| View this email in your browser We hope this email finds you well during “CoronaTime”! We are doing well and as usual, are overdue for an update letter. So, here is the latest on our crew…  Isa is driving a big truck – he is driving by himself and enjoying it very much. Fortunately, in this “Corona Time”, it is pretty easy for him to isolate as he has very little interaction other than on the phone. Isa is officially engaged to a lovely young woman from his home town and they talk on the phone pretty much all the time. He is very happy. We had a visit from him recently – he needed groceries from Elias and a couple of masks and some hand sanitizer. 🙂  Roshan is still driving the truck with his partner Alijan. They two of them seem to be doing well – staying away from everyone and a bit bored, as usual. They are both engaged to girls in Afghanistan. Roshan is looking into finding a way for his sister to attend college here. He says that she is super smart, and studies all the time. He would love for her to have the opportunity to go to a university here. Under normal circumstances, that is tricky. Now, it seems impossible. But we will investigate and if we are lucky, get something in place for when we reach a new normal.  Ghani was home November-March with his cousin, Arif K. It was wonderful to have them. I was hoping they would stay, but they are planning to open a car salvage and export business near Orlando with the help of Ghani’s uncle. They were ready to get the thing started when the Coronavirus brought everything to a stop. They went back to Michigan the day before MI issued the stay at home order and are there with a bunch of the other boys. Ghani and several of the other boys are working in factories, making food and they seem to be doing well. They are concerned about exposure at work, though.  Hedayat is still here. He has been struggling – got mixed up with a naughty group of kids from Emmaus while at LCCC and was arrested for DUI in mid-February. His court hearing has been postponed. Since then, he is pretty much just sleeping and hanging out. He has applied for a few jobs but hasn’t gotten anything yet. We are a bit worried about him. He is amiable enough when he is with us and we are hopeful that once he starts a regular full-time job, he will feel better. It is a bit of a mixed bag though… a job would be great for him, yet any job he would get now would create a lot more exposure, so he is much safer at home (and we are safer too!).   Abu is doing well. He is in his senior year and we have no idea what will happen regarding his graduation. His grades are excellent and he has been accepted at NCC and is planning to attend there for 2 years and then transfer to a 4-year university. He traded in his first car for a newer, used car this week and is still working part-time at Walmart. When the virus hit, he took a couple of weeks off as he was not keen to get sick. After the two weeks, Walmart called and said they had put in place a bunch of things to make the workplace safer, so he is back at work and doing fine. Abu had planned to move out over the summer, to live somewhere closer to the community college and to have the experience of living sans adults, I guess. He found a roommate — a medical student/resident from Kenya and he is moving out at the end of April. It is a bit sudden and unexpected, but as Abu explained, he knows that he can come home whenever he wants to, and he is not going far, so he will be home regularly. The boys have had to cut each other’s hair since all the barbershops are closed! They have actually done quite well.  Jean Claude is here as the dorms are closed. He has been doing quite a lot of schoolwork as things transitioned to online pretty quickly for him. He is doing well – looking for a job for the summer and keeping up with schoolwork, so he keeps himself quite busy.  Arif Saramad is our new guy. He arrived on February 12th. He is as lovely a young man as anyone could wish for. He is helpful and cheerful and works hard. He is using the online Khan Academy to learn algebra and has been working with my mother on English vocabulary and grammar. The high school has moved to online schooling and he is doing a great job at keeping up with that. He enjoys cooking and is eager to help out in any way. He still has the “new boy” syndrome. I told him that I hope it lingers! He is so delightful. He is looking forward to getting his driving permit and work authorization. Like everyone else, our lives have changed a bit since the beginning of March. I have been busy, not accomplishing much, as usual, it seems. 🙂 The three big-time sucks are shopping – the new shopping experience is a lot slower, and since I am shopping for 8-12 people, well, it takes pretty much of at least two days a week. And then I am tired. I am actually tired quite a bit. I expect it is a combination of my perpetual battle with sinusitis and the stress that is inevitable when living through what we are living through. I have been a bit easier on myself about that, though. We have family movie nights at least 4 nights a week, which means that on those nights I am not in my office or studio until midnight, trying to be productive.  I also dug out my sewing machine and spent a ridiculous amount of time perusing mask-making videos and articles, and shopping for supplies, and tools related to making masks, I have been experimenting with different designs and trying to combine some of the best features – it often doesn’t work when I do these experiments as I seem to have a real knack for putting things together inside out or backward or just the wrong way. But I am persisting and spending a lot of time with my seam ripper. 