Pacific Palisades Front Porch Project Photographer Robin Aronson Shares Series in Partnership with the Palisadian-Post
By Robin Aronson | Contributing Writer
Besides raising money for the Westside Food Bank, the joy of this project was photographing and meeting so many new people in the community.
This week, I’m giving you a glimpse into four more families and their experiences behind the front porch.
The Granz Family
Uhhh … what day is it? Haven’t we already run the dishwasher today? Honey, we’ve binged the entire Netflix catalog! Masks haven’t been this popular since “Eyes Wide Shut!”
Jokes aside, we are happy and healthy. We don’t take for granted that we have everything we need. To the heroes of this crisis … the first responders, the medical workers and the essential workers—thank you! We salute you!
We’ve been playing it safe and have been eating in a lot. I enjoy cooking and entertaining but 200 home-cooked meals in a row is kind of ridiculous. This mama is tired!
Glenn and I are sharing an office, juggling Zoom and conference calls, all while parenting and teaching our two lockdown ladies Cassidy and Kayla. Cassidy is a combo book worm and dancing machine! She has been dancing with Fancy Feet Performance Group most afternoons over Zoom.
Kayla is our little smiley face energizer bunny who is spending her free time riding her scooter or thumbing out an emoji-filled text message to her friends. Family time has never been sweeter with lots of baking, family dinners and board games.
Like everyone else we are longing to get back to normal, and hang with friends and family. We are grateful for our beautiful community, our home, our health and the knowledge that we will get through this and be better for it. Virtual hugs to all!
—Kristine Granz
The Leshgold Family
Our family has two working parents and three children, 20, 18 and 14. Our older two daughters flew home from college in mid-March with one suitcase and they are still here three months later with no clarity about what the fall will look like for them.
Our son’s sports have all been paused and, like everyone else in the family, spends much of his day on Zoom. Our house became a sort of WeWork with five people studying and working remotely. We are also sort of a commune, where people are chipping in with housework (sort of), cooking a lot of our meals and sharing responsibilities.
Highlights of this time have been going in the hot tub together, baking, walking our dogs and watching TV. We are present to the privileges we have—a safe neighborhood to walk in, financial security, and a large and comfortable home. Our hearts are heavy for with the knowledge of the suffering taking place around us. We are grateful for what
we have and hopeful for a better future.
—Wendy Leshgold
The Malone Family
Quarantine is:
- A minimum of 2.5 dishwasher loads daily.
- Religious handwashing.
- A careful consumption and use of leftovers not seen since the great depression.
- More walks than the dog thought possible.
- A call to arms for an entire generation of middle-aged, upper-middle-classers to relearn what cleaning products are used where.
- An opportunity to discover all the stuff that is broken in your house, or marriage, that you’ve been overlooking.
- Using (finally) all those frivolous Williams Sonoma bakeware dishes that arrived off the wedding registry but were never used. Only to discover—they actually do help make the food that much more delicious.
- Dinners together again.
- Five extra pounds.
- Time to plant a garden and rediscover the joy of growing your own vegetables.
- An opportunity to discover the many uses of yeast—for bread and preschool experiments.
- New routines, like how to divvy up childcare responsibilities.
- Learning new skills like cutting hair from YouTube DIY tutorials.
- Watching your social media usage average spike by at least 30%.
- A long apology to all the delivery people who have moved daily among us completely unnoticed for so long.
- A surge in bike sales and sidewalk chalk.
- A charming discovery that every household really does own a teddy bear and why did we never stick them in the front window before?
- A prayer for everyone we’ve lost, an awed acknowledgment of what we’ve regained, and a hope that we can live more kindly, simply and graciously together in the future.
—Maggie Malone
Robin Aronson can be found at robinaronsonphotography.com or Instagram @RobinAronsonPhotography.
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