Social distance has mostly begun to settle over me, probably because I have carved out a meager routine that gives my day order. There is hot tea and knitting while watching 15 minutes of The Great British Baking Show, a sentence that no doubt ages me several decades. Emmet and I then walk to the office early in time for the postal carrier, and I work in silence until Chris arrives. (Thanks to his introversion and the current lack of co-workers, I work in silence after he arrives, too.) There is an hour of exercise at home, 30 minutes of national news, an evening walk, dinner, and mindless television before an early bed time.

I find that I can knit just fine, and I have begun to sew fabric masks for my RN friends. The masks are designed to fit over N95 masks and survive repeated hot water washings, all to the end of prolonging the lives of the N95s. If my friends were expecting a sudden outburst of good taste and solemnity, they will be sorely disappointed.

I find that I cannot paint. I chalked it up to the fact that painting is such an act of joy for me, and right now I feel like I am treading water. But there may be another reason. During this morning’s knit-tea-baking show extravaganza, I looked at what was on my easel, that very large painting of Emmet at the window. As a refresher, here it is:

This foyer window is Emmet’s favorite spot in the house, and I have a series of photographs of him standing there and looking longingly. So in addition to the painting’s merely capturing that pose, its story reflects a dog in a comfortable and colorful house, standing next to a plant, a poor and confined substitute for the larger world awaiting him. Within the painting itself, I had saved the best for last, like Emmet and the explosion of beauty outside the window. The dog was to be solid yet wreathed in light, but now he is ethereal, looking as if he will waste away to vapor and simply float outside. And the color and pattern of the outside was to be riotous and put the inside of the house to shame. These are the things left to paint. Now I simply cannot.

Several things spring to mind here. First, I took too many art history courses in college. Second, the story of the painting feels a little too close to home. Third, perhaps I should try a still life instead, for if anyone can capture stasis right now, it is I.

It is harder on my children. This is — or maybe was — my son’s final semester of college, and for all of his big talk about how he was ready to be out of college, he is so disappointed about missing the last few weeks with his friends and the cancellation of commencement exercises. My daughter will be 21 in a few days, and for some reason, buying a bottle of wine at the liquor store and sharing it with her father and brother does not convey the celebratory air of a night out with friends.

There have been a lot of pep talks and Pixar in our home.

But a couple of nights ago, there was Monopoly. My daughter insisted that we all sit on the floor. She and her brother made it look easy, and Chris and I made it look hard. I sat on a pillow, falling onto it at the end with an inglorious thump, and Chris sprawled out, chest down on an ottoman. As three of us sat upright, he looked like a puppeteer. I have found that being a wife and mother conflicts mightily with being a ruthless capitalist. I nearly cried when Chris declared bankruptcy. And when my daughter told me her heart’s desire — to own Boardwalk (which I held) to match her own Park Place — I abandoned all reason and made a bad trade that I justified with the facts that she had only $32 in her bank (so she could never buy houses) and that in decades of playing Monopoly, I rarely landed on either of the blue spaces. Many rounds later, and three visits to the hotel on Boardwalk, I was out of the game. And with the grace of a 2×4, I arose from the floor.

Perhaps it is the combination of last year’s private health crisis with this year’s public one, but I sense that these weeks (possibly these months) will change my life. I suppose there’s that feeling of sufficiency, to make do with what you have. I am speaking, of course, about the food in the freezer, the acceptance that the grocery has only green beans instead of the brussels sprouts that sounded so good, the relief of having any brand of toilet paper.

But I have begun to look askance at the caches of fabric and yarn I have accrued — materials that I purchased simply because I could. It seems so wasteful now, and I have started working on using things up. There is the skirt that finished off some small pieces of black and white fabric, some red gingham bias tape, and a whole lot of yards of ball fringe.

And the shawl that has consumed two full skeins of yarn and half a dozen little pieces.

I whittle away, removing pebbles from the mountains. Don’t get me wrong. I like what I have made. The focus on using what I have forces me to be more creative, more adaptable — but I also think of how nice it will be at some point in the future to need something, figure out what that is, and hold out for exactly what I want. It may take a decade, but I will get there.

A final word. I have seen the meme proclaiming that WE ARE THREE WEEKS AWAY FROM FIGURING OUT WHAT EVERYONE’S HAIR COLOR REALLY IS. You have seen what my hair color really is, the result of a very long period of growing out the color. If you find yourself in this same boat, you will have to transcend hair. I did not do that very well, until suddenly I did, and on the other side, I realize that life is not a beauty pageant. But it is beautiful. This is lucky for you, because you are also beautiful, and you will be fine.

