ISO: In Search Of ...

In the panicked early days of Covid, I posted an ISO (“in search of”) on the neighborhood app Nextdoor for sanitizing wipes.  I got a list of suggestions for places to get them, but all the stores and pharmacies were out.  There were none to be found on Amazon, or anywhere online.  Finally a man named Jason offered some of his own. I was grateful.  But when I picked them up from his front stoop, there was a single container, already open, only a quarter full.

Then someone posted an offer to make face masks.  The masks were not cheap--$20 each—because she was donating one for each one paid for.  When I got them, the elastic loops were too big for my ears.  I had to pinch a segment of the elastic and staple it together to make the mask fit more snugly. The staples kept rubbing against the back of my ears.
 
Now, I’m engaged in a what my husband and I call a “cleaning frenzy,” a mad purging of clutter and grime.  We call it a “frenzy” because the impulse is both intense and rare, and motivated by despair.  This impulse flies against my life-long hatred of vacuuming and dusting.  When I was 12, I informed my mother that I would not be helping her and my sister clean on Saturday mornings.  In fact, when I was older, I’d be hiring a maid.  I was planning to be a doctor, so I’d have plenty of money.  For some reason my mother let me get away with this; I guess we both figured I’d be wealthy enough to take care of the whole family.
Anyway ... . 

For some reason my husband is deeply offended by paper grocery bags.  I use them to gather up items lying around the house, collect paper for recycling, store books I want to sell to Half-Price Books, you-name-it.  So I decided to search for free cardboard boxes—but where?  I posted another ISO to Nextdoor.

Again, people offered suggestions.  Finally a guy named Blake said he had produce boxes I could pick up.  “They might be a little damp from the rain last night,” he said. “But they’re waxed so they should be fine.”

I like the produce boxes they use at our coop.  They look like firm, cardboard laundry baskets, just the right size.  Besides I didn't remember any rain.  I messaged him back: “Thanks, I’ll come and get them!”

I had a little trouble finding his place, and when I did, my heart sank.  There was single box on the front lawn.  I peered more closely and realized there were flattened boxes inside it. But they weren't damp: they were soaked.  The bottom of the box holding all the other boxes nearly dropped out as I carried it back to the car.

“Will it always be this way?” I wondered.  “People giving away the leftovers they no longer want?” When I got home, I opened up the flattened boxes and put them on our porch to dry out.  Then I got another message, someone offering more boxes. But I wondered: Would they be too small or too big?  Flimsy or moldy?  Infested with spiders?

I can only hope for the best.  But I do notice one thing: these offerings, ragged as they are, make me feel safer.  A whole network of help is at my fingertips..

My husband and I grow more irritable as the isolation drags on. Like everyone, we are sad and angry and afraid.  I ask for grace: the power to forgive easily, out of the humble knowledge that we're all a mass of contradictions, doing our best in the midst of a crisis.  It doesn't come naturally.  I have to work at it.