Not in an Adele way. Certainly not in a Lionel Ritchie way. Just a greeting. At this point in time, it’s all I can offer.
On Wednesday, a mere 48 hours from now, I will have been sequestered in my home for a month. I’ve not spoken cara a cara to another human being since March 15….the Ides of March. A day of bad luck, especially for an ancient cat named Cesar Augustus. He was killed by his own men. Just like Fabre College’s ROTC Sgt. Douglas Neidermeyer in National Lampoon’s Animal House. A few years later, Dougie still the military man, was fragged by his own platoon in the jungles of Vietnam.
I think we all feel kind of fragged. We felt this way on September 11. We all felt wounded. But I don’t remember feeling this kind of prolonged fear. Of course, we were scared on 9/12 , 9/13 and probably felt through that was the entire week. But when every TV channel stopped broadcasting all things 9/11, day and night, it was like the cue for the generator of life to kick on once again. And once again, we started shopping, we traveled by air again, we celebrated Passover and Christmas a few months later. We survived that attack, grieving those who didn’t. We’ll do the same as we survive this attack, too. And let’s not kid ourselves, this was an attack.
*
This virus traveled across the globe several times over, with tremendous speed, killing with abandon, infecting with a vengeance. It took a while, but I learned yesterday that I actually know people who knew someone who got sick and died.
On March 16, Josie needed to go to the store. Her husband asked her not to go, but she felt she needed to beat the rush and get supplies before the shelves were completely empty. She goes to the store, and while in the check out line, some inconsiderate asshole, standing behind her let’s loose with a few open mouth coughs. Ten days later, Josie was dead. Mom, sister, wife to her loving family and friends; another tragic Covid-19 statistic to everyone else. People like Josie are dying just for breathing. Another friend in Houston had a neighbor who died after a two week battle with Covid-19.
*
I’ve been on a steady diet of watching all of the more famous germ/viral annihilation movies. Contagion, Outbreak, 12 Monkeys, The Plague. By the way, 12 Monkeys is a yawn fest. Don’t bother. However, Contagion, which was filmed in 2011, actually feels very contemporary. The dialog is very fitting for today…eerily so. Word for word in some cases. If humanity needed to hurriedly compose a playbook for this pandemic, it only need go to Netflix.
*
I’ve ordered disposable masks masks and gloves. My mother is climbing the walls. We talk daily, but I haven’t seen her in almost two months. She keeps asking when the gloves and masks will be arriving.
Soon, I tell her.
Ouch, she screams as she pulls out more hair.
*
She’s staring down the barrel of 90. Cognitively, she has good days and bad days, but even on the bad ones she can still get in a few pointed digs about my appearance or some aspect of my life that she thinks I’m living wrong. I might be a heathen with bad taste in clothes to her, but she needs this shabbily dressed degenerate to take her to run errands, but I’ll do so only if we’re both properly armored.
She says she hasn’t gone to her hairdresser since early March. She was in dire need of a permanent by the the time the lockdown was initiated. Without one, her hair is straight as a board. I asked her what she looked like at this stage of forced neglect. 
She told me she looked like “Moe Howard in ancient drag”. Seeing my mom’s hair like that will be worth the price of admission.
*
Just to wake up my car’s battery, I took her car out for a drive in my lovely Texas Hill Country neighborhood. I just made the block. The neighborhood felt anxious, nervous, very much on edge. It was apprehension in stucco and limestone. I think my neighbors are about to don Jack Nicholson masks and chase Shelly Duvall around with an axe.
Cabin fever. Stir crazy. Cage crazy. The tyrannical state of monotony. I don’t want any more people to die. Going back too work and school too soon, might just do that. But if something doesn’t happen even sooner with the populace, we risk killing spirits and the will to live. Once those are gone, listening for a heartbeat or other signs of life is folly.
Something must happen soon. We’re in dire need of some good news, sooner rather than later.
PS. If you want to help, the food banks need it. Check with yours or your county’s Department of Family Service or its equivalent. They can use your sweat and manpower, but most definitely your money. Any amount will help. They’re feeding thousands more people than usual. But Thank God they are.
I know things might be tough right now with diminishing contents in your cupboards, in your wallets and bank accounts, but the feeling you get when you give, is mind blowing.
