Life in the Time of Corona Virus, 4.11.20

This post was published in the Wilson Times April 21, 2020

I wore a mask over my nose and mouth this morning, the same mask I wore to the grocery store earlier in the week to protect me from the Corona virus. Today the mask protects my sinuses from the pollen. I was outside to shovel five big piles of raked and swept pollen into a compost bin, to be buried in the landfill.

String-like tassels from three big oaks and comma-shaped pods from a half-dozen pines blanket the lawn and asphalt driveway.

The trees’ reproductive dust fell like snowflakes, soft and weightless. The wind picked up, and it was snowing pollen horizontally, coating cars, streets and outdoor furniture. The trees’ determination to survive coats my sinuses and my skin.

It took some time to get accustomed to the mask over my face, but medical professionals recommended them for everyone, so I complied in the hope that I might not be infected or might avoid infecting others. Wearing the mask for more than a few minutes tugs at my ears and requires me to remove the mask to wipe my nose, which drains each pollen season.

My wife made my mask from scraps of cloth left from all the years she sewed clothes for our children and gifts for others. She put the mask together quickly from instructions in a newspaper. The rumble of her sewing machine resonated through the house for the first time in months as she worked. Newspapers, which provided the concept and the pattern, and home sewing machines are both becoming rare. What will we do at the next pandemic?

For four weeks, the grocery store has had no facial tissues or toilet paper. Hoarding and panic buying are to blame, we’re told, but that doesn’t fill the paper products shelf. I recall during my newspaper days someone telling me that newsprint was just one step above toilet paper. Maybe we’ll be forced to upgrade to newsprint. Until the papers we subscribe to quit print publication altogether, I guess we’ll have a sufficient supply of a necessary product, despite hoarders.

We order takeout from our favorite local restaurants in the hope that they will survive the stay-at-home orders that have emptied their dining rooms.

We have developed the habit of avoiding close encounters with other people so the virus won’t spread. We are staying home for the same reason. We don’t want to be responsible for illness or death of others.

We have canceled two trips we had planned for this year. This was to be the year we would really take advantage of our free time as retirees. We would travel to places we’d never seen. We’d cross an ocean for the first time. But an invisible disrupter forced a revision in our plans. Our planned trips amount to nothing compared to the potential hazards if we are not vigilant in avoiding other people and washing our hands repeatedly.

I like being home, a comfortable, quiet and familiar space. Rules of fashion don’t apply here. I can wear the same jeans all week, and no one notices. But personal hygiene rules our lives. I have washed my hands so many times my skin is dry and flaking. Kitchen counters are cleaner than ever.

But the virus can strike anyone, and it’s especially dangerous for older people (like us). A cousin’s friend far away wrote a gut-wrenching account of watching her husband die from COVID-19. Because of the virus, she was not allowed into his hospital room to say goodbye, to hold his hand, to give him a last kiss, to share tearful farewells.

The thought of dying alone in some hospital isolation ward without any family members in the room, then forgoing any funeral or memorial that might attract more than 10 people provides the motivation for me to observe social distancing, wash my hands frequently, stay home, and wear a face mask when I leave the house.

A pandemic has the power to change society, culture and civilization. Already, pundits are predicting changes in retail, governance, travel, Internet use, shopping, civic clubs, religious observances, funerals, sports event, family reunions and so on.

While everyday life continues, the virus lurks unseen, waiting for an opening and shading our every thought. Songwriter John Prine died from COVID-19 last week, leaving these timely words from my favorite of his songs, “Hello in There”: “But old people just grow lonesome, waiting for someone to say, ‘Hello in there.’”

COVID threat becomes clear in grocery aisle

This post was published in the Wilson Times March 22, 2020.

The grocery store parking lot seemed a bit more crowded than usual when I arrived to pick up a few items we needed last Sunday, but the crowding didn’t seem so unusual until I got inside and found the aisles jammed with shoppers pushing overloaded carts along nearly empty shelves.

I felt a bit unnerved and shocked by what I was seeing. As I took in the scene, I realized what was disturbing me. The jammed aisles and empty shelves reminded me of newsreels and movies from 1939-40 depicting desperate Polish and French refugees scrambling to haul away as many of their possessions as they could carry just ahead of the Wehrmacht. The only thing missing was menacing commands spoken in German.

There was no army chasing those shoppers in Wilson, but they seemed just as desperate, and their shopping buggies were piled as high as the Joad family’s decrepit Model T leaving the Dust Bowl in “Grapes of Wrath.”

I checked out and drove home, still discomforted by what I had seen. The Corona Virus pandemic had inconvenienced me before this incident, but I had not recognized this new virus as a global crisis until my mind conflated the scene of the panicked shoppers with the desperation of World War II refugees.

We should have seen it coming. The COVID 19 virus leaped across China into Europe, Asia and the United States. We knew the virus was going to disrupt the American way of life.

Schools are closing, the NCAA basketball tournament (“March Madness”) has been canceled along with other collegiate activities. Major League Baseball is delaying its season. The NBA has canceled its season. All gatherings of people (first 100, then 50 and now 10) are strongly discouraged. The stock market has fallen off a cliff. Recession looms. Congress and the White House are working on stimulus packages to soften the economic damage. The numbers of infections and deaths are climbing rapidly.

Even churches are feeling the impact, and many are canceling services or altering their worship to limit human contact. Handshakes are forbidden, as is “the sharing of the peace.” But Holy Communion, the central act of liturgical churches’ worship, cannot be dodged or moved online. My wife and I “attended” church in Salisbury via a live online link Sunday morning. Despite its limitations, it gave us comfort.

So we are hunkered down, avoiding interactions with other humans as much as possible. We are washing our hands far more often. If the stores were not all out of them, we’d be using sanitary wipes and hand sanitizer, too. We have food enough to survive for a few weeks, but if the infections continue to grow for many months, we’ll have problems.

One benefit of this crisis has been that we’ve talked to our adult children more. All three have called at least once to check on their parents and engage in long conversations. We enjoyed the calls and appreciated their concerns, but I couldn’t help envisioning bedridden elders being cared for by adult children and grandchildren. Yes, we are in the demographic of more vulnerable populations. I look at mortality charts for COVID-19 and cringe.

It is inevitable that this pandemic will change our lives. Vacation trips have been canceled. Sensible precautions keep us away from restaurants, lectures, worship services, theaters, schools, sporting events, celebrations of birthdays, weddings, anniversaries and so on. When this is over, will we be able to transition back to the way things used to be? Will we be able to hug our grandchildren again?