I should have known that things were bad when Mimi and Gramps insisted that they weren’t. “Why is everything a conspiracy with you?” I shouted
into my car’s Bluetooth, embarrassed at how forcefully it came out and that the car next to me at the light could probably hear everything. Usually, I know better. But on this day, a Wednesday, after nights of no sleep, a full moon, despair at the Michigan primary results the day before, after navigating a month’s worth of school bureaucracy and work emails and car troubles, well, I should not have called at all.
All I asked was, maybe you should not come in April. I was thinking of the work-at-home paperwork I had filled out that afternoon.
I was thinking about my own health, about yours, about how the virus affects the old (like my parents) more, and also the homeless and the already sick. I was thinking about the logistics of working at home with a kid at home too. What if my parents got sick while they were here? What was the plan for that? How would l feel? What if we got sick, and they weren’t here? Also not good. And simultaneously, I was mentally tallying our toilet paper and cat food and medicine. After I hung up, my dad texted a youtube video. I didn’t watch it.
The next day, he sent me an apology, and I sent one back. I don’t want you to die, it said. Not really, but mostly. I don’t know how I got this way, only that it’s classic Midwest. “I do not want you to die” is a painful, hard thing for me to say, and the circumstances that make saying it possible the only time I would gather the breath to spit it out.
Early Friday morning a voicemail came through – school canceled. School canceled in Michigan too. Gramps is handling a whole church full of people now and it seems it’s more real for him. No more youtube. You and I are home, building battleship models and learning German online, baking cookies and trying to figure out what else. In other news it’s spring break, the poppies and primroses are coming up in the garden, and we don’t have travel plans to cancel. Just here, waiting it out.
Little Bug 