Emmet’s favorite window in the house is the one in the foyer at the bottom of the stairs. My series of photographs of him at that window function like a growth chart; see his size as he defends the house against the next-door neighbor, a mail carrier, and dogs on leashes who are cheeky enough to walk by. It is at this window that I have painted him. And it is at this window that I begin to wake up the house every single morning, pulling up the blinds and assessing the day that awaits.

On Sunday morning, Emmet and I padded down the stairs, and through the lights beside the front door I saw where the squirrels had once again been digging in the front planters. As I pulled up the blind on the foyer window, I was immediately greeted by a squirrel on the fence post. With a certain degree of irritation, I rapped the window’s glass with my knuckles and watched the squirrel leave.

This was not enough for Emmet, who clearly wanted to reinforce the idea that the squirrel should not tarry. As soon as my knuckles left the glass, the dog lurched forward with an MMA-worthy punch that cleanly knocked a large semi-circle of glass right out of the pane. It was like a cartoon. The dog, who was not hurt, stepped back in wonder as I involuntarily yelped. Together we surveyed the damage as I told Emmet that this was coming out of his allowance.

Emmet learned how to punch from play-fighting with his human brother. These fights had been fun, complete with a lot of growling and tail-wagging, until Emmet learned the secret of felling a male opponent four times his weight. At first it seemed like an accident, and then I watched him sail across the living room rug in a canine karate pose, much like Hong Kong Phooey in the 70s Hanna-Barbera cartoon, and after the fourth KO, the play-fights suddenly ended.

It was not a moment too soon for my son, for in addition to hoping to have a family one day, he began to experience terrible mouth pain. He is recovering from oral surgery that occurred at 9:30 this morning, and if you have ever had your wisdom teeth removed, no doubt that you are involuntarily cupping your jaw as you read this. Sadly this is the first of two dental procedures on his slate, and to make matters even worse, he has final exams next week.

Even in near-isolation, life goes on.

At the end of last week, the state of Georgia famously opened some businesses: beauty parlors, nail salons, bowling alleys, gyms. Also opening was Emmet’s daycare, a once-a-week treat for a dog as spoiled as he is active. His daycare is well-managed and careful, with low employee turnover and great customer service. It is a business that has thrived, and until a pandemic hit, its biggest concern was whether it would beat a rival doggie daycare in the newspaper’s annual Best of Savannah polling. The owner sent a message that a limited reopening was the only way to keep her shop in business and her staff at least partially employed. So with a new protocol for drop-off and pick-up permitting zero human-to-human contact, it reopened.

In normal times, the owner works at a desk; the employees take active management of the dogs. But last week, when I picked up Emmet there she was: hands-on, thinner (and not in a good way), and stressed. That I continued to work almost normally seemed a tremendous luxury.

There have been things that I have not minded about the quarantine. I have genuinely enjoyed a quieter life. I am spending less and driving less, and there is time to tackle the yard, the closets, the unmade curtains. It has been a pleasure to see my neighbors out walking, yelling hellos across the street and waving. A woman with two small dogs — strangers to me, all of them — blows me a kiss every time she sees me with Emmet. I like having clear priorities: When this ends, I want to see my friends and family, occasionally eat fine meals in good restaurants, and travel.

But through it all — the punching dog, the dental woes of my son, the sadness I felt for the daycare’s owner — this week has been a good one. This week I got tired of feeling helpless. There is a saying that I love, that I first heard when I was a baby lawyer: When you don’t know what to do, do something. So I did.

In gratitude for our firm’s clients, I made a donation to Second Harvest Food Bank.

Looking for the satisfaction of doing something on a micro-level, I began buying groceries to stock a small food cupboard a few blocks from my home.

I told the daycare owner not to charge my prepaid punch card, but allow me to pay for these sessions and hold onto my punch visits.

I bought yarn that I did not need from both of the local yarn stores.

I gave a pansy painting to a friend, since every time I looked at it I thought of her.

I baked banana-versary bread to celebrate some friends’ wedding anniversary.

