The fear-inducing power that can be found in a cough.
A sneeze.
Saliva; spittle.
If you stop for one second—just one second—and attempt to wrap your head around these microscopic critters and the absolute power they yield, it would be mind boggling. Seriously. Ponder that the next time you smoke a blunt. And by the way, if there was ever a time to completely bogart a joint, that time is now.
Once that starts to marinate, think of our bodies’ incredible defense system. I’ve always been told that our bodies fight malignancies constantly. It’s really a physiological fluke that we ever truly get sick. Ever-present, opportunistic bacteria and viruses are marauders that constantly look for a way to penetrate our bodies’….well, our fire walls, if you will. Compromised immune systems due to preexisting conditions or stress (a killer more prolific than Ted Bundy) are big, giant reasons behind the killer chaos of the Corona virus. That and age. And gender. Older men seem to die from Corona than women in the same health and weight class.
Getting on
I don’t think people stop and really think about aging. Oh, maybe they do in terms of gray hair, wrinkled skin and faltering memories. But it’s more than that. It’s the reason why the hair grays, the skin wrinkles and the brain eventually betrays the rest of the body. Everything about us is the same age we are. Next month, everything on and in my body turns 61 years old. My heart, lungs, the lymphatic system, my eyes, left big toe, blown knees, my colon….everything will turn 61 years.
Let’s put it in a sort of perspective. For a year, leave a piece of bread out on the counter, away from the semi-security of its wrapper. Time will ravage it. Okay, I know that’s an extreme example and with so many preservatives in commercial loaves these days, the slice might be just as “fresh” as it was when it was placed on your grocer’s shelf. But I think you get the point.
Time
It’s about time. It heals, it hinders. It moves at glacial speed when you want it to speed up. It can compete with Formula One racers, when you want it to slow down. And you teach a point where you realize there’s so little of it left. When I turned 60, it was surreal. Where had time gone? My life had flown by and it felt like I’d been watching it as a very disinterested UN observer. What did I do in those decades that now seem to have flown by in a heartbeat? I made mistakes (and most of the time had a grand ol’ time making them), I made horrific choices. I stayed too long in some cases, not long enough in others. I let people use me because I felt I needed to be needed. I probably used people as well. How silly all that seems now.
Furthermore, just last week I was on a wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime tour of Ireland which is rapidly edging out Hungary as my favorite country other than my own. But the news of the Corona pandemic crept in between tours of castles, ruins, amazing cliffs and slamming back brown beer, sweating in 1,500 year old non-ventilated pubs. The ever growing numbers of the sick and dying? The rapid nature of the contagion’s global spread? Sure, that bothered me, but it was nothing like the abject fear I felt while watching my stock portfolio bleed out like one of the Romanov children. I quietly obsessed as I outwardly ooh’d and ah’d places where ancient Celts once roamed. It didn’t ruin my vacation, but I couldn’t help but hear an old school cash register ding every time I turned around, which was silly because the entire trip was bought and paid for almost a year ago.
I mean, it’s just money.
Okay, I will admit something: ouch, it still hurts to type that. Obviously, I’m still not that evolved. But, news of my impending poverty seems less, I don’t know….less something then it did a week ago. Sort of, anyway.
Home is where you need to be
It was strongly suggested that since we’d been abroad, everyone in my party self quarantine for 14-days from the point of our arrival home. That’s hardly a big deal for me, since staying home is my preferred MO since retiring, but I know some of my younger kin are going stir crazy. Twenty five years ago, I might be climbing the walls too, but I’d like to think that had this pandemic occurred back then and I was in any other business besides Broadcasting and wouldn’t have Had to cover it as a story, maybe I would have been wise enough to take advantage of this time and sort out and resolve some of the more egregious unresolved matters in my life.
My parents come to mind. Try as I might, the terms of my relationship with both of them were etched in stone back when this was considered a cave kids’ comic strip.
My mother will turn 90 in June. My father will turn 89 in a few weeks.
She lives in a lovely semi-assisted living complex four miles away, but it might as well be 100 miles. I dare not go there and I’ve asked my mother to stay inside. Perhaps, we’ll have lunch, after our self imposed two week exiles are up (two weeks or less is the Corona incubation period, or so they think). Then again, I could be an asymptomatic carrier, I haven’t been tested.
As for my father, he’s remarried and lives independently in Oklahoma. I remind him that him that he should leave home only for essential reasons. But I trust him. He and his wife are level headed people.
I call them almost daily. Social distancing doesn’t mean total disengagement. Even so, to play it safe, I’ve not left my house since arriving home from the airport early Monday morning. Does taking the garbage out or retrieving the 12 lbs of junk mail I receive daily count as “leaving?”
A concerned populace is an obedient populace
In my backyard, I can often hear the din of traffic coming from Interstate 10 at all hours of the day. Lately, my backyard has been silent. There are kids in this cloistered community, but I never see them. I know there has to be some somewhere because I see the occasional school bus. . Adults rarely venture out. But that’s on any given Tuesday, but I’m glad to know people are adhering the warnings and staying inside. No big deal for this ‘hood. Landscaping, pool maintenance, gutter cleaning, all those hallmarks of home ownership are handled by “people”. The people here, have their “people”.
But I hope the people, my neighbors are taking advantage of this time as couples, parents, children, as siblings and saying things to each other that they felt, perhaps conveniently, they never had time to say. I hope they’re spending this time doing more than endless hours of play on Nintendo, binge watching stuff on Netflix or sleeping. Well, sleeping I get, but in between naps, I hope they’re utilizing this time for positive things.
The Corona virus and the restrictive mandates made in its wake have given me pause to rethink some things. I’ve got to be better with the time I’ve got left. That’s not defeatist thinking, I feel I’m being realistic. I’ve had two incidents in my almost 61-years that continue to remind me in no uncertain terms of the fragility of life. Your time is up when your time is up, whether it happens at age seven or 70. So, then yeah. I’ve got to make a bigger, better difference so when that time comes when I relive my life in that final flash, I won’t be as embarrassed by my stupidity and neglect as I’ve been in previous brushes with my mortality.
In summation
I can’t change the world, but I can change the immediate one that exists around me. If I can empower more people within that sphere, I’ll do it with anonymous largesse. I’m not smart enough to give an motivational speech, inflict guilt trips with preachy blog posts or pretend I’m better than anyone else. Believe it it not, even my narcissism has its limits.
The long and short of it as I see it is simple: sometimes people just need a helping hand and often, you have people that are in dire need of lending one.
Stay well, mi gente. Stay well. And wash your hands.