🙂 I have narrowed it down to 3 patterns that seem to work, are comfortable, and aren’t ridiculously complicated to make. This project started in the dining room but had to be moved down to the studio as it was taking over. I have an order for 50 of them from my brother, but so far my supply is depleted as quickly as I make them. Two of my boys who drive trucks needed them, my parents, friends, my boys, some of their friends, even one of my ex-sisters-in-law… and of course I had quite a few that didn’t quite make it through the first washing machine test. But now that I have settled on a couple of patterns, as soon as my fabric order is in, I should be able to go into production. The third thing that takes an inordinate amount of my time, is reading the news. I check my phone to look up something, open google, the news headlines pop up. I scroll through and click something that looks intriguing and it is a bit like getting lost in Dumbledor’s Pensieve. At the beginning of this “Corona Time”, I was taking product photos and putting things on Etsy, but it didn’t seem like that was going anywhere – our sales were pretty much none. But we have had a few in the past week, and some for something not in stock, so I am going to have to reclaim part of the studio (that has been taken over with sewing) to make a few mead mugs. I am looking forward to having a bit of time in the studio to just make things, but I am not sure when that will be, and I am not sure really how our business will evolve to survive this. I think a lot of small business owners are contemplating the future and wondering if their business will find a place in whatever the future looks like.  Nolan is working from home too. He carved out a pretty nice office for himself downstairs and has settled into a fairly comfortable routine. He is working long hours though – longer than when he was at the office – and work has been pretty stressful. But he is enjoying cooking with Arif and has started puttering in the garden, so he is doing pretty well. Nolan was talking with the boys about how we are helping Bethany set up a virtual foster parent support group. And Abu was very sweet. He said that we aren’t foster parents, and this isn’t a foster family – it is a real family. The boys are handling the stay at home orders pretty well. They spend a lot of time on their phones, talking with friends, and playing online games with friends. When we have nice weather they do go out to the stadium to work out and kick the soccer ball with 2 or three friends – but they are quite mindful of the dangers and keep their distance. We remind them regularly how important it is because if they do bring the virus home, they could infect all of us. Right now the only one with a driver’s license is Abu (Hedayat lost his driving privileges and will have his license suspended when he eventually gets to court for his DUI). Though Abu is busy, he is happy to run errands to do porch drop-offs or pickups for me. The boys are all taking the virus very seriously. They are washing their hands and staying inside most of the time. They are concerned about the future and how this will end, as we all are. We talk about it and are clear that right now, there are lots of questions and very few answers.  We are trying to keep a bit of fun going. We have fires in our outdoor fire pit when the weather is okay, and we watched the entire Hobbit and Lord of the Rings series and the Harry Potter series. We would do more, but I am terrible at managing my time, (and spend a lot of it reading the news) so I always have too much to do and often work in the studio after dinner – when we could be playing a game or watching a movie together. And with Ghani not here, I seem to be the default instigator. Ghani is a good instigator – he could get everyone motivated for a game or a project. I miss him a lot, and his cousin, Arif, who is a very kind and thoughtful guy. We received a call from our caseworker yesterday. He had heard that Abu is moving out and was concerned about that, but when I assured him that all was well, he mentioned that with Abu out, we would have a bed available for a new foster… 🙂 So we may have more news coming soon. We hope you are doing well during this crazy time. If you need a mask, please let me know, I am happy to send you one (or more). And if you are local and need any supplies from the store, please let me know! Added note: Roshan surprised us with a very quick visit last evening. He and Alijan needed masks, and Roshan really wanted to come home, even if just for a few minutes. He joined us for some pizza at dinnertime, picked up 2 masks and some bread, and was back on the road. He told us that he is planning on taking a job in NJ which will allow him to be home 2 days every week. He misses home, misses playing soccer, and sitting around the dinner table with everyone. He is planning on getting an apartment in Emmaus or Allentown with one or two of the other boys who are driving trucks. It sounds like he is planning on making this move within the next few months. This relationship that we have now with Roshan is somewhat miraculous. For quite a long time after he came to live with us, Roshan was so challenging. I despaired on more than a few occasions about him – he was grouchy and uncommunicative and did not seem to want to be here with us. I worried about him affecting the attitudes of the other boys. And now he is totally different. He is loving and thoughtful and appreciative, and he talks to us. He is certainly much happier since he visited his family in Afghanistan and got engaged to Shegufa. Whatever the reasons, I am enjoying the result! Copyright © 2020 Clay Street Speakeasy, All rights reserved. |