I sewed masks for my mother-in-law, my brother, and his wife.

I reached out to a different friend every day, whether by a porch visit, a text, or a call.

I dusted off my Good Habits Checklist and got back to work on my own good health.

These are small steps, but to be fair, the only person that I can change is myself. Sure, I am doing this to make myself feel better. But it’s still kindness, even if it has an ulterior motive.

I saw the power of thinking small when Emmet and I walked this morning. There is a high school a few blocks from my house, and over the past week, I have seen parents decorating the chain link fence that surrounds it with pictures of their children who are graduating this year. Today there was a parade of decorated cars that stretched for four blocks, and I followed the line to its terminus: the high school. Assembled in front was a group — probably teachers — holding signs, yelling, and applauding for all of the students in the cars.

As the cars passed me I raised my hands and clapped, and the drivers honked. It all about made me cry, but I knew that if I started, it would be ugly — a torrential downpour of six weeks worth of tears.

But I held it together. There is the overwhelming specter of the virus, and there are punching dogs who prey on larger opponents desperately in need of dental work. There are fissures and divisions and uncertainty. But there is community, and compassion, and plenty of small acts of kindness that still need to be done. Since I have some time on my hands, that is what I will do. The closets can wait.

ALC

When the children lived at home, Chris and I were committed Publix shoppers. But when they fled the nest, we changed our allegiance to Whole Foods. Don’t worry: We make fun of ourselves. We call it “Whole Paycheck” and wonder exactly how much it costs to achieve a well-lighted warehouse-type space that looks both frugal and expensive. I ultimately embraced this change due to the homemade Biscoff gelato sold at the coffee bar, for a single scoop keeps me from a Price Is Right-like running commentary about the relative costs of the same items at both stores. As an added bonus, getting a treat at the grocery store reminds me of how my mother would buy me a little red circus box of animal crackers on our own shopping trips, a shameless bribe to keep the child version of me well-behaved and engaged in happily biting the heads off of hapless tigers. (I apparently have a pretty low price tag, and it is comforting to know that some things never change.)

If you have ever shopped at Whole Foods — or, as the store probably puts it, enjoyed the Whole Foods experience — you will understand the importance of bringing your own shopping bags. Years ago, as a devoted Publix shopper, I made my own shopping bags out of leftover brightly-colored fabric, and in addition to being washable and sturdy, the bags bring me pleasure. They are happiness with two straps. Luckily for me, Whole Foods pays you to bring your own bags, and the day when one of its clerks told me that they were the greatest grocery bags she’d ever seen, I felt like I had won the Olympics. (Perhaps that was just the sugar high from the gelato kicking in. Who knows?)

Apparently forgetting that the children were home, Chris and I went to Whole Foods yesterday for groceries. There was no gelato. Instead, at checkout there was a clerk in a mask separated by a giant Plexiglass shield, and as I went to place my bags on the conveyor belt, she yelled at me. “I CANNOT TOUCH YOUR BAGS. DO NOT PUT THEM ON THE BELT!” She yelled at me so loudly, so vociferously, and so unexpectedly that I actually startled and jumped slightly. When she saw my reaction, she softened: She didn’t mean to scare me. (Or at least that’s what I think she said. I couldn’t quite understand her through the mask that covered her mouth but not her nose.)

This is, of course, an understandable rule. I just wish either I had thought of it, or Whole Foods had warned me with an expensive sign. (Yes, Whole Foods corporate has sprung into action with a whole lot of professionally and tastefully printed placards, stickers, and warning signs, while humble Publix has resorted to blue taped Xs and arrows indicating aisle flow and store-printed signs all over the place.)

Just when I think I have fallen into the new normal, something like this happens.

I have done my best to embrace my circumstances. Sunday afternoon was overcast, and having done a lot of gardening that morning, I declared it pajama day, watched terrible TV, and even took a nap. Sewing anything but masks seems so stupidly optimistic and beside the point right now, but I made myself complete a skirt that I had cut out, finishing just in time to wear it to Publix last week:

I have set a routine. I have even given myself leeway on that routine. (Indeed, one of the homeless men that Emmet and I walk by on our way into the empty office told me this morning that I was running late.) I bathe daily. I exercise almost every day. I eat my vegetables. I wear mostly clothes that I made, which are much happier than clothes that I buy. The garden looks bonkers.

