When This is Over

To walk down the street and have people give you a wide breadth, deliberately avoiding coming near you.

They can’t come close, but it doesn’t mean they can’t make eye-contact.

It isn’t illegal to smile.

To stand in line at the pharmacy and have the woman in front of you glance back, look you up and down, then take two steps farther away.

No apology. No, “it’s not personal.”

It’s not personal, but it still feels like you have a disease.

Six feet is a long way apart. It’s the average height of a man. That’s the distance we’re supposed to keep.

And I find myself doing it, too. I drove by the office and the accountant was there, working away from home like she’s not supposed to. “Can you look at something real quick?” she asks. I keep my distance when I enter her space. I don’t pull up a chair like I normally would. I start to feel itchy, like I need to get out of there fast. “Call me if you still have questions,” I say, before retreating to grab what I came for in the first place.

I wonder about my old people. The ones I hang out with at the historic bar. They’re all at risk from the sickness. The bar closed down last week and I haven’t seen them.

I haven’t let myself wonder if I will see them again after this is all over. They are very old. The virus affects the old.

I haven’t let myself wonder if they could all be gone by summer.

I receive a package from my mother. It’s toilet paper and chocolate and vodka—an emergency kit for the shut-in. It makes me chuckle to open the package outside, retrieve the contents, then toss the box in the dumpster.

I wash my hands thoroughly before opening the chocolate.

“Going to Target. Need anything?” my roommate asks. “I’m getting low on coffee creamer,” I reply. “It’s on my list too. Going to start making it at home ‘cause Starbucks is closing at the end of the week.” “It’s sad. But it’s good. It doesn’t seem safe.” 

Starbucks will be okay. My favorite, local shop two blocks from my apartment probably won’t be. I bought a couple extra bags of beans before this whole thing hit, just in case.

I hope they pull through. I really like that place.

“Support your local businesses” flashes across Instagram. How can you support them if they are closed?

I haven’t let myself wonder if anything but large chain restaurants will exist when this is all over.

My sister is a health-care professional. She lives with my grandmother.

She’s putting my grandmother at risk, by going to work.

I want to tell her to move in with our sister for the next few months. Fear my live free, die hard family members in the south will mock me for paranoia keeps me from it.

I want to shout at people who think this will just blow over.

Then I remember the people on the street who won’t make eye contact when they circle you, wide and safe and inhuman.

I wish more people had been concerned about the space when I was at the beach last weekend.

Then the beaches might still be open.

A local coffee shop announced they will have take-away cold brew. I go to show support, not because I need cold brew. I hate myself for washing the jar with bleach when I get home.

On the way home, a man who is homeless doesn’t give me the wide loop when he passes by. He passes on one side of the sidewalk and I pass on the other. I smile at him, grateful he’s not afraid of me getting him sick, or the other way ‘round.

I wonder, if you live your life from one day to the next anyway, does a rapidly-spreading virus alter your existence at all?

All the billboards say to help the homeless. “They are more vulnerable now than ever” they say. A big city could blame the homeless for the spread of the disease. Instead, it protects them. I haven’t heard one peep about how the homeless can’t stay home when you’re “safer at home.”

They are home.

A therapist I like to listen to says we have to rethink what love looks like during this time. Visiting someone in the nursing home looks like love in a different context. Visiting them when you might bring a deadly virus as a gift is not love in this context.

Staying away is love. Waving at someone from your porch as they walk past on the street is love. Keeping six feet away is love. Sharing your toilet paper is love. Buying cold brew when you don’t need it, love. Ordering groceries from a local farmer when it’s cheaper to go to Target, that’s love.

This is human. A new human. A human who keeps a distance when we want to draw close.

I can’t hold your hand, or kiss you.

But I can text you, call you, hear you.

The virus might get sorted. The restaurants might reopen. The toilet paper might line the shelves once again.

I wonder if, when this is all over, if we will remember again what it’s like to be human.