Saturday, June 13, 2020

As I walk to the House of a Hundred Grandmothers, I think I see a cat nuzzling a bottle of wine. I get closer. It’s a bottle of olive oil and a white plastic bag. Ahead of me, a young woman walks with four children, dressed in their Sabbath best. The tallest girl wears a white dress made of endless translucent layers. I am surprised when they call the woman “grandmother.” The park on the way is more crowded than last week. Three dogs run around, two on leashes, one without. The freely roaming dog ambles toward me, but darts off to my left when we hear something move in the bushes. At supper, my family sits as we did last week. I’m in a sturdy folding chair. A step stool takes the place of the chair that broke. I offer to replace it. They decline. Two of the family households are about to move. They will get another kitchen chair from one that has too many. In the living room, we discuss some tricky language in a Biblical passage that I am translating for a film project. I had tried to use a modern meaning for an ancient word. Wisdom doesn’t say that God bought her when he started on his path but rather than he created her. Oh. We talk about researching and organizing the books that we’re writing. We get tired as it gets late. We have to repeat ourselves when we mumble through our masks. I head home. A Facebook post reminds me to file for my overseas US ballot. So does my mother, over videochat. Done. There’s still time for other ongoing tasks before I work again tomorrow.