A-Two-Day-Wait and Riding Forever

Friday, April 3, 2020

Total Confirmed: 1,099,389

Total Deaths: 58,900

Total Recovered: 214,459

I started a list online of stuff to request from Raley’s since they have the shortest time frame for getting groceries out to your car. It’s only A-Two-Day-Wait.

I feel sad today. It feels like we are alternately in imminent danger and in a safe bubble. It will never happen here, and it could happen at any second. And it already is happening here and leaving the house is super dangerous. Our lives could be ended because I needed non-dairy creamer and went to go get some. Only one of us should go to the store so we don’t both get infected. Everyone’s bodies are all mixed up and we don’t know how to allow ourselves to feel the feelings. Because we don’t understand what these feelings are.

I worked on my invention for a few hours and everything was perfect but then it turns out I measured something wrong and it all went to hell. Aidan gave me hugs and brought me to the front yard. We lay down in the grass. I’m sorry it didn’t work out, he says. You’ll get it, I swear, he says.

Comforting as always.

But I was sad anyway and I lay on my belly in the grass and gripped two handfuls of spiky green and felt the Earth turn underneath me until I was getting dizzy. Some people walked by and we rolled over and they laughed at us for lying in the grass. The little boy said, Oh are you Sungazing?

Yes, we said. Yes we are.

The little family kept on down the street. I think he meant Sunbathing, Aidan said. He tossed a lone brown leaf into the air and it settled on the lawn behind him.

We laughed and decided to do another bike ride.

We rode for 10 miles with no direction at all. We rode down to the big park where people were playing frisbee in groups of eight, all standing far, far apart. A guy slack-lining by himself. People walking their kids. Everyone having fun. The Canadian geese totally unafraid as we zipped around.

There were BBQ’s and happy hours with folks in their shorts and their folding chairs on their respective sides of the sidewalk. Laughing with each other. Long-distance high fives and toasting each other with Here-Here! Maintaining Friendships. I looked at houses in a new way. The houses from the 60’s. This guy has a killer view. That guy painted the trim of his house the most ugly florescent blue on the planet. A shake roof that will need to be replaced before it burns down. A pretty driveway. An adorable yellow house. A cute little garden full of bright happy daffodils. A red and black motorcycle parked on the lawn with a bunch of foul language professionally painted on the side. A guy with a permanent skylight installed on the truck of his car. For real.

I felt the wind on my face and the happiness of the world.

This is not how I thought the apocalypse would look.

The sadness gradually faded from my shoulders and the top of my head.

And I could’ve kept Riding Forever.