Which reminds me. Until about a decade ago, there was a small spray-painted legend on an undeveloped building that sat at the end of the one-way dead-end street on my way home every night. In small letters, it said EVERYTHING WILL BE OK. I later saw that stencil everywhere — notably, a dumpster — and it brought me great relief and courage. There is no need here for acts of vandalism, but these are good words. Everything will, in fact, be okay. There will be hugs and health and parties. Toilet paper will even be flung again in branches. The painting of Emmet will be finished (even if that means that it is declared finished as it is). Things will be plentiful, and I will not be wasteful. But for now, we will all have to sit tight. Very tight. And tonight I will try to paint.

ALC

I have spared you from the things I have written over the last few days.

You are welcome.

I have spent the last few days spinning the Wheel of Disaster, a caffeine-fueled, sleep-deprived hellish game involving a steady diet of news coverage and escalating panic. It was a good thing that I was largely isolated, for no one would want to be around me anyway.

But today — oh, glorious today! — I went to the grocery store at 8 a.m. I figured I would beat the crowd, buy what I needed to feed my family, and quickly slip home. These goals were largely unmet. There was an immense crowd; I bought what I needed to feed a family that subsisted on a slightly less healthy diet than normal; and the trip took 90 minutes, including a 20 minute wait in the checkout line.

Fortunately I dressed for the trip. I had on a red bandana and red shoes, a handmade denim skirt with red buttons, a navy T-shirt with Y’ALL in white letters, and my red gloves. I applied red lipstick in the parking lot and realized that the red lipstick matched almost everything else, including the gloves. This amused me, so I took a picture.

There was no toilet paper. There were no lemons. There were no bleach wipes. There was no broccoli.

But there was my stockbroker, who was smiling. I figured that if she could still smile, I could too. There were people who needed help, so I pointed out the crystallized ginger and the bundles of asparagus. There were people who thought the shirt was funny, and there were people who noted that the lipstick matched the gloves. There were a number of grocery store employees who needed to be thanked for keeping food on the shelves and my family (or a slightly less healthy version of my family) fed.

Apparently no one wants to buy extravagant plants during a pandemic, so Publix had marked its orchids down to $4. Some of the orchids had been worn down by captivity, shriveling up and dropping flowers. Me? I bought the two best-looking plants, noting that they had adapted to their confinement in a protective plastic wrap and still bloomed.

Perhaps there’s a metaphor there.

This has been a difficult week, and it’s only the beginning. But in a lot of ways, it has forced me to confront that I have enough. My family is together. We are fed. The yard enjoys the attention. So does the house.

I thought I would miss things. And I do. I miss our local restaurants and stores, and I ache for their owners and workers. I miss hugging my friends, having an empty nest, working out at my favorite gym. I really miss the dream of retiring at 62.

But I do not miss the news. I have turned it off except for the 6:30 national news, although I sometimes skip even that. (I substitute the Great British Baking Show, with a cup of tea and knitting, for much of what I used to watch.) I have found that a good Pixar movie takes the sting out of sibling rivalry — even when those siblings are in their 20s — which is why we watched “Monsters, Inc.” on Thursday and “Monsters University” on Friday. Yard work cures a multitude of ills, and plants still grow from seeds and multiply from splits. (If anyone needs basil, let me know, and I’ll bring you some in a month.)

On my walks around the neighborhood, I see children and their parents playing in the parks. I see friends walking and talking across the distance. I have happily sat on people’s front steps to enjoy some leisurely conversations. And my own block is having a Social Distance Happy Hour every night at 5:30. (The advantage to getting there early is that you can claim a spot on the bench.) I saw on the news that people were putting up their holiday lights as a gesture of cheer and hope to their neighbors, so I did my part on Thursday night:

But Thursday night was also the night that I bottomed out, and so early in the game. After a night of tossing and turning, it struck me that surviving the quarantine but coming out of it with an anxiety-induced heart attack or a terrible case of agoraphobia was a shallow victory. So I have reminded myself that in the strangeness of this time, some things seem to have become much simpler. While happiness seems harder to muster, it feels less elusive. Walking, catching sight of friends, enjoying deeply discounted orchids, tending a garden, matching lipstick to gloves: These are all things that have filled me with joy. I have just had to look in smaller and different places.

ALC

And I thought February had been a strange month.