I have given up on feeling bad for myself, mostly since my days somewhat resemble my days before the entry of the stay-at-home orders. But being an overachiever, I have compensated by feeling terrible for my children. It is dawning on me — which means it probably dawned on them several weeks ago — that there is no snappy, short-term fix to this long-term problem. I may have some anxiety and discomfort, but this situation is not plunging me into a full-fledged existential crisis. I don’t think I can say the same for them. They ask for advice, and for once, I just shrug my shoulders. I have no answers, no suggestions. I cannot do their laundry, pack their cars, and wave as they drive back to school. My usual fixes — to see things you’ve never seen before, to work a hard job that leaves you tired, to spend time with friends — are failing me. I cannot put them in a car and point them westward and tell them to see the country. At least not for now.

The closest I have come to getting into a car pointed westward was this Monday afternoon, when Chris had an appointment to see an elderly client in a remote corner of Chatham County. She needed to sign documents, and he needed me as a witness. With masks and Emmet loaded into the car, and my navigating to our destination, I saw a pull-through nursery on the right hand side of the road, shimmering like a mirage. We met with the client on her porch and shuffled papers across a wide round table and signed documents. (We let her keep the pen.) Back in the car, masks down and Miracle-Gro coursing through my veins, I very sweetly asked Chris to drive back to the nursery so that I could get some plants.

For 20 wonderful minutes, it felt like normal. I got a yellow rose and some salvia, a few Shasta daises, some Mexican sage, and a butterfly bush. It felt less normal when the owner REALLY kept her distance as I practically shouted my credit card information. On the ride home, the sun shone, the car smelled of roses, Emmet propped his head on my shoulder, and the radio played a local university station’s Jazz Cafe’ (tagline: Real Jazz for People Who Feel Jazz). It was a moment of perfect contentment.

My children have been passing the existential crisis baton, and as every mother knows, you’re only as happy as your unhappiest child. My son — who should be in his final few weeks of college right now, preparing for the rest of his life — held that baton in a death grip on Tuesday. Summoning every bit of maternal authority I could muster, I handed him a shovel and told him to start digging, and for an hour that afternoon as I barked orders, he dug up a patch of pesky liriope and moved a holly fern to a better place. We did not talk much — for what could I tell him? — and focused instead on the welcome relief of physical exhaustion.

Like a lot of things right now, a flower garden feels like a foolhardy endeavor, a bit of frivolity in a time of suffering. I am aware. But I cannot help myself. See the blossom as it cranes toward the sun, and that will tell you everything you need to know.

ALC

I went out this weekend, which is to say that I worked in the yard. Front yard, back yard, side yard: It was a veritable extravaganza of yard! My Grandma always said that your front yard is for your neighbors, and your back yard is for you, and like many things that she said, she was absolutely right.

As I worked in the front yard, neighbors streamed by, and we invariably had some variation of this exchange:

Neighbor: Hey! The yard looks great!

Me: Well, I’ve had a little time on my hands.

(Both parties chuckling and waving)

This contact buoyed me. But as I walked back into the house, I noticed this sight under one of the planters by the front door, and my blood ran cold:

In a time where casual trips to Home Depot to purchase spring plantings were out of the question, there were shredded marigold blossoms. My ornamental kale was ornamenting the porch. I raised my tiny fist of rage and shook it as I bellowed to the sky, “SQUIRREL!”

My long-time enemy was no respecter of crisis.

I love our house. Apparently squirrels do, too. What’s not for them to love? We have an enormous pecan tree in our back yard; fruit trees all around; several bird feeders and bird baths scattered about; plenty of soft, well-amended soil that makes for easy digging; and little brick ledges and fences that serve as wonderful places to perch. So shortly after moving in 20 years ago, I christened the house “Squirrel Estates.”

