It's not normal

 From up here, way up in the trees, sitting in the evening on the front porch can almost make me feel like things are normal.  People are out riding their bikes around coming-home-from-work time.  I can hear kids talking and questioning and parents telling them to turn right or go straight at the corner.  I can hear the lone dog bark as it's let out into the yard, a lawn mower somewhere already working even though the grass is barely green let alone long enough to mow.

There is the occasional truck.  Not like normal traffic.  There is a business at the other end of the cemetery that's at the bottom of our driveway.  The semi trucks go to and from the business from early in the morning till evening. Not constantly all day, but enough.  After awhile it's like a ticking clock, you just don't hear it anymore. Except when it isn't there.  Then  you notice.  It's not normal.

It's quiet, even for this small city. On a normal day from 4 till 6:30 p.m. you can't turn left onto our main street because of the traffic.  But you can now.  You can walk across this main highway, stop, look around and still make it across just fine and that's not normal.

Restaurants are closed or doing take out only business.  And from the looks of it, there's not much of that.  Businesses are closed if they don't sell food and precious few of them do.  Gas stations are open but there's nowhere to go so a full tank can last a really long time.  More and more people are wearing masks.  Not everyone yet, but many.  We are. Going through McDonald's drive thru service I give my money to a gloved hand and at the goods window my diet coke is presented in a cardboard carrier container from which I take my drink without touching the cardboard. All hands are gloved, faces masked.

All sports are cancelled, events, dance recitals, school, churches, libraries, birthdays, anywhere people can congregate or find themselves in a party of more than two. Easter will not be spent with family but alone.  Hospitals and nursing homes and care facilities are begging for supplies and praying for the people who they have to admit. Only essential services are open.  Grocery stores, gas stations, pharmacies. Liquor stores are open but churches are closed.  The newly opened marijuana store is open but schools are closed. 

We took a walk to our daughter's house today to stand in the yard and say hi.  We talked to a neighbor out mowing his lawn.  He in his yard, we in the middle of the street.  It was safe. There were no cars. We could talk.

I've been making masks.  Elastic has gone the way of toilet paper.  Everyone wants it and no one has any to sell.  So I make ties for my masks.  They are mismatched funky and fun.  You might as well have something funky and fun tