ANOTHER LOST DECADE? [F, 3-27-20]

Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

My father lost his eyesight in an industrial accident, when he was 35, and I was five. He lived over 60 more years. Every once in a while, he would misplace a decade. It was sort of like living with Rip Van Winkle.

After the eye accident, we moved back to his home area so he could farm, the way his parents farmed when he was a boy. We got a horse and wagon and cow and pig and chickens. But this was after WWII. In the decade since he and Mother married, the decade of WWII, farming had changed. Everybody else farmed with tractors instead of horses. They didn’t put up loose hay, the way we did; they had balers. They didn’t plant and pick and shell corn by hand; they had mechanized planters and pickers and shellers. They didn’t carry their water in from a well. They didn’t use an outhouse.

With no eyesight, Daddy socially distanced. He did not feel comfortable in crowds. He might walk into someone. Even individual contacts were difficult. What if an old friend spoke to him and he didn’t recognize them? Batter just to be self-quarantined.

He was a very smart man, but he could not see. Not just physical blindness, but change blindness. He self-quarantined a whole decade. He never quite understood.

When farming on his own became financially impossible, he got jobs on dairy farms. He could do the barn work very well. He did it for a decade. Dairy barns are 24-365 jobs. Those cows have to be milked twice a day, regardless. He never left the farms where he worked. Until one day he needed a new pocket knife. Helen thought it would be nice for him to pick it out himself. He took an afternoon off. They went to every store in the county. Every time, he said, “That’s too much. We can get one cheaper.” A decade of inflation had gone by, and he missed it. He never did buy a knife. Just couldn’t understand how prices could be like that.

I think about that now, as I wonder about how long our pandemic will last, wonder how many people will lose a decade. It’s not just that we have to adjust to a new reality right now. That will pass, probably not as quickly as any of us wishes, but some day the corona virus will be gone. Our time of “social distancing” will be over.  But on the other side will be a very different world, where we don’t recognize the different horses and the different prices.

Right now, understandably, we just want to try to survive. But in the process, will we keep our eyes open well enough to see the changes, so that we can live successfully in the brave new world that follows? Will we be able to drive a tractor? Will we even be able to buy a pocket knife? Stay home, but stay alert.

John Robert McFarland