Every morning I pad down the stairs and open the blind in the foyer immediately to the right of the last step. This is almost always the first thing I see:

SQUIRREL!

No doubt I could put cayenne pepper in the bird seed and planters, but I don’t quite have the heart. And this weekend — after several weeks of worrying exclusively about this stupid virus — it was a pleasure and a relief to channel my irritation at a long-time foe.

It was also a pleasure and relief to be outside: the sunshine, the neighbors, the physical labor, the time to think. Mostly I thought about my Grandma. She loved to garden, worked with her husband, sewed a lot of her own clothes, and was always up for a cross-country trip.

Does this sound like anyone you know?

As I have gotten older, I wish that I had known her better. I remember mostly being dropped off at her house as a young child, when we lived close and she lived in an apartment over my grandparents’ hardware store. Grandma would bake bread with you, make cookies, allow a mess. On special occasions, she would break out her fine china — Fiestaware — and let you choose your own colors. And there were purses and jewelry to be explored.

But we moved, and I grew older, and I kind of lost her in the divorce. At my grandfather’s funeral, she told me that when she looked into my eyes, she could still see the little girl. This may have been the finest thing anyone has ever said to me. And then she passed on, too.

At 51, I find myself missing my grandmother. Like — REALLY missing my grandmother, especially when I garden. There are so many things that I want to ask her, especially now that I finally see the size of her footprint in my life. And as I get older, I see her as less of a one-dimensional character and think of her as more of a person.

This was all brought into focus for me when a long-time friend of mine lost her 99 year-old grandfather this week. How fortunate she has been to have that connection for so long. And as I trimmed the boxwood and dug up the spiderwort and exchanged pleasantries with my neighbors, I thought about my friend, too.

I probably would have left it at that, but the pandemic made me do something different. I picked up the phone, and — miracle of miracles! — I did not send a text or put a Facebook message on her wall or email her. Instead, I dialed her number.

It amazes me how much harder phone calls have become with all of the technological advances at our fingertips. This strikes me as ridiculous. I remember the days when long-distance was a carefully rationed and expensive proposition, a 25-cent per minute endeavor. I rejoiced at a phone plan in law school that allowed unlimited calling between Athens and Atlanta after 9 p.m. on weeknights for $15 per month, and how Chris would call from Atlanta after 9 p.m. and hang up after one ring. Even without caller ID available, I would know it was him and call back. I would lie on my back and twirl the cord and luxuriate in screwing over Bellsouth on a flat-rate plan.

And now I find I confine my expressions to a few words in a disappearing medium.

This cannot be.

So I called. And yesterday we spoke. In a time where everything seems so isolated, I cannot tell you how immediate and comforting it felt to hear my friend talk. As I walked the dog, we chatted easily about our grandparents and our children and ourselves. And after we had solved all of the world’s problems, she — who was working from home — announced that she planned to sneak into her garden for a few minutes, that working there reminded her of her grandfather.

We are friends for a reason, and after I ended the call, I silently wished her sunshine and good soil and only the politest of squirrels.

ALC

I really want a drink. I really want a glass from that fine bottle of bourbon high on the shelf over the refrigerator. Almost to the point that I can hear the ice clinking in the glass, smell the heady caramel aroma, and feel the knot of tension clenching my chest like a fist simply dissolve. I really want that warm Kentucky hug.

I stopped drinking in August or September of last year. It was a decision motivated by health concerns; some studies have linked alcohol consumption with cancer, including colon cancer, and since I really wasn’t supposed to have cancer the first time, I didn’t want to do anything to help myself get cancer again. I didn’t drink at all for a few months after my surgery, and when I resumed, I started to drink less and less — to the point I wondered why I was drinking at all. So I quit.

I made it through college football season. (As an SEC fan, that’s really saying something.) I made it through the holidays. (As a Savannah resident, that’s also really saying something.) I have made it with ice melting in my Coca-Cola or La Croix. I have made it as a designated driver. I have made it as a fully sober conversationalist.

