I am in Brooklyn, and Steve is in Factoryville, and we are both doing well.
It dawned on me a few weeks ago that this is my first pandemic. Of all the things that I imagined that I would live through, a pandemic was way at the bottom of the list. Right below witnessing the ascension of an over-bearing reality TV show talking head to become leader of the Free World. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse arriving, uninvited, at supper time is down there as well.
At the top of the list, however, is bearing witness to the efforts and endurance of some amazing people. The doctors, nurses, and staff of hospitals dealing with what is most certainly their first pandemic as well. And the men and women still going to work at services and jobs that have now become lifelines for many, and that up until a month ago I took very much for granted. Grocery store workers. Delivery workers. Liquor store owners. You know, the important services.
Of course, we are also bearing witness to some palm-to-forehead, mind numbing stupidity. None of which I feel like recounting at the moment. Suffice it to say you only need peruse the newspaper to catch some of the amazing stories.
I am starting week number four of working from home. Even though I am considered essential at SUNY Downstate, the department felt that it was too much of a risk to have us travel in everyday. We are also the kind of department that can work from home with little effort – we all have computers, we can connect to the systems that we need. And there is email. Endless, unceasing, multi-threaded gobs of email. Oh, and there is video conferencing now. It’s still a novelty for me, and I get to see what kinds of rooms people plop down in, which is fun. My one trip out into the world is to the market on Tuesday morning. Whole Foods lets geezers in an hour before opening, so I head on in with my homemade mask – swanky double layered percale sheet scraps. Only the best! Steve is getting out only when he needs to, but has the supplies and essentials to go for the long haul: chili and soup in the freezer and enough TP to last well into the next year.
We were scheduled to go back to work on April 29, but Governor Cuomo just pushed the stay-at-home rules into May. So I have a feeling that there may be three or four more weeks of isolation to look forward to here in Williamsburg. Both Steve and I are olde pros at hunkering down in isolation, even though we message and video chat every day. We are always in touch and talking. We just shake our heads at all the young folks crying about not being able to go to Starbucks or the beach – amateurs.
I am looking forward to giving every single one of you big, giant, arms-around-you hugs. In the meantime, from at least six feet away, I bid you good night.