There was that encounter with tourists — an older couple — who stopped Emmet and me and asked for directions to the Mercer House, an inquiry akin to asking a New Yorker to point the way to the Empire State Building. I trotted out my best Moultrie accent (after all, tourists have certain expectations) and gave stellar directions. At that point, the husband consulted his city map and started arguing with me: According to him, I had given them bad directions. The map, he said, led them to Bull Street, while I had sent them to Whitaker Street.

My initial thought involved the words “map” and “shove it,” and my second thought involved a destination several miles away on Bull Street. But then my fine Moultrie accent (and the spirit in which it was invoked, as well as the memories of growing up in a small town) prevailed. As you may recall, I said, my directions led you to the back of the Mercer House. I felt pretty confident that from there you could follow the signs directing you to the front of the Mercer House. His wife (who I suspected had had numerous conversations like this with her beloved) grabbed him by the elbow sharply, and they set out.

Then there was the encounter with someone working at the house next door to our office. There has been a frenzy of apartment construction across the street, which apparently has necessitated Savannah’s very own Big Dig. There is a side street entirely torn up, dirt exposed; a barricade and flashing lights; a parade of heavy machinery; the occasional bleeding of a water line; and a number of construction workers shaking their heads and pointing. Do any of us have any idea what is going on? Absolutely not. But the worker next door stopped me and asked, closing in on my car as I was getting out. As I responded to his question, I looked down. In his right hand, he had a knife with a 6 or 8 inch blade held by his thigh. I stopped talking and decided that it was the perfect time to step aside and get Emmet out of the car. I got the dog, and the man realized that he looked like a serial killer, and an already awkward conversation became even more so.

And then: passport renewal. It took four different trips to three different drug stores to get an acceptable photo. In the first round, the photo was blurry and my face partially obscured. Although I am no State Department employee, even I could tell it would be rejected. In the second round, the first shot of me was at a distance of 20 feet or so; I was pretty certain that the regulations provided for no full body shot. I came back as directed to meet with Kelly, the assistant manager and apparent Keeper of the Passport Photo Flame; she imposed a series of rules resulting in the worst case of RBF I’ve ever displayed or even seen. I had no doubt that that face would keep me out of any country in the free world simply on general unpleasantness grounds. Why, a face like that would yell at a thousand waiters, quarrel with customs, make hoteliers cry, break in front of beleaguered tourists in museum lines, haggle with merchants, and wear obnoxious fanny packs!

Wait.

So at the third drugstore, I got an old pro — an apparently well-traveled Hinesvillian who knew that there was to be no smile, no drop earrings, no glasses and hair pulled off the face. He was a man who kindly looked away as I slipped in a smirk, yet who had no idea of the psychic damage that ensued after I compared my passport photo from a decade before (taken by someone who apparently did not know the rules) and my current one, a display that fully documented the passage of time:

(Even though I look like a traveler who stuffs Kleenex in her cardigan sleeve, I’ll still be wearing the fanny pack.)

February left with a bang as I fell into March — literally. I was delivering an old but working printer to the nearby high school when I suddenly and unexpectedly found the printer airborne as gravity asserted its pull on my body. There was a tremendous thud, a sheepish-looking cleaning woman appearing out of nowhere, a ruined printer, and some pretty spectacular bruises, both on my knees and on my pride.

When I complained to Chris that it had been a rotten month, he replied, “Everybody hates February.”

And now here I am in March:

Yes, those are the gloves that I never use when I wash dishes, gloves that now seem entirely appropriate to push a cart around Target to buy food for an extended stay at home. (I already had a new bundle of toilet paper at the house, a purchase occasioned by need, not panic.) Welcome to social distance and life in the time of a pandemic with a 51 year-old extrovert who has been treated for asthma in the past.

I started a blog five years ago because I had difficulty processing my life. Writing helped, even when it hurt. (I could not have survived my cancer diagnosis, followed by a &*%$ appendectomy a few months later, without it.) But life lately had been so happy, and I had been so content, that I had been engaged in the joyful expressions of painting, sewing, and knitting. Here, for instance, is an enormous canvas of Emmet currently on my easel:

But all of the paint, fabric, and yarn in this world will not help me process our collective current situation and deal with the resulting anxiety. I’ll be checking in — a lot, probably — as I maintain social distance and avoid the situations (like disbelieving tourists, knife-wielding maintenance men, passport photographers at varying skills levels, and flying LaserJets) that make life so much fun.

Stay well, friends.

Sending you a virtual elbow bump in solidarity,

ALC