I have made it. I haven’t really missed it.

And now: I really want a drink. I really want a glass from that fine bottle of bourbon high on the shelf over the refrigerator.

I haven’t. And I won’t. What’s left of my colon is safe.

This all hit so hard and so suddenly that I have a difficult time remembering even a few weeks ago when I could do things like hug my friends. I have found it hard to paint, and I have mustered only a first draft of an essential component of this pandemic:

Since it is unfinished, and perhaps will never be finished, I refer to it as “1-Ply.”

“1-Ply” was a half-hearted attempt during a binge watching of “Tiger King” with my daughter — in particular, the episode about Carole’s husband who either (take your pick) disappeared or was murdered and fed to tigers. I was stuck inside, sure, but at least I had that necessary realization that things could be worse. I have not been fed to tigers. I have not been saddled with an unfortunate mullet and a droopy eyebrow piercing. I have not resorted to writing country songs about tigers, a niche genre if ever there were one.

I have knit obsessively, to the point where my arthritic hands have forced me to expand on my two crochet lessons. This is an ever-growing market bag that will be fully washable, another practical sign of the times:

And in perhaps the most terrifying sign to my family, I have started to bake. (I do not cook, mostly due to an edict from Chris many years ago that we would all be a lot happier if he cooked.) But there were blackened bananas, and we miraculously had the ingredients, and in an hour, there was banana bread:

(I have noticed that Chris purchased six bananas at the store on Saturday, and as of Thursday, none of them have been touched. That’s enough for two loaves of banana bread this weekend. I’m no dummy.)

I am fortunate. I have a yard. I have my hobbies. I have a job. I have plenty of work to do. I have a dog. And I have my health.

But still: I kind of feel like I’m falling apart.

Hence, I really want a drink.

I have been calling my mother daily. Her health and mobility make her #1 past-time riding around in a motorized cart in big box stores and then getting lunch. Her social circle consists of a few neighbors and about a million store clerks, fast food workers, and waitresses. I have walked beside her as she drives, and it is true: She knows everyone’s story, the names of their children, and the latest crisis brewing in their extended families. It has taken a bit of evangelizing by my siblings and me to impress upon her the seriousness of what is going on, and while I like to think she is being largely compliant, there are chinks in the armor. She tells me stories of her days at home, but then things magically appear, like the off-hand reference to new plastic storage boxes in yesterday’s talk.

I have given up scolding her, and I just listen. She has become the cheese on my anxiety sandwich.

But all is not lost. My daughter is at home, and she wants to talk to me, usually as I’m trying to go to bed. We have been working on a puzzle — an incredibly savvy purchase at Target a few weeks ago — and when I try to quit, she uses her powers of persuasion to get me to puzzle just a little more. (“Power of persuasion” is a pretty low bar when dealing with one’s mother.) I have been staying up too late yet still getting up early, and yesterday I did something I never do: I took a nap. At one moment, the clock said 3:00, and at the next, it blinked 6:08.

It is easy to forget about the power of sleep. But there it was.

This morning Emmet and I set out on our walk to the now-empty office. I am my mother’s child, so I smiled and waved at passers-by, the garbage collectors, the man mowing the grass in the park. They reciprocated, which doesn’t always happen. As we reached the point in the park where we hang a left to walk the last three blocks to the office, something caught my eye.

I thought at first that it was a bat, and then a baby bird dipped in pollen, and finally I realized it for what it was: a sign of life. An attempt at a connection. A real Boo Radley moment — albeit one without claiming the prize — in the middle of Forsyth Park.

When we got to the office, I looked out my window. I saw this:

In the middle of a stay-at-home order, the city is issuing parking tickets. It was a street sweeper night for that side of the street, and appearances must be maintained. For a moment, everything felt as it used to: A world patrolled by ruthless meter readers. My old boss, the Judge, always told me that if meter readers ran the town, we would have the nation’s most efficient city government.

So with that, I started to write. Because just in case you’re a little anxious, a little worried, I wanted you to know that I am, too.

ALC