The Postscript

“Waiting for the Sun”
An enormous box arrives at our house. It is filled with food and cleaning supplies and, yes, toilet paper. I feel guilty. But the truth is, these supplies were ordered months ago. My husband, Peter, was a hoarder long before hoarding was in fashion.
“Here you go!” Peter says, as he unpacks the latest shipment. “Eight more pounds of oatmeal!”
My oatmeal consumption over the past few weeks while writing would certainly set some sort of record had I been keeping track. Peter pulls out a one-gallon bottle of hand sanitizer—also ordered before everyone in the world wanted it.
“You see?” he says, brandishing the bottle with more than a touch of pride, “I was a germaphobe before germaphobes were cool!”
And it’s true. Peter has always had a slightly higher-than-average concern about germs. We live in a small town, with no regular job to go to and no children to care for. Add to that Peter’s insistence that we have a four-month supply of all the essentials, and our lives have been less affected than anyone I know.
My parents are in Florida and it looks like they will be staying there for the indefinite future. Normally, they’d be heading back north, but they don’t know where they’d stay on the way home and, with everything so uncertain, they’re staying put. They are in their 80s so, naturally, I worry. But my mother seems pretty calm.
“We don’t play bingo!” she explains, as if bingo was the primary source of the contagion. She tells me they’ve shut down the pool and the Internet room and the woodshop where my dad likes to go. “But not pickleball!” she tells me. Pickleball games continue, with or without a pandemic.
Before the restaurants were shut down, we had dinner with our scientist friends, Mary and Wolfgang. It’s nice to have the news digested and parsed by scientists. But they were not terribly reassuring. “I’ve been washing my hands until they’re chapped!” Mary complained. Their son has just started work as an EMT and Mary feels certain he will contract the virus. She is afraid—but he is young and strong and helping people. She is proud of him.
The hardest hit are, of course, the very old and the very sick. My brother-in-law is both. Peter’s oldest sister’s husband is dying of Alzheimer’s and now she cannot visit him. Everyone in the nursing home is so fragile that they have shut the door to visitors.
“He won’t understand why no one is visiting!” she tells us, and I’m sure this is true. I don’t know how much he understands about anything at this point but he certainly will not comprehend that a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic is preventing his wife from seeing him.
“I’ve been thinking, maybe I could look at him through the window,” she says, and my heart breaks a little, imagining her standing outside the window of the nursing home in the early spring cold. The nursing staff promised they would let her come when her husband is dying. No one knows when that will be.
For those of us who have it easy, life is not much different and not so very difficult. For those who already have too much on their plate, these times are almost too much to bear.
Peter read somewhere that the sun was good at killing the virus. I hope this is true. I know the sun provides cheer and we could certainly use some more of that. So, right now, I’m watching the sky and waiting for the sun.
Till next time,
Carrie
Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

“Parked Out Back”
Joe’s red truck is parked behind his house. It hasn’t moved in days.
Joe gets in his red truck every morning and drives around. He’s a member of every fraternal organization, a regular at the brewpub, and has friends in every corner of town. Joe picks up a coffee and spends most mornings greeting people out the window of his red pick-up. But Joe hasn’t been feeling well and his truck has been parked behind his house. He’s been sick and there’s nowhere to go. Normally, I would be worried about Joe. But worries these days, like toilet paper and fresh produce, are spread a little thin.
Worry is in the air.
Charles and Joanna live across the street. They are both elderly and live alone. Joanna’s health is not good. Because I have a bird’s eye view of their house, I know their habits well. Charles fires up his SUV every morning to make the trip to the senior center to pick up his free newspaper, stop at the bank for his free coffee, then head to Starbucks to get free cream to put in his free coffee. He then comes home with his coffee and newspaper. But not now.
“There’s nowhere to go!” Charles tells me, as if I might not have noticed. “Everything has shut down except the grocery store!”
I tell him I know. I confirm that these are strange times. Charles looks amazed and a little annoyed. But he also looks worried. I just saw Charles leave in his SUV. He has nowhere to go but he’s still driving around, trying to behave as if the world hasn’t changed.
I’m reading a lot about people bingeing on Netflix and Cheetos and being bored and spending quality time in bed and I’m sure there are folks doing this. But, so far, they aren’t the ones I’ve talked to. The ones I know personally are a lot more like Charles. They are perplexed and worried and trying to stay busy.
I’ve got a friend who makes beautiful designer bags. She is now using her luxury fabrics to make face masks. “I’ve made more than 500!” she told me.
“That’s a lot of masks!” I said. “If I needed a mask, I would want one of yours!”
“Aww! Thank you.” It doesn’t strike either of us as odd that I am complimenting her on stylish respirator masks.
Another friend, a retired librarian, is a quilter. She is also making masks out of expensive fabric. “I hope we don’t need them all!” she says, looking over her pile of wired mask faces, sorted by color. “If we don’t, maybe we can use the matching ones to make bikini cups in the spring!”
The idea of unneeded respirator masks being transformed into bikini tops is one of the happiest thoughts I’ve had all week.
In Japan, I hear they are cutting apart bras to make masks. I saw a YouTube on this and I think the success would depend a lot on a person’s cup size, but more power to them, that’s what I say. They are keeping busy and I think that’s the best most of us can do right now.
The news evolves so quickly. The expectations change overnight. I feel as if I am driving in a fog, unable to see past my dim headlights, no idea when there will be a sharp turn in the road.
My husband, Peter, met Joe outside and says he’s feeling better. I’m glad. But I’m still worried. And Joe’s red truck is still parked out back.
Till next time,
Carrie