Can we find the Circle of Trust?

The long Summer of COVID continues to grind along, taking an otherwise challenging struggle with ALS and adding an exclamation point to so many events. We knew the journey with a stiff adversary would be challenging. We had no idea last September that we would spend so much of this time alone, separated from our friends.

Last week we celebrated Annie's 20th Birthday, and Deb got an additional surprise when Paul walked through the door on Saturday night after driving up from Boston with Annie. In what can only be called "speed friending", she spent last Saturday in Lexington visiting with a host of friends at various outdoor venues, picking up Paul in Cambridge before heading up to Yarmouth. We celebrated the beginning of Annie's third decade with improvised Asian dishes and slabs of wonderful cake lovingly baked by Mom.

Homemade chocolate cake with raspberry filling.

Paul's visit also gave us an opportunity to head out onto Casco Bay for an afternoon on the water on Sunday afternoon.

We also learned that Mount Holyoke has suspended its residential program for the foreseeable future, doing all of its classes online, so Annie is considering her options, including the possibility of moving into an apartment with friends who are also learning that their colleges will not be opening this Fall. Perhaps some of you have a house that is empty and requires a house-sitter.

This coming week we will be doing a quick trip to Boston for some time at Mass General to visit the Healey Center and to get Deb back on Radicava following an unexpected two-month hiatus as we tried to get into position for a drug trial that had some restrictions on candidates. Ultimately, the trial was oversubscribed by a factor of ten, so we have opted to return to the regimen we were on through June and hope to be back up and running next week. There will be more to report on that front soon.

As ALS moves forward, it has become difficult for us to hold long Zoom calls with you. We still want to schedule a time to see each of you and hear what is happening with you and your families during this unusual summer. We have had some visitors stop by in Yarmouth, and Deb's creative hand continues to turn our house into our home. Yesterday, we pulled off a blitz of picture hanging, including some dreaded multi-frame collections which taxed our measuring skills (and patience) after two hours. It is great to see familiar art on the walls, again.

I cannot stress strongly enough how much we treasure short notes/updates to let us know how you are all faring. There is no need to post publicly here if you choose to write a more personal note, but share a missive with Deb thru an email. And, yes, we are definitely putting thought into how we can re-establish a semblance of social life with our friends, receive visitors, and be visitors. As friends and kids have come through Yarmouth, and we increasingly venture farther from home base, we know that judicious risks need to be taken to curb this isolation. We also know that we can work together, through understanding each other's prior isolation/self-quarantine and use of more available COVID testing, to provide a level of comfort that we CAN see each other without unreasonable fear. There is a longer post on this whole subject rattling inside my brain that hopefully can find words someday. We are not meant to live this way, and the tenor of how we cope with physical health risk through this pandemic will hopefully help us avoid the mental and spiritual deterioration that is not easily measured but is nonetheless occurring. Each of us knows this, but it is too fraught to discuss with strangers.

Until then, we will be trying to assemble a "circle of trust" (aka safe ways for gathering) so that we can have a semblance of living back. We need to see our friends, and we need to be able to hear each other and not be ten feet apart in windy conditions. We are putting our home back together with room for guests for a reason: we need guests to feel fully alive. If you would like to be part of such efforts, we are open to planning some things.

And, with that, I hope this adds some levity to reestablish the origin of this hilarious phrase.