpointing, always giving it a different name. We’ve really seen him decline a lot over the years.“In some ways it’s really kinda hopeful. When we first realized something was going on they told him, ‘You’ve probably got seven years,’ and that was sixteen years ago. I wouldn’t have expected him to be with us today, or cognitively functioning based on what they described. Yet he’s here.
He tried to prepare us
“One thing that we anticipated was that at some point he was going to have a lot of difficulty being able to swallow. He tried to prepare us saying, ‘Sometime they’re gonna have to do a tracheotomy.’” This pre-pandemic health story reminds me of Joe and Esther’s story. Daniel goes on. “I took the girls over for a visit on New Year’s Day. On the third, my mom calls me at work. My dad had choked and passed out and the ambulance came. They took my dad to Park View [Community Hospital]. I mean they basically planned to do a trach. They put him in ICU. He was under. And it felt like he was gonna pass. We spent probably a week thinking that. It was tough for me, for my mom. I’m the oldest brother, kinda like the leader in the family, and doing all those things.“At the same time as I was grappling with losing my dad, I was paying attention to the news. My superintendent, my boss, pays a lot of attention to what’s going on in the world. He kept going, ‘This is interesting. The pandemic could impact us the way we’ve seen that happen in Asia.’ We started talking about that and thinking it through and it seemed absurd to me.”Daniel, who worked as a school principal as mentioned in his first story, is now an assistant superintendent of human resources for grades K-12.
In the midst of this
He continues. “In the midst of this, my dad. They ended up doing a trach. He was intubated for a week and a half—which was something we saw so much on the news later. I only point this out really in retrospect: seeing my dad intubated, seeing him in the ICU, seeing him under. Those are the things we’ve seen, especially last spring and summer. So many people who had COVID, really severe cases, were in the hospital and being intubated and how traumatic that all was.”“Yeah,” I nod as I grasp the outline of Daniel’s personal and professional burdens alongside his ability to reach for empathy.“Fortunately for my family this was before they said, ‘Nobody can go in the ICU.’ We were able to be there. My mom kept vigil, like twenty-four hours a day for weeks. But finally, he came out of it. He’s okay. He’s now survived a pandemic too.” A small laugh marks Daniel’s wonder.“Amazing,” I say. Daniel echoes the word. “Which is amazing. I remember when he was in the convalescent hospital, I asked a pulmonologist who was working with him, ‘About this virus, what’s going on? Are you guys doing anything as far as protocols?’ And she said, ‘Oh, no. You don’t need to worry about that.’ I pursued it a little more with her, like ‘Are you asking people to wash their hands? Are you doing any of these things that people are saying you’re supposed to do?’ She said, ‘No. You don’t need to worry about it.’
Mid-February
“This was like mid-February, so [COVID-19] was starting to really gain some traction. There were people worrying about it. But with all of the background noise going on at work, I thought, ‘Doctors are saying it’s nothing to worry about. A pulmonologist, an accomplished, informed person aware of respiratory issues, knows what’s going on.’”With a laugh Daniel comments about this doctor’s responsibility and credibility—or lack thereof—before he admits, “I really held onto that for a few weeks.“February progressed, and eventually my dad came home. It was miraculous seeing him wake up, start to talk again, and sing, and all these kinds of things, it was amazing. It was wonderful. And my mom had her birthday in the middle of that. We had this wonderful celebration for her, and it was so fun. “Then all of a sudden they started to say, ‘People need to be cautious about gathering.’ They weren’t saying wear masks, but talk[ed] about maintaining distance. So we were really careful. My brothers are both very vigilant. We all kinda decided we’re gonna do whatever we can to keep dad safe. And keep mom safe,” adds Daniel. “Right,” I nod.
The burden of care
“She can’t get sick,” Daniel explains. “The burden for his care at home is [on] her.” Because of his dad’s delicate health and his mom’s need to stay strong, Daniel and his brothers “went into lockdown” to protect their parents. This was necessary, but also tragic for the close-knit family. “We see my parents a lot. I try to go visit them and give them a lot of attention.” Here Daniel pivots. “That happened at the end of February. It was bizarre seeing what happened with school—for my kids and at work. Part of my job I meet with the teachers union. I talk with them every day. But I remember asking the CTA [California Teachers Association] representative for our region, ‘Are you guys hearing anything about people being concerned about the Corona virus and schools? Are teachers asking about that?’ And they said, ‘No.’ “I was starting to think. ‘This is really gonna hit us. We’re gonna have to do something about this, and they’re not thinking about it yet.’ That was maybe March 10th, or 11th. By March 12th we had a negotiation session set up for March 13th and I called the union president and I said, ‘I don’t think we should meet tomorrow. I think we should plan for the possibility of shutting school. There are things that we have to negotiate about that.’
Pretty dramatic
And she said, ‘I don’t mind if we cancel the meeting, but I don’t think you should. I don’t think we’re canceling school or anything like that. That seems pretty dramatic.’”Back in BC (Before COVID), how many of us would have agreed with the CTA representative? Before our routines went sideways, before we learned how to use Zoom, before hand sanitizer became precious and masks necessary, before body counts in big cities dominated national news—didn’t such talk seem too dramatic, too absurd?“We’re political actors in a lot of ways,” Daniel explains, “so we have to respond to people’s concerns.” The diplomacy of this replay makes me think that Daniel is good at his job. He continues with a laugh, “By the end of the day, she called our superintendent and asked, ‘What are you guys planning to do?’”“At the same time,” Daniel says, “I called Jenny and said, ‘I think somethings gonna happen. People are saying the governor might close schools.”. Jenny was thinking, ‘What am I gonna do with the kids? This is gonna be a crazy time.’ And I said, ‘I think we need to get food.’ She went to the store, waited in a two hour line at Winco! At Costco she realized that everybody was there to get toilet paper.” I have to laugh at this detail. Daniel summarizes, “It was just bizarre.” We both shake our heads remembering.
