Author: Claire Brennan Dunn

The centerpiece of my weekly entertainment schedule is a couple dozen squares on a 13-inch laptop screen. If it’s Saturday night, it’s time for the Social Distance Social.

Ed and I are regulars at the Social, an online dance party organized by our son Pat from his home in Seattle. It’s part technology and a bigger part heart with a trademarkable name. It’s our kind-hearted son’s gift to people he loves, a way to build the sense of community that feeds his well-being. And it is joy.

When Pat clicks us into the “meeting,” I scan the squares in a private roll call: Pat and his partner, Dana, are there, of course, as are her parents across the county from us, and her sister, under the stars somewhere out West. I check for our daughter with her boyfriend in Syracuse. I find our younger son at his place in Cortland.

My extended family grabs this opportunity to connect; more than a dozen of them from toddlers to seniors appear from six states and two New York City boroughs. Some dance solo with abandon, others gently bop their heads in time to the music and smile wryly. It doesn’t matter. They are there.

The young women who grew up across the street from us sign in from apartments in Philadelphia and Queens. I might see their parents at their new home in Delaware. This week, my music-loving college roommate joins from Richmond, Virginia, meeting my adult children for the first time. Friends in our small Central New York town show up.

Many of the people in the little squares are young adults I have not yet met, 20- and 30-somethings who see the value of facing a challenge with a dance party. As they have since they were children, this generation gives me hope.

The format is the same each week as the cast of characters and playlist vary. We start with a jumble of giddy hellos as people click in, then Pat’s gentle attempt to corral us into a countdown to launching the music. For a half-hour, there is no lockdown, no virus, no stress. Just a lot of people embracing silliness, the joy of movement and each other’s spirits.

I feel hip when I know one of the Millennial-favored tunes and joyful when Pat queues up something Boomer appropriate. When Springsteen rocks into Dancing in the Dark, and I jump up and down with my hands in the air as Pat knew I would, I see him check his monitor and point at me. Yup, “there’s somethin’ happenin’ somewhere,” and tonight it’s in kitchens and living rooms all over the country.

But it stops abruptly, as happens in free Zoom meetings. No warning. No slowdown. It’s over. We’re all alone again.

Until next time.

April 13, 2020

Since I was a teenager, I thought I wanted one simple phrase as my epitaph: “Bold, Brave and Undaunted.”

It’s a recurring line in my family’s anthem, an Irish song called Brennan on the Moor that tells the tale of a beloved outlaw, Willie Brennan. Willie “commenced his wild career” in the early 19^th century, supposedly dedicating himself to protecting the poor from the horrors they suffered at the hands of the well-to-do. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem recorded the song in the early 1960s, and its thundering guitar intro never fails to get me dancing in March.

This March, of course, is different: no toasting in bars, no parades, no communal celebration of St. Patrick’s Day marking the coming of spring in wintry Central New York. Instead, we huddle at home, finding projects to keep us busy, connecting electronically with loved ones and watching the best of Netflix.

Maybe we watch the news, where we see the story of a disaster Willie Brennan never imagined. A virus erupts from a market and blankets the globe, isolating us from one another as we ask questions that have no answers. 

And if we watch the news we see him: the sneering, lying narcissist who, courtesy of the Electoral College and continuous boot-licking of the Republican party, is supposed to lead this country’s response. The one who disassembled the country’s pandemic response team. The one who ignored warnings about the seriousness of this threat. The one who called it a hoax until he suddenly told us he knew all along it was a pandemic.

It takes me back to Election Day 2016, when I backed into a corner of the couch with a blanket pulled up over my cheekbones, trying to hide from what I thought could never happen. Enough people in this country had chosen to ignore his grifting and greed, his financial failures, his mocking of the disabled and his vile comments about women. This was a person they thought worthy to honor with the highest office we can offer. 

I lost faith that night, feeling utterly disconnected from Americans who could observe the behavior of this petty, dishonest buffoon and think he deserved anything other than to be kicked to the curb. Since then, I’ve donated to candidates of my choice, protested at rallies and marches, and repeatedly shared my worries with my representative in Congress, but I continued to fear that this country was lost on Nov. 8, 2016. 

I hope I was wrong. There’s a lot I don’t know in the face of this disastrous pandemic. But one thing’s for certain. I’ve changed the plan for my epitaph. Instead of “Bold, Brave and Undaunted,” let it read: SHE DIDN’T VOTE FOR DONALD TRUMP. 

March 22, 2020

Dear Dad,

I can see you shaking your head – that quick left-right-left-right, that slight tilt toward your right shoulder. And I hear the rapid-fire “tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk.” You’d have some colorful things to say if you were watching all this. But if I were within earshot, your language would be no stronger than, “Damn fools!” 

You always knew what you were talking about. 

You did like to talk, and you were a great storyteller. But there were some things you never told me and my brothers when we were kids. It took nearly 50 years for you to open up about serving with the Navy in the South Pacific. You spoke proudly of a job that was done and a wartime duty that was served. I heard about treasured friends, admired leaders and a family that was dearly missed as they prayed for your safe return. You liked to tell me about the beautiful auburn-haired girl who waited for you to come home. You said I was just like her.

In all the years that passed, you never asked for thanks. You didn’t talk about the money you could have made had you not served. You didn’t complain about a lack of praise for risking your life. You just got on with it. You got married, had a career, raised three kids. You did what had to be done, and you had little patience for those who didn’t. 

That brings me to the head shaking. If you’re watching your beloved country now, you see supposed leaders weighing which is more important: markets or human lives? You see the lieutenant governor of one of our largest states suggesting grandparents should be willing to sacrifice themselves in exchange for a healthy economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was not the reason you spent three years on a destroyer called the USS Thatcher. You always knew there were some things more important than account balances.

You made that point when my first car needed an expensive repair that would wipe out my meager savings. “I know it’s painful,” you said. “But at least they’re only asking for money. It’s not like they want your firstborn.” That was 10 years before I had a firstborn, but your point was well taken.

 Ed and I were deep into some dark humor this gloomy morning, noting we don’t have the option of throwing your generation under the coronavirus bus for the sake of our stock portfolio. It’s too late for that. 

But we could use your wit and wisdom now. It would be worth more to me than my retirement account.

March 24, 2020

Claire Brennan Dunn