Walking Towards What We Miss

Today, my youngest son completed his Zoom meeting and everyone left. He tried to restart the Zoom on his computer. He texted on his machine, all his teachers and classmates names and home car Mom go. Explaining that he'd see them tomorrow, I went about the business of cleaning up from breakfast.

We heard the door shut and realized, Paul left the house. He'd packed a bag with his pull ups, a change of clothes, an apple and his stuffed monkeys. He sat at the tree where we always wait for his school bus, and all I could see on his face was the howl of a heart so lonely, it no longer could stay still.

I can say "You'll see them tomorrow," but I can't say when they'll be back together. It's his last year at the school. I can't even say when he'll enter a school building again.

I know this shut down has made me wary of everywhere. Getting gasoline for the first time in a month felt risky, even wearing gloves and a mask. The pump's controls were broken and I had to go inside, where there were at least five people working to upgrade the store, but there were five people moving around, within six feet of me, all of whom I did not know and thus I felt fearful of being exposed. I didn't want to catch Corona or bring it to my family for what amounted to twenty-five dollars and a tank of gasoline.

Back in the car, I sat there thinking, how much seven weeks of quarantine changed my sensibilities, and how much more might they change as this extends. I do not want the country to open up prematurely, and at the same time, we weren't made for living in isolation, even when we're with most of the people we love.

Walking with my oldest son that evening, we prayed the rosary and joked about how this pandemic is making everyone a little British. We're drinking tea in the afternoon, because it is different and warming, and communal. We go for walks. We're noticing all the different birds and talking about it. We feel robbed when the fluffy grey cat isn't sitting at the front door of the yellow house staring out at the world and judging us.

Equally dismaying is the absence of the black angora sewer stray that used to hiss as we'd walk by. Guess we're no longer invaders but shrug your shoulders kind of neighbors to it. We eagerly await the mail for some contact from somewhere.

"My God, we're becoming a Jane Austen novel with none of the money or romance." I said. "Still have the humor though." my son said. "If we switch from tea to alcohol, we could be Irish." "I am Irish." "Yeah, but it's diluted by all the other genetic stock. We don't fight nearly enough. To really commit, we'd need to be composing poetry." "Too late. Did already yesterday." My son laughed. "I'm on the next step of Anglophile assimilation. I ate a digestive and yesterday, I asked if the post arrived!" "That's nothing. I just stopped myself from enrolling in an online course to learn caligraphy."

My son spoke the rest of the walk in a faux English accent. "Day fourty-seven. We spotted two hawks and several brilliant cardinals. We've taken our state authorized constitutional and mum seems in better spirits. We're on our way home from our expected journey, and plan to cook some boiled meat and potatoes with turnips and wilted greens for dinner because, we're the country that scoured the world for spices and use none of them."

Somehow, the stupidness of it all made the ache a little less, and we ordered pizza for dinner.