December 6, 2020: Substitutes -

There are five days to go in my pretty-much self-imposed (as in, “recommended, but not mandated”) quarantine at home, after our epic journey. This time around, I’ve learned how to use the grocery-delivery service, so I’m feeling savvy and responsible.

New Seasons is four blocks from our house. Before the trip, it was my habit to shop there during old-folks hours, between 7 and 9 am. Actually, it wasn’t just a habit, it was a bit of a thrill.  Grocery stores are so full of color and possibility, and while there weren’t enough people to make it feel dangerous, there were guaranteed, live, 3-D people, not dear friends or family, but the all-important acquaintances or even strangers, masked up, who would say hello at check-out.

Saying hello to me was their job! Saying “How are you holding up?” was mine! We had it DOWN.

Anyway, delivery turns out to be fun in a different way, not so much socially as in the surprise factor. Long story, but we have more cabbage than we can handle. The cabbage is victorious, and we are vanquished. This despite the fact that we have had cabbage for breakfast for the past five days. It’s good. It’s weird, I know, but it’s good. And it MUST surely be increasing our dietary fiber, as doctors recommend.

(Glam shot of cabbage by CSW)

I saw a clip from Black-ish, where Dre loses it when he is delivered the wrong brand of cookies. He has been trying so hard to keep the family functioning, to keep his kids on task with their online schoolwork, and now he can’t even get the cookies he wants.

I hear you, Dre. Would you like some cabbage instead? Because I have some to share.

I want to say something good about grocery delivery, though. I mean, besides the obvious, “We aren’t starving, we can afford groceries, we aren’t getting evicted from our home where the groceries are delivered,” and all those big, I-know-I’m-lucky things.

In addition to all of that, I’ve gotten a few things I never would have bought, and they’ve been really good. I never tired that brand before, but I like it. I never bought those avocados, only the other sort, but those are excellent! 

Plus, the people doing the shopping are choosing the most perfect specimens. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more completely unblemished bananas (or more handsome cabbage, for that matter). I’m trying to delight in the surprises more than I whine about off-brand cookies.

In other news of substitutions, our choir gathered on Zoom to sing Compline service for the first time, this week. We were all muted except our two leaders, who took the cantor and congregation parts. We got to sing with one of them (or both, because who could stop us?), and it was so satisfying, I can’t tell you. I haven’t sung with anyone since March. Singing with one other person, even one person who can’t hear me, was bliss. We’ll sing Compline alone, together, one night a week, for the foreseeable. It’s substitute choir practice. I’ll take it!

After the service, we went around the Zoom boxes checking in. Five of our young choristers reported in. The two oldest said online high school sucked, and it was hard to get motivated. The two youngest, twins who never hold still, agreed - relishing the word - that online school SUCKED! And then one of them, wriggling and arching his back, and sliding, and finally sinking right out of the bottom of the frame, as if the quicksand had ahold of him, added, “But it’s EEASYyyyyyyyy!” I had to imagine what those two are like when they are not just wiggly, but wiggly and bored.  And the middle-school chorister said, smiling, “I like school. I like it online. And I like being home, and now I get to be home. So I’m good.” 

The substitution theme made me think about an article I really enjoyed recently, with the not-quite-apt title “Pandemic-Proof YourHabits,” and the sub-head:  “Too many people are still longing for their old routines. Get some new ones instead.”

The article is so much better, and so much more fascinating, than the above would suggest. The author, Kate Murphy, describes how we are biologically wired to do things in the ways we know, and about how frustrated we get when we can’t. Here’s a snippet that stuck with me:

‘Psychologists, anthropologists, neuroscientists and neurobiologists have written countless books and research papers on the topic but it all boils down to this: Human beings are prediction machines.

“Our brains are statistical organs that are built simply to predict what will happen next,” said Karl Friston, a professor of neuroscience at University College London. In other words, we have evolved to minimize surprise.’

We are prediction machines, evolved to minimize surprise!

This rings true to me. So I’m staying open to adding  new routines, when the opportunity arises, but I’m also trying to roll with the surprises, much as a cabbage would roll, if you were to gently push it downhill.