733. 112 Old Partner Emerged as Prominent Figure in Pandemic/Tender Lin (老伴在疫情中凸顯其重要/林天德)

112 Old Partner Emerged as Prominent Figure in Pandemic

Tender Lin

 

To defend the attack from Chinese Wuhan Coronavirus, the in United States declared Home Stay in March 15, 2020. All citizens were required to stay at home at all possible. If one had to go out, he had to have at least six feet of distance from others. At first glance, this ordinance was a piece of cake for me to follow. I and my wife just stopped going to gym. Instead, we stayed at home doing on our garden. We ate three meals, watched TV, opened I-phone, and dug garden soil as usual. But to our expectation after two months of home stay, we stated to get agitated. We started to collect masks in preparation for later usage, engaged in conversation with others and moved around our house and climbed up-n-down stairs with more frequency. My wife even started to shop twice a week instead of once. We even started to feel uneasy as we might be the target of a hate crime which was warned by the FBI. As of today, May 21, 2020, there was still no vaccine and drug in treating virus. It was reported that some 1.6 million tested positive and 95 thousand had passed away.

I have never encountered a horrible pandemic in this magnitude. At daily conversation, I found people tended to treat this virus attack as a world war. This corona virus attack started in Wuhan, China, in December, 2019, but shockingly in March 12, 2020, Chinese diplomat Mr. Chao declared that it was brought to Wuhan by American soldiers. President Trump reputed and clearly stated that it was a Chinese virus. As a lay person like me, I testified with hundred percent assurance that it was from Wuhan, China, simply its occurrence was first reported over there and had been continued for over three-month period. This virus is now treated as invisible enemy and have produced far greater harms than the previous two World Wars. As a result, the government have sent out $1,200 per person for relief.

For my wife and I, Home Stay was just to have mutual support and care at home, and there was nothing usual about.  But under the pandemic, it had two special implications: One was that we had to pay special attention to each other, because if one got disease then the other would be bound to get it too; Therefore, mutual dependency and self-reliance got intensified. For example, my wife was alone to go out shopping once a week and my self was to further limiting my living scope.  I did not go to drug store to pick up anti-itching medication which I myself considered as not essential and I did not take the PSA test which was due at end of six months but I told myself to extend it; The other one was we further limited ourselves within governmental limitation. For example, our three daughters were unable to come for Mother Day, May 10, 2010, but my son insisted to come. When he came, we had to wear masks and obeyed social distancing, as we were afraid of getting infection, as this virus was said to have no-symptom infection. Obviously, you could see the celebration lost its meaning. However, underneath these two implications, I came to in touch with the true meaning of interpersonal relationship.

Inside of my book, Live to Win (Published by Amazon Kindle), I elaborated on the development of interpersonal relationship. Namely, it is to move from stranger to acquaintance, then to friend, and finally to lover. In this process, two individuals are constantly engaging, accepting, understanding, and refusing on various types of interests. Consequently, they either move closer or pull apart from each other. Therefore, relationship should not be simply construed as this old Taiwanese Saying, “Having relationship then no problem; No relationship then having problem”. Interpersonal relationship definitely has deeper implications as it was the result of a long-term interaction.  The final lover relationship does not easily come by. Here, you might ask that one is to have how many lovers in this life span? My answer is to have as many as you can have, particularly if you want to have a big enterprise or to be a big winner in life. Loosely speaking, one does not need to have many lovers in his senior years. Of course, the number is still up to the individual. On one occasion, I overheard someone said, “For a senior, if one has five lovers, he is well enough.”

That is right. As our living scope decreases, so does the number of our lovers. We all know, as we reach to end of our lives, we are all alone. People are often saying, “One came this world with empty hand, so he left this world with empty hand too.” You might ask, “What happened to all lovers we made?” In fact, they were not disappeared, they just could not do anything when we die. They would just helplessly watch God taking us away to heaven. Therefore, life is a lonely road to travel for all of us. Interestingly, this pandemic strengthened me another glimpse. Namely, man fundamentally is a social being too. After two months of isolation, I noticed people starting to get agitated. The longer the isolation, the more agitated it turned out. As of today, the pandemic is still not under control but people started to stand out on streets. They protested and shouted to be loosened and demanded to be reopened. Apparently, we the people are truly the “lonely crowd”. By the way, this phrase was the title of a book given by my lovely host family when I entered UCLA in 1967.

Right here, we can see that old partner was the most prominent one among our lovers in senior life. Of course, a man’s old partner does not have to be one’s better half. For me, it happened to be my better half with 52 years of marriage. Today, wife and I are seniors and are belong to the most venerable group in this virus pandemic. Besides, I did have some additional chronic illness and also was often suffered from influenza and allergy at this time. Without no question, I told my wife I particularly needed her help. Subsequently, we rendered care, protection, and respect for each other even more than usual at this pandemic time. For example, we respected each other in gardening. She had her own plant lot. She planted her own zucchinis, pumpkins, tomatoes, okras, and egg plants. I had my own spot and planted my own tomatoes, okras, sun flowers, and bitter melons. We were independent and nourished our own strength. Give you another example.  Even we used the same tomato seedlings, but we had our own different care. She learned from internet and wanted to trim leaves and branches (Photo A). On the other hand, I just let tomatoes grew naturally (Photo B). We understood and accepted our differences and got along all the way.

I firmly believed if we two old partners maintained stable mind and body, we definitely would defeat this horrible and invisible enemy, namely, Chinese Wuhan Corona Virus (5/21/2020).

Note. This article is to be collected into my book: Live Asks, I Answer, III by Amazon Direct Kindle Publishing.

 

 

Source from Dr. T. Lin

Posted in 07/2020