3rd Edition!

The 3rd edition of The Meaning of Everyday Occupation is now complete and being released by SLACK, Inc.. For this 3rd edition, Virginia Dickie, retired faculty member from the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, agreed to be co-author. Virginia is a highly valued scholar in the profession of occupational therapy. Our work together on the book has been an enriching journey for both of us. What had previously been “my” book is now fully our book.

The Meaning of Everyday Occupation is designed to immerse the reader deep into the world of people as occupational beings. The everyday occupation of our lives is often seen, but not noticed. Our intent with this book is to increase the visibility of everyday occupation and to offer readers opportunities for personal reflection about their day-to-day occupational patterns, how these are positioned in their own lives and in the lives of clients, and how they contribute to the meaning and quality of life at both individual and societal levels.

The emphasis in the book is on everyday occupation as experience. The reader is encouraged to think about how occupation is experienced in day-to-day life, to recognize and understand the complexity of meanings found in the rhythms of daily life, and to pay attention to and value the personal and social significance of everyday occupation in the lives of all people.

The chapters in the book focus on daily occupation as a source of social connection; as imbedded in culture, space and place; as a force for well-being and development throughout life; and as a source for creativity and the human spirit. The concepts and theories of occupation, ongoing areas of research in the field, and the practice of occupational therapy come alive for the reader through the authors’ personal reflections, occupational therapists’ stories from practice, and narrative data from current and past research on occupation.

The 3rd edition of The Meaning of Everyday Occupation is available directly from the publisher, SLACK, Inc., at slackbooks.com/the-meaning-of-everyday-occupation-third-edition/, or 856-848-1000, or 6900 Grove Road, Thorofare, NJ 08086.

Whew!

The Days of Our Lives

The everyday has never been so everyday. The coronavirus has seen to that. Day after day of sameness in the lack of busy-ness to the waking hours. It’s not that there is nothing to do; it’s more that what there is to do seems so unremarkable and unmemorable.

We rise out of bed about the same time every day, we eat our meals at the usual times, and we bed down for the night at our usual time. Meanwhile, the average amount of time I spend online each day has gone as high as 3 hours and 10 minutes. Mostly I am playing Scrabble on line, but also scrolling through Facebook or checking email; I had no idea I could become so addicted.

The BIG day of the week is when we complete our grocery list for the next week, send it online to friend Karla who then submits the list to a nearby grocery store, does a curbside pickup at an appointed time, takes everything to her house and uses alcohol wipes on all the items, puts it all in a bin and then delivers the whole shebang to us. We think she’s a saint!

Weather permitting, Ed is out in the garden for hours every day — planting, weeding, cutting back, dividing, transplanting the perennials, and, with the vegetables, more planting, watering, willing the tomatoes to ripen, and harvesting the rhubarb, chives, radishes, cucumbers, pole beans.

And I have my piano. I can happily spend an hour or more each day at the piano, working my way through the stash of music I have from the past. Its been Chopin Preludes and Nocturnes for some months now. Once a week, I have a session with our piano coach using Facetime. My piano partner Melinda and I have not been able to get together for months now — physical distancing is not possible when two people sit side by side on the same piano bench to play duets! However, we are beginning to wonder if we could safely work on the two-piano works. Not sure…. Maybe if we open lots of windows?

We had a little unusual excitement one day last week. Ed has a “have a heart” trap that he sets in the back yard regularly to catch rabbits and chipmunks, or occasionally a bird or a squirrel. We let the bird or squirrel out of the trap in our yard, but the rabbits and chippies we “give a ride” to a nearby park or woodsy area and let them go. The other morning we looked out our window and could tell “something” was in the trap but we couldn’t figure out what it was. Upon closer examination, it was a possum! It was a rather sizable thing, definitely bigger than a rabbit, and, really, SO ugly — long hairless tail, pink mouth open with sharp pointed teeth, perfectly still. I called the young neighbor boy over to have a look. At some point we realized the creature was “playing possum.” As in playing dead. Ed opened the trap and nudged it out of there, while I cringed and was glad to see it go. But, admittedly, it did add some novelty to our day.

Today, we got a Facebook posting from our son with pictures of our granddaughter in her new dorm room on the UW-Madison campus.

Julia is a brand new Freshman, and her move-in was scheduled for yesterday morning at 7AM (!). Her room looks wonderful, cozy and sunny. I think of Julia and her hopefulness for the future in spite of the troubles of the world and our country. It is a lesson for us all. To recognize the anguish and grief in these days, but to also hang onto hope and possibilities for the future. Congratulations and good luck, Julia! And much love from Grandma and Grandpa.

A Virus Among Us

The coronavirus is here. As one journalist described it in the Sunday, Mar. 22, New York Times, the entire country has “just taken a precipitous slide down Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, with food, shelter and safety now topmost on many people’s minds” (Jennifer Senior). More precisely, the entire world has just taken a precipitous slide down Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

On March 8, we were downtown on a Sunday afternoon, attending a Madison Symphony Orchestra concert with a phenomenal 25-year-old Canadian violinist playing Mendelssohn for an audience of hundreds. By Friday of the week that followed, the Overture Performing Art Center went dark and the doors were locked; all upcoming productions and concerts were canceled. Also that week, houses of worship canceled all services and other activities. Schools, retail stores, and restaurant closings were announced. The University of Wisconsin-Madison sent its 43 thousand students home for spring break with instructions not to come back — the remainder of the semester would be all instruction online only. The coronavirus, having first appeared in the coastal areas of the United States in late January and February, was now reaching the middle of the country.

By the time I began to take serious notice, the shelves at the pharmacy were already completely empty of hand sanitizers and alcohol wipes. A mandate to “shelter at home” came to us from the governor’s office.

And Madison went quiet.

Little by little this new experience of our once familiar everyday lives began to sink in. The days were filled with trying to establish new routines of frequent hand-washing and staying 6′ away from other people and staying away from groups of 3 or more people. I am learning to take piano lessons on FaceTime, with my piano coach at his studio and me at my piano here at home in the den. Yesterday, my book group met using Zoom. I will say that it was a huge rush of excitement to successfully and fully engage on my IPad with all the others in the group; nevertheless, the absence of being physically present together does not lead easily to a smooth and coherent discussion.

As I write this blog posting, the “shelter at home” mandate in Wisconsin has been in effect for over 7 weeks and will remain so until May 26. By the time we reach the end of May, I will be desperately in need of a haircut! I am hopeful that my weekly Scrabble club meetings will be able to resume. Canceled appointments will be rescheduled. We will be able to do our own online grocery shopping with curbside pickup instead of relying on a (very gracious) friend to take care of our list every week. I will once again be able to meet regularly with my piano partner Melinda to spend good times together working on two-piano works and duets. I do realize, however, that no matter what the time table, at least two major family events will very probably not take place — our granddaughter Julia’s high school graduation at the end of May and a celebration of our 60th wedding anniversary in early June.

Meanwhile, we are safe, we are healthy, we are well-fed, we are loved. We will (mostly) enjoy the peacefulness of getting up in the morning and looking forward to the absence of a hectic and overly busy day ahead. We will continue to check the calendar daily so we can figure out what day of the week it is! And through it all, we will try to maintain “connection” in our daily lives, enjoy moments of physical and mental exercise, help others, and live with hopefulness — despite the uncertainties of our times.