A Year Into the Pandemic of 2020-2021

As the pandemic drags on, I find that I am becoming more scatter-brained. I start one project, then walk into another room as I go to refresh my cup of tea and suddenly, I’m on a different project with my cup still cold and close to empty. Nothing seems to get finished. This Polar Vortex has made it worse. The wintery sky – so gray when I look out of the window. Even the birds seem to have lost their vibrant colors. This is NOT me. “ME” is attention oriented. “ME” is detail oriented. “ME” is focused. “ME” has checklists on top of checklists that are religiously checked and updated every evening before I go to bed, then crossed off as I get things done. “ME” accomplishes things. This “Other Person” is not “ME” and yet… When I do focus, it is for others. Clients. Friends. Making Masks. Projects that involve my doing for others. Then my focus sharpens and I accomplish things. I keep all the balls in the air at the same time and ensure that nothing drops, nothing is missed. But, when it is just me, my brain is “mushy”. What was it that I walked into this room to get? Where did I put….. What was it I wanted to tell Mike? Did I call Annette and tell her… what was it I was going to tell her? My focus is lost. The kitchen table covered with partially worked projects. Books for 4 different book discussion groups, plus a fifth book for the one I’m really reading right now. The dining room becoming a catchall when I need to clear the kitchen table. The living and dining rooms, still full of sewing supplies from making masks and boxes of things to be “rehomed”. Some days are better than others. Today the sun shone and the sky was bright blue. The snow and ice melted around the heated bird bath that had gotten encrusted with ice around the rim, from the extreme cold. My focus was better. Today I got things done. I crossed things off the list. But tomorrow, more snow is coming and the sky will be gray again and the bone chilling cold will keep me inside. Conversations with friends make me feel better. I’m not alone. Others have had the same issue since COVID has dragged on and on. It’s worse for those who are more isolated. Where things are delivered and they never leave home. “Buddy Checks” from friends, family and church help as they give people a chance to talk to others. Creating projects that are mentally stimulating help – writing blogs and family histories, taking online courses, projects that force them to use their brains to puzzle out solutions. But still it’s trying. At times my mind starts to wander and I wonder how the early explorers, trappers and pioneers who so often only saw other people a few times a year managed it. Oh, How I wish I could reset my brain to before COVID hit. When it was needle sharp and my focus was constant. When I could call a friend and meet up for lunch and a long stimulating chat. That day is coming.

