The End of the World, and Queen Anne’s Lace

Things go on as they always have, with variations.

The guinea pig is elderly but active as ever, and she likes to graze on weeds while I prepare the garden for summer. I’ve got plants nearly bursting out of their pots in the dining room, just waiting for the night time temperature to stop dipping below forty, just like every May. The cat likes to go in and out of her basement hideaway so often that when I am home, I prop the side door so she can come and go as she pleases.  Adrienne gets up in the morning and walks to school, but she’s at the high school for the moment, spending three weeks in orientation for a program that will give her college credit concurrent with her high school courses next year.  I pick her up downtown in the afternoon, and sometimes we go to the community center to exercise, and sometimes we go shopping.

Shopping is getting tricky. The prices of everything have gone up, unevenly, one random item and then another. First it was hamburger and coffee. Next, I think, it was the utility bills: I swear they’ve gone up by a quarter again of what we used to pay for gas and electric. My writing income and Michael’s work at the restaurant would have been enough to make us feel like we were middle class two years ago. Now it’s impossible. And then, of course, the gas prices. When I heard they were going to skyrocket, I filled up the tank even though we couldn’t afford such a luxury. Then next day, as I drove past the gas station, I saw that the price had gone up by fifty cents a gallon.

That’s just the cost of living, of course. Other cracks are showing here and there. The neighbors down the street used to have a TRUMP flag on a great big flag pole, and now suddenly they don’t. The Baker Street Irregulars‘ mother doesn’t bother with the local food pantry she used to visit, because there isn’t enough donated food to be worth her time anymore. Every so often, the Mad King threatens war crimes again. I go to bed wondering if I’ll wake up to news of nuclear war– and then, when I wake up, he’s backed off again. There was an outbreak of Hantavirus on a cruise ship somewhere, and I didn’t think to be worried about another pandemic. But then the Mad King told a reporter, “It’s very much, we hope, under control,” which is exactly what he said about COVID-19. Now, I’m worried.

Maybe nothing more will go wrong. Maybe the world will come to an end.

I asked somebody the other day, “What do children want to be when they grow up? When I was a little girl, the exciting job everyone wanted to be was an astronaut. When I was a teenager, all the cool kids wanted to be video game testers. I think when your grandparents were young, they wanted to be reporters. What do children want to be now?”

My friend looked grimly at me and said, “Kids don’t think about what they want to be when they grow up anymore. They just watch reels on their phones all day.”

I hoped he was wrong, but it chilled me. I was more determined than ever to help children learn about the world they live in, so they’d want to be something when they grow up. My after-school classes at the church outreach are over for the year, but I started brainstorming the next ones: interesting places to go in the geography club. Fun art projects in the art class. Science or current events. No, on second thought, I don’t even want to think about current events.

Jimmy’s boy came for his evening visit a few days ago, wanting to watch cartoons while he played with Adrienne’s old Legos.  But the TV is broken and with all the financial upheaval, we can’t quite find our way to get a new one. I sat him in front of my computer instead. “Want to learn about local plants you can eat?” I asked, thinking of the fun we’d had looking at wildflowers on our last hike.

I showed him reel after reel on social media, reels by a creator called “The Black Forager” who lives in Columbus, just two hours away and in the same climate zone as Steubenville. Every time I thought he’d get bored with the reels and ask for a cartoon, he asked for another. He watched them until it was time to go home.

The next day, as soon as Adrienne and I got back from our errands, he rushed up on his scooter and demanded to go for a walk. “And bring bags, because we’re going to find food like the Dark Forester!”

“The Black Forager,” I corrected, and ran to get plastic grocery bags.

A moment later, he and I were foraging for dinner.

We went to all the vacant lots in a two-block radius, places nobody ever sprays the weeds, harvesting plantago and violets, dandelions and wood sorrel. I picked a sprig of Queen Anne’s lace and made him smell it, lecturing.  Queen Anne’s lace has hairy stems and smells exactly like a carrot when you break it. Poison Hemlock, which has a similar white flower and delicate leaf, has a smooth stem with purple blotches and no carrot smell. Queen Anne’s lace is edible. Poison hemlock is deadly even if you only taste a little bit. Hemlock is invasive in this area, so every child needs to know the difference.

For just a second, holding that frond of Queen Anne’s lace, I was transported to the first time I came to Steubenville, decades and decades ago. It was the summer before I went to preschool. My parents took my baby brother and me to Franciscan University for a retreat for families with children that was known as the Holy Family Fest. That was the first time I ever gathered with a group of Charismatic Catholics. It was the first time I heard the infamous cult leader Mike Scanlan’s gravely voice. Scanlan’s voice is one of the faint memories I have of that trip. The other is standing by the road on another part of campus with another little Charismatic Catholic girl, picking Queen Anne’s lace. I remember what it felt like to yank and twist the hairy stems, wondering why they wouldn’t break easily like dandelions. I remember forming a great big bouquet of Queen Anne’s Lace as a gift for my mother. I remember that, scarcely an hour later, I came back to check on my present, and the flowers had already faded and died for lack of water.

That happened, geographically, about a quarter of a mile from where I was standing with Jimmy’s boy just then.  Chronologically, it was about thirty-eight years ago. But in the metric of living through it, it might have happened eons ago on another planet.

Jimmy’s boy and I took our greens back home.

Maybe nothing will get worse, and maybe it will. Perhaps the world really is coming to an end: or, perhaps it’s always been coming to an end. The only thing we can do– the only thing we have ever been able to do– is make it better for the people around us.

I was terrified, but I was also at peace.