The Stoicism and Grit

The Mrs. is nervous about the virus.  She’s not alone.  Last night my father and stepmom suggested a dinner at Lombardi’s in Gardiner.  We’d tried to go there on Valentine’s Day at the last minute and it was completely sold out.  I’d been a few years back, but couldn’t much remember what it was like.  I’ve swung and missed on the few Italian joints we’ve visited and in New Paltz, so yes, sure, let’s head there.   My wife wasn’t having it.  “Let’s eat home.”

Indeed, yesterday she came home after having done a massive shop.  She let slip that she’d seen an article in Chinese social media about Americans stockpiling food. One imagines that nothing like the Hubei province, Wuhan metropolis lockdowns that happened without major protests.  U.S. citizens won’t take kindly to any such lock down.  Some U.S. citizens pride themselves on being armed in preparation for any such government interference.  Guns notwithstanding, it will be harder to control people and their movement in this country.  And so, perhaps spreading will occur uncontrollably. 

There are many way in which one could critique the CCP’s handling of the virus, particularly in the early days of the outbreak, but the world certainly has the Chinese people to thank for putting up with the hardships and restrictions of the last six weeks, or the spread of the virus would invariably be much worse.  One hopes the number of new cases in the U.S. continues to grow unconvincingly, in small fits are starts.  But if not, we’ll all need to model ourselves on the stoicism and grit of hundreds of millions of Chinese families. 

And much as I would have liked to go out for dinner last night, I was content to dine at home.  Before dinner we all took a walk, down on the rail trail.  I bike down there every day.  My wife and I walk down there regularly.  But it’s not often my little one joins us.  I warned here that she was underdressed and by the time we got to the bridge she was complaining that her ears were cold.  I gave her my coat with the hood, while keeping ahold of my gloves, and zipped up the turtleneck on my sweater for the return walk home.

After dinner my wife shared an interesting documentary about Isabel Cook.  I know of the stories of Sidney Rittenberg and Sidney Shapiro, but this was a Canadian woman who’d been born in Sichuan, the daughter of missionaries and who, after returning from college in Canada, was married to a British communist and they worked for the revolution, helping to establish the Beijing Foreign Studies Institute.  A Chinese production, there was the notable omission of anything that occurred between 1953 and say, 1979.  I looked and her husband was (of course) imprisoned during Wen Ge, and she was confined to the university.  Regardless she was a forceful and compelling advocate and as they sat there in her small Beijing apartment interviewing her in Chinese, I got an aching melancholy considering just how much I missed Beijing.

Sunday, 03/01/20