Outbreak

Few among us are as totally untouched by the virus than we are. We live well apart from the madding crowd, out here with nothing behind us but flood plain. We're stocked and ready, and the house is warm, even after last night's blasted March blizzard. In a while, I'll crawl back into a warm bed and attempt the impossible--to wake my wife, who is and has always been a world-class sleeper, my toughest job on March 20, 2020.

There's nowhere we have to go. Both of us get along fairly well with solitude; this isn't Walden and we're not recluses, but being alone isn't chilling to either of us. We've got wi-fi and Netflix and enough toys to stay connected.

Not so with our kids. Our oldest has to go to the office, and when she does she leaves three kids at home, the oldest a college student on her own right now, dorms having been shut down. She and her brothers get assignments on-line, but when our daughter goes off to work she has a right to worry about whether all that work gets done without supervision. I can't imagine kids can go home-school over night and by themselves.

At the office, when the crew has coffee, they sit, as prescribed, six feet apart. Lots of businesses have closed. Restaurants serve up warm meals in microwavable containers and deliver them from drive-up windows. Sunday-go-to-meetin' means tuning in on sofas already overused. She worries. I can't imagine that she's any more anxious than gadzillions others here and around the world. But she's my daughter, and there's a certain tone of voice that's anxious because right now she's not at home with "at home."

Our son the fireman is anxious too. His beloved wife is a few weeks from the much-anticipated delivery of another daughter, a sister to their two-year-old beauty queen. COVID-19, he knows, could make the hospital a great deal less comforting than it is or certainly was, two weeks ago. His department has altered protocol, and he's enough of a news freak to know the dire predictions a dozen governors have asserted. Life just isn't the same at home or at the station, and it's scary--and the parent in me can hear it in his voice, in their voices.

There isn't much we can do about that, the two of us here on our island in the storm. For us to help our daughter at their place is simply not advisable. Maybe that'll change. 

Maybe two weeks from now, we'll view the whole vista of present and future through new glasses. Maybe something will happen, something big. China's curve has flattened. So has South Korea's. 

What's clear right now is that as of this morning no masked man on a white horse is coming over the hill to make the world a better place. The best we can do is stay in touch with each other and the One who has always promised deliverance. 

I don't know that I could tell them as much right now or if they could hear it from a father whose burdens are far less weightier than theirs, but what I'd like to say is not just "fear not," as biblical as that line is. It's humanly impossible not to be anxious. 

I don't have a cigar like Churchill, but what I'd like to say and what I believe is that, the Lord willing, this whole mad mess just could be our finest hour. Really.

Let us know if there's anything we can do, and promise us you'll remember this: you are loved.