The Old Drum

There happend this Weeke so thick a Mist and fog; that people lost their way in the streetes, it being so exceedingly intense, as no light of Candle, Torches or Lanterns, yielded any or very little direction: I was my selfe in it, and in that extraordinary danger, robberys were committed betwene the very lights which were fixt between Lond: and K[e]nsington on both sides, and whilst Coaches and passengers were travelling: and that was strange, it beginning about 4 in the afternoone was quite gon by 8, without any wind to dissipate it. At Thames they beate drumms, to direct the Watermen to make the shore, no lights being bright enough to penetrate the fogg.

John Evelyn
Diary entry
November 8, 1699

A message from my sister came in yesterday: "While Neneng's ninang is shuttling from clinic to ayala to PGH... I yearn for weekends with blaring band music waking us up. Simpler times."

She was referring to the Sunday mornings of our youth when my father played marches top volume to wake us up. If them horns were not enough, he'd come stomping up to the bedrooms shouting: What do you think you are, pensionados?

Good times, good times. Incidentally, father was asking about his grandchild and I said that she was diagnosed sore eyes, and even with the meds the virus would have to run its course - a week, at most - before she gets better. I told him the tables have turned. The ophtha said we would have to wash our hands after carrying her. She's contagious.

We were relieved. Because of the allergy and the insect bites that had happened recently to that same eye, we were already imagining her blindness.

We had always been on guard, always expecting she'd pick off some germ or fever from us, but this time she's the bully with the virus. And my father rubbed it in, remarked on the beauty of the situation, how funny it would be to see a dad infected by a baby. Now we could laugh it off. Listen, these are the times.