COVID 19: What Startles Me

 You know what makes me sit up and take notice?

The highway that runs past our apartment. It's a four-lane highway. Busy. Traffic night and day.

Years ago, it was the main channel leading to the only bridge across the Mississippi at Memphis. Heavily trafficked by all trucks and cars traveling cross-country through the mid-South.  Now, there are other, better bridges that cross the Mississippi between Tennessee and Arkansas. This highway below our apartment is no longer the conduit across the Mississippi, but it's still a fast way to move from downtown Memphis to the airport and diagonally through the city to the southeast.

Memphis on the Mississippi

I pretend that the whooshing back-and-forth from the highway below our balcony is the sound of the ocean. It's crashing and receding, crashing and receding. Predictable and constant.

When we moved into this apartment, my husband was particularly concerned about traffic noise. Said that it would bug him, a lot. He'd lived near a high traffic highway years ago, and it nearly drove him out of his mind. I, on the other hand, have never had that experience and was willing to deal with the traffic noise to get the best apartment we'd seen. It's bright and we have two balconies, a large one facing south (the busy highway with the airport in the distance) and a smaller one facing west, downtown and the Mississippi.

I figured we'd get used to the noise. We'd block it out...as insignificant white noise. I figured, we're on the fourth floor so it's not right outside our windows. When we're playing music, we can hardly hear it.

Today, there are sometimes gaps between the cars passing below. Sometimes a minute separates them. Maybe that doesn't sound like much, but it is distinctly different. Recently, I awoke in the night because something was wrong. What was it?

Graffiti by the 4-lane highway near us

I didn't hear any traffic! I held my breath and waited and waited to hear a car. Finally! And then I had to remain awake to be sure that the traffic would continue. The world is still turning. People are still going to work at the hospitals, police departments, groceries, pharmacies and Memphis Light, Gas and Water. The basic necessities to run a city are still operating.

Our apartment building's parking lot remains nearly full all during the work week. A few of our building's occupants are policemen and medical workers. The rest of us are apparently nonessential, or working from home, or are retired. That group would include my husband and me and one little white-haired lady.

I actually notice a little blip of optimism that gives me a start when I hear an obnoxiously loud vehicle drive by. It's gotta either be somebody that has been unemployed (and therefore should stay home) but is out doing ordinary things. How wonderful! Or is it?

OR it's a newly employed Amazon worker (the only company that's hiring) that is so busy he or she hasn't yet had the time or paycheck to fix the muffler. Probably nobody is fixing mufflers these days, anyway. Unless it's an emergency.

A muffler emergency? Hardly.

Where are these chickens' eggs?

There are a lot of things that won't happen unless they're an emergency now. Surgeries, dental work, optical exams. If hair braiding/extensions and fingernail artistry do not qualify as emergency services in Memphis, I predict that a lot of people will begin to look a little unkempt in a couple of weeks. I am still cutting Carl's hair and will revert to cutting my own hair again.

If we can't find a source for toilet paper in the next week or so, we will become desperate people.

I would love it if someone could explain to me why people are hoarding toilet paper. And eggs. I haven't heard any scientists say that diarrhea is a symptom of Covid 19. Nor have I heard anyone suggest that all of our chickens are going to die. In fact, aren't we counting on hundreds of thousands of eggs for scientists to make the vaccine for Covid 19? Is that the answer? Hordes of scientists are swooping into the grocery stores at dawn and buying up all the eggs? Highly unlikely, but then a couple of weeks ago, I would have thought a world-wide pandemic unlikely at this particular time, too.

I think about our friends wherever they are in the world. How many of us will become ill with Covid 19 in the next year? How many deaths of people that are important to me?

We realize now that it was fortuitous that we moved away from living on the boat when we did. If we had not, we would be somewhere in the Caribbean now, and unlikely to be able to leave.

Running for Grenada?

We have cruising friends that are stuck wherever they were when the pandemic struck. Antigua, Grenada, Portugal. Cruisers we know that were running hard to make it to Grenada before they closed their borders. No place else to go for a couple thousand miles.

I don't know anyone that is stuck in Italy. I am frightened for all those who are. Sailors are stuck because no other country will admit them now. Borders closed everywhere.

How many people will be cursing themselves for touching a door handle when they went to get groceries. For touching their face afterward. Or for standing too closely to the lady waiting in line for medication at the pharmacy? I think of all the times I have been annoyed at how exceedingly polite Minnesotans are when waiting in lines. Standing so far apart, I couldn't tell if they were in the queue at all. Now, I'm thinking...how smart those Minnesotans have always been. They've been practicing social distancing for generations.

Will I wonder...did a cough come from the homeless man who came up behind me when I was filling my gas tank? I didn't notice him until it was too late. He was asking for a few bucks for the shelter? Damn him. Will I become heartless? Frightened of my own family and friends? 

More than usual, I mean.