Nancy (March 2020)
It has been like nothing else I’ve ever experienced, this “social distancing.” Our usual disasters, hurricanes, never keep us away from one another for very long: we are used to huddling in homes, sharing water bottles, hugging our neighbors.
The “cone of concern” is personal now. We are being schooled in quarantine.
Those lucky enough to work from home, do. But the others, the hourly workers, food service, any kind of service, really, need a paycheck. So, some businesses hang on for them and their very survival, keeping doors open another day. Others shutter their ghost town dining and waiting rooms, giving into reality, which, in this day and time, just happens to be the same thing as safety.
People sheltering at home shake their heads; social media explodes with shaming and praying and predicting. When will this thing end? How far up the curve are we? The curve of public health shoved down our throats like the dog’s antibiotic. Every day grows more confined. It will make us better, but we hate it and kick and scream.
Not me, though. I’m not screaming.
I’m lucky—I have a job, at least for the moment, which has allowed me to work from home. I don’t mind; in fact, I prefer it, though I didn’t let on to anyone there how much. Meeting planners are supposed to love being around people, enjoy face-to-face, detailed discussions with the powers that be, in my case, a community of physicians. I am meant to be the quintessential extrovert.
But, I’m not. I’d much rather text, email, and talk from the comfort of my own home. More specifically, my bed. So, silver lining (and striped sheets) there. Telecommuting has taken the sting out of a crazy work situation.
One that many are calling Armageddon for the events industry.
Martha, my former co-worker, keeps messaging me that this phenomenon is like nothing we’ve ever seen. I know, Martha, I write back. The whole world’s back in its shell. Is the Annual Meeting canceled? She keeps asking. Not yet, I say.
But it will be. I’m sure of it. No one can travel, large groups can’t gather, many North Florida Medical Society members are sixty-five and over, a vulnerable population. The meeting’s as good as dead for the NFMS.
And I fear we have months left to crest the curve, keeping everyone at arms’ length times two until this crowning virus is dethroned. In the meantime, there will be no events. Life is cancelled.
Sigh.
“Bruff.” A puff of sound from my dog, Chum. We both are sitting on my bed, crisply made up first thing this morning; working from home, I vowed I would not get between those sheets until a respectable hour arrives. Three o’clock, it’s been lately. Before that, I can sit on the bed, even recline but, no naps until the afternoon. I need to work; get my head around cancelling vendors and venues, do a deep dive into new online educational options–though, honestly, that’s more in the purview of the Online Education Director, not the Meetings Department. Of which I am currently the last one standing. Not due to COVID-19, just capital. Still, work tends to focus me, and I need grounding right now—to plunge in, regardless of where my career may be headed.
I pat Chum’s head. Thank goodness, he’s been healthy. I asked my vet if this thing could cross over to dogs, and she said most likely not, which was a relief. He rolls onto his back for a belly rub, so I comply, scratching softly with my fingers there.
The diamond on my left hand never fails to catch me off guard.
Such a bright thing, bigger than I remember. Sparkly. It attracts attention, others and my own. I keep forgetting I’m wearing it. The current troubles have arrested my attention in a way I could not have anticipated.
“Plague thinking,” Fairfax, my best friend calls it. She’s been trying to shake me out of it, get me to focus on the big event happening next month, but my mind can’t seem to accept that it really will take place, life being canceled and all.
Fairfax helped me select the date, my dress, the flavor of cake. She lent her incredible style to the event, promising me that I would be the most gorgeous bride ever. It felt like she was channeling the spirit of Ruth Plumb, my mother, so joyfully did she plan each detail. The mother of two boys, Fairfax might never get to plan a wedding, so she took on the project without me asking. Plus, she had a lot of time on her hands, and stage-managing my love life enlivens her like nothing else.
And I need to see Fairfax whole again, her bubbling energy and busy limbs. Her “get up and go” galvanizes me. I cannot lose that. Not ever.
But life’s usual complications have grown more complex and puzzling and mystifying. Nothing is ever easy, I know, but problems now slay me with their strangeness. Situations I never expected to encounter have taxed my logic and nerves, and, let’s face it, love skills, both old and new. I wish I could keep living life in the black and white, plop everything that happens into “good” and “bad” piles, easily relegated. But the longer I live, the more I see this clear-cut grouping as impossible. Especially in the year 2020.
I live in a gray zone now. A blur of emotions, love and hate, yes and no, leave or stay. Opposites all mixed together into an oyster-colored fug.
After finally getting engaged at nearly fifty, I now can’t help but feel I’m in the middle of a cruel cosmic joke with a perfectly timed punchline:
It wasn’t meant to be after all, Nancy.
By “it,” I mean lots of things. Happiness, peacefulness, passion, the expected end to the story. Because right now, those feelings, that sure-footed knowing, are gone. There is a curious absence in my heart at the moment, like a hurricane has blown through and scrubbed out anything good. And like everything else nowadays, love and union and safety are heading straight towards cancellation.
Leaving me high and dry with an empty riverfront room and a big cake that no one will eat.