East Berlin Trip

When we lived in Germany, I took every opportunity to travel. Sometimes with my husband and sons, sometimes with visiting relatives. Often though, I would go on the “Wive’s trips” set up for by Officer’s Wives Club or Mike's Squadron Wive’s Club (my unit had too few people in it to set up trip). The wives would go on shopping trips (often shopping at the factory outlet stores for china or crystal), or cooking classes. Sometimes we’d just go where it was difficult to go. Like when we went to Berlin. Germany was still divided then, into East and West with Berlin a divided city trapped in the middle. We went with plans to shop, sightsee and enjoy ourselves. Since I was active duty at the time, I had to get special permission to cross through the Eastern Sector to get to Berlin and then permission to enter East Berlin, as did the only other active duty wife on the trip. The civilian wives had to bring their passports and military ID’s but they didn’t have to have special permission documents. We started out that morning, driving from Ramstein AB to Frankfurt, doing our best to keep our caravan of cars together on the autobahn. By the time we reached Frankfurt, we were running late for processing in to catch the special British run train that would take us from Frankfurt across West Germany, then East into West Berlin. I helped park the cars, while others grabbed our documents and rushed into the train station to do the military paperwork required to get us on the train. The Brits knew how to live well and the train was very comfortable. Even with expecting it, it was still strange to have to pull the window blinds and not look outside as we traversed the Eastern Sector. After we finally arrived in West Berlin and got settled at Templehoff Air Base, we got our briefing on what we could and could not do in the city and when we crossed the border at Checkpoint Charlie to enter East Berlin. We were not supposed to engage in conversation with any of the East Berlin citizens, in particular we were to say absolutely nothing about military units, where we were stationed or what our spouses did. We were not under any circumstance to use the light rail trains to go from one section of the city to another. Like Cinderella, we had a curfew and had to be back on the Western side of the city. We were briefed on carrying our passports and for the two of us who were active duty, carrying our permission documents. That’s when I realized that the gal who did the paperwork hadn’t given me back my permission document. Then we discovered that she had accidently left it at the Frankfurt train station. Without it, I couldn’t enter East Berlin. There was nothing that could be done at that point, so the others left to start their visit of East Berlin, while I waited at Templehoff. Later that day, I was able to rejoin the group. I found them at a shopping area, where they stood in line with queues of East Germans purchasing Christmas decorations. While I bought a few things, mentally I was ashamed of myself. I was so affluent compared to the East Germans around me, that I really felt that I shouldn’t be purchasing items that were so obviously hard to get in their city. Regrouping later back at Templehoff, the group prepared for the night’s big entertainment. We were going back into the East side for a wonderful 5 course dinner at the fanciest hotel in East Berlin. This was the hotel where ruling heads of state stayed when they were being feted by the Communist regime and shown around that “plum” that was East Berlin (as compared to everything else in the Communist Bloc). This time we were going on a military bus with a military driver and a civilian tour guide assigned to us from Templehoff with us. The dinner was fabulous. Couse after course of outstanding food, excellent wines and excellent service. It truly was a showplace for the Communists to take dignitaries. Of course, one of the women did make the mistake of talking too much to the restroom attendant (for which she and her husband got to have a talk with his commander a few weeks later, when “intel” was received that she had passed military information to the attendant). And then there were a couple of women who had wanted to shop at a specific store and had followed the directions an East Berlin citizen gave them, which included riding the light rail train system. When the dinner ended, several hours later, the group was more than slightly inebriated. We had just enough time to get back through Checkpoint Charlie before we turned into pumpkins. Unfortunately, there was one slight problem..... While we were inside the Hotel having our dinner, several other busses had totally blocked in our bus and the driver couldn’t move it. The tour guide, bus driver and I searched the street looking for the driver to no avail. We went back into the hotel and asked for help, which they declined to give us. Finally, without any alternatives, we went back to the bus and rejoined the rest of the group while we pondered what to do next. In our absence, the other women had decided to start singing. Unfortunately, for the Airman who was driving the bus, they chose to sing the fighter pilot songs they had learned from their husbands. I watched the Airman’s back as he sat in the driver’s seat and his blushing went up his neck. As the women got rowdier and rowdier, their noise level increased. Finally, the hotel sent someone out to tell us that we were disturbing their guests and we needed to leave. We pointed out, once more that we couldn’t leave until the busses blocking us in moved out of the way. This time they decided to help us. It turned out that the bus driver was nearby smoking a cigarette and laughing to his colleagues about how he had trapped the American Military bus and its passengers. The hotel staff made him move his bus and we were finally on our way, the bus driver and the tour guide visibly relieved. Now, I hadn’t come all that way to miss the trip, so after the rest of the group headed over to the Eastern side, I paid a visit to the orderly room for the Templehoff Services Division (where I knew the Chief of Services). Telling them part of the truth, but not all of it, I explained that my permission doc had been left in Frankfurt by accident. I convinced them to give me a blank permission document, by telling them that the other active duty gal on the trip was from my orderly room and hence had permission to sign the form for me. OK, so a slight diversion from the truth, since she wasn’t in my unit and had no ability to sign the form. A quick trip to the bathroom (out of sight of prying eyes) and my form was filled out and signed and I had headed for the Eastern side of the city. When the group asked how I’d gotten the document replaced, I told them I’d gotten it from the orderly room, I just neglected to say it had been blank when I got it and they never questioned it. So I had ended up being on the wrong side of Checkpoint Charlie, after curfew, on a bus of drunken women where I was not only the ranking military member, but also the only one who was sober other than the bus driver (I hadn’t bothered to tell anyone on the trip that I was pregnant) and I was traveling on forged documents.... Luckily for me, while the bus driver and tour guide got “called in” the next day to explain what had transpired, the authorities didn’t bother to talk to any of the women in our group.