The Century Mark
Well, hello. It's been 100 days.
Fourteen weeks and two days, that is, since March 8. That was the last time I ventured out to socialize, already paranoid and second-guessing. The past week had been spent shutting down segments of our lives -- my wife's university closed down on March 6, moving entirely to distance learning until the fall – so this was just the last step. There's always a last step.
It's an entire season, plus change. In fact, as of this coming Sunday, I've lost all of spring 2020.
Lost is a funny word in this scenario. I'm not sure what I would have been doing differently, other than hugging. Still, I speak for all of us. It's my legal obligation.
It might not feel that long. And you might still have been out and about, seeing family, going to work, doing your usual stuff for a bit longer. For me, it's been the full 100. I'm pretty sure I've forgotten how to drive by now.
And it's not that long, not really, although perspective helps and age doesn't hurt. It surely feels endless to some children, day after day of sameness, large chunks of their short lives in stasis.
On the other hand, if you became pregnant on March 8 (not judging!), and if you're a responsible person who knows what's what, you're only now telling the majority of your friends and associates. You're just getting into your second trimester. You've got a while yet.
My wife's Starbuck's card, which gets automatically refilled about twice a week during the school year, has clicked over once since March. We've filled the car with gas twice, for a total of $50. You would think we'd be rolling in cash.
Or waddling in cash, but I see no signs of increased girth around this house. My scale seems to be the same, maybe even a couple of pounds down at the moment, although I'm moving way less, in an ominous way. Use it or lose it starts to feel important at my age, and nothing is stopping me from walking around the block a few times except me.
We've used some of those savings to try to support a couple of local restaurants, and we've picked up grocery bundles from one of them a couple of times that were a little pricey for their normalcy (but good! Very good veggies and cuts of meat, flour, rice, and so on). Last week we bought a Date Night package from a favorite restaurant, very fancy, around 50 bucks total even with a drink thrown in.
I've gone out more often than I thought I would, usually a couple of times a week, darting in and out, feeling anxious and irritated at the anxiety. Each trip is a data point of cumulative risk, but then risk is our business. I take more chances getting in the car to drive to the store, and life has never been fair or free from danger.
My wife is getting her hair cut today. We discussed it, talked about the risks, the precautions, the situation. Masks and gloves, wide-open space, plenty of distance – no one is worried.
People should be more worried, obviously. I remain baffled, as do a lot of my friends, by the behavior we observe or think we observe (we don't witness it; we see it online, and I have no idea how representative that is of anything). On the other hand, I have no answers. We can't stay shut down. Those restaurants I love have to open back up or they'll cease to exist; I completely understand.
I just don't understand why anyone I know would go to one. Not the impulse or desire; obviously I get that. I have plenty of desire. I also can't imagine spending an hour or more in an enclosed space where people are talking loudly without masks. Right? If you're young and restless and healthy and whatever, sure, I get it. I wish you well, hope for the best, watch the spikes and worry.
I'm just not about to do it, and if you're around my age, or have any health issues at all, I just can't imagine. Eat at home. We should all know how to do that by now.
But, you know. I can sit here and judge everyone else because I'm bored, but I'm constantly bouncing back to sympathy. This is hard. People need other people. And incomes, and distractions, and essential services. And their roots dyed, and so on. We're going to be living with Covid-19 for a long time, living being the operative word, of course.
I wrote a column this week about my dad, and smoking. It just struck me the other day, watching the rare (but persistent) fellow shopper bopping around without a mask, or any noticeable awareness of this fact. Everyone else is wearing one; this dude is walking up and down the aisles, screaming into his phone. You'd think he'd eventually catch on.
He's the smoker in the store, in other words, which was my point, although I never got around to the bigger one. I suggested imagining him as a smoker, puffing away in Safeway, while the rest of us stare in silence. I don't think it's a bad analogy.
The bigger point, though, was that we don't smoke in grocery stores, and we used to. I think our memories compensate somehow by blurring change; I dunno. We used to smoke everywhere, 50 years ago. We'll be wearing masks now. I don't really think this is temporary, and I suspect we'd be better off by recognizing that things change and we generally do OK.
But I'll tell you what: If I'm still writing in a public way a year from now, and I realize I was too cautious, too paranoid, over-reactive and a pansy-ass about this virus, I suspect I'll be happy to say so. I've been wrong a lot in my life, and I see no signs of improvement.
I also suspect this won't be necessary. I suspect things will be worse. I suspect we'll see half a million deaths in a year from now, or we could. That's a guess I'll be more than happy to be wrong about, but talk about ominous signs. I read them every day, from my bunker in western Washington.
Where, 100 days in, it could be worse. I've learned things, I've adjusted. I talk with my wife and son more. I actually think I eat better, on average. I have intermittent congestion and sinus drainage stuff, and now I imagine this is environmental, something I wouldn’t have considered before, only because I don't think I've had a cold at all. Not once this winter or spring. Around 6pm every night, my nose gets stuffy and I sneeze a few times. I don't know what that is, but I'm pretty sure it's not a virus, at least one I need to worry about. I should have been washing my hands like this years ago. See? I've learned things, as I said.