The days right before
“March 11th, to March 12th, to March 13th,” Daniel counts off the days right before the stay-at-home orders were issued in California. “It was amazing. By the morning of March 13th, I had called together the classified union, the teachers union, and our superintendent. We all sat and wrote a memorandum of understanding and a statement to our community saying We’re gonna close schools.“I was driving home that day thinking how surreal it was. It was a rainy day. All our kids were going home. My kid was coming home. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I had a flat tire and I had to pull over and fix it. By the time I got home, it was like This is just the craziest thing in the world. The world seemed in total chaos.“We closed schools for two weeks. We’ll be closed for two weeks, have spring break and come back. We’ll do some deep cleaning and this will all be washed up.”As Daniel tells his story, the events of March 2020 rise from the murky depths of my memory. In the beginning I too thought we would correct course in a month or two. But our shared experience (aka the pandemic) has dismantled the optimistic confidence that once allowed us to think a few weeks at home and a deep cleaning would get us back to the familiar.
Keep everybody safe
Daniel continues, “I ended up going to work for a couple of days and then we all decided to work remotely. The governor effectively closed schools the rest of the year. We wanted to keep everybody safe and set the example, so we worked from home. We’ve insisted that people stay home. And we just hunkered down.“It was hard not seeing family.” As Daniel mentioned earlier, protecting his parents meant not visiting them. He repeats the words, “It was hard...I’m a very social person and it was hard being away from work. It was hard knowing kids weren’t at school. At the same time my life was, in a way, really beautiful. “My daily life became helping the girls get ready in the morning. We did yoga with YouTube. Then I’d jump on a Zoom meeting. I’d call people on the phone and I’d work on my computer. Then I’d have lunch with my family every day. We took walks twice a day. “We have priceless pictures of the girls on scooters. A police officer pulled over once just to take a picture of us because they were on scooters with their masks on, the snowy San Bernardino Mountains in the background. Victoria [Avenue] was like the backdrop of our life.
Spread love
“I don’t know if you saw, Rebecca, for a time people scrawled little messages and stuff.” I nod. “The chalk. Yes.” Daniel smiles, “One read, ‘Spread love, not Germs.’” I grin, “Yes! I took a photo of that.” (Included with this story.) Daniel tells me, “Spread Love, Not Germs. To me that encapsulated all that was good about 2020. “Throughout the pandemic there was a moment in time where everybody, regardless of politics or religion, or...” Daniel stops then starts again. “It seemed like everybody to me—I mean the union people who I love and I respect and I value, but who I disagree with professionally all the time, that’s my job, and that’s their job—we all just saw eye to eye. Let’s do whatever we can to keep everybody safe. It’s about keeping people like my parents safe, or your grandparents safe, or Sue’s grandparents safe.”Then Daniel becomes wistful, “I’m still amazed there was a period of time where everybody was sort of on the same page. Everybody was doing the right thing. Ready to listen and follow the rules. Kind of an opportunity…” Here his voice trails off a bit, “Maybe an opportunity missed.”“Maybe,” I reply. “But also, we had that brief window of hope, that sense that It could happen.” Meaning we could think and act as we rather than as me.
We're back
Daniel is telling me this story on the first day of May 2021, so it is no surprise when he shifts gears from the past to the present and says, “I’m very excited that we’re back. We’ve got kids back on campus. I think we did the right thing by being very cautious. And I think we’re doing the right thing now, reopening with all the strategies and mitigations.“As it played out, there were a lot of people worried. And now we’ve been back for over a month and it’s like ‘Okay, we’ve got it.’ It’s really good for kids and it’s good for the adults, the grownups. “I see the benefit for my kids. Mariamne didn’t go to preschool or daycare. Her world is us and her big sister, maybe a random cousin. She hadn’t made her own friends. And something clicked this week. Jenny was telling me that when she went to pick her up the kindergarteners were in line. There was all of this awkward not-knowing-each-other, not really being able to connect, living parallel to one another. Yesterday they were like, ‘Bye Mina. Bye Anthony.’ They knew each other. They’re friends.”I feel a bit like a kindergartner as we come out of the pandemic: waiting in line, a little awkward, tired of not being able to connect. The thought of meeting vaccinated friends in real life, without masks—tickles my inner five-year-old! I’m eager to braid our parallel lives together once more.
Personal and professional
“My world,” says Daniel, who is my neighbor, “is so often about kids. It’s personal and it’s professional for me. There’s been a lot of talk in the last year about the long-term negative impact of all this on kids. That is real. “But another thing I’ve realized is how resilient people are, how resilient kids are. I was really worried we’re gonna have to do a lot for kids. Some kids’ situation and life at home is such that they don’t have certain things they can fall back on, or built-in resiliencies. There are kids who are gonna need a lot. We can now focus and help them. Target their needs and do what we need to do. “But for a kid who has a loving household and safety and security,”—something Daniel and Jenny and millions of parents and caregivers provide, pandemic, or no—“they got with the program. They’re okay again, you know. And that makes me really hopeful.”
Brené Brown says, “Human connection is one of our most renewable sources of courage.” Each conversation I have with a neighbor proves her words true. What they may see as their ordinary lived experiences speak to me of compassion, hope, courage.As I share them, I trust that I am not the only one with this conviction. Thank you for your interest in this project and the quiet, life-sized stories that come out of it. Your curiosity and kindness is like that of the neighbors who initiated the work at the beginning.The work is wonderful and free! Support this living artist and share Who Is My Neighbor with someone who could use encouragement and a good read, and thank you. I'm grateful for you.Your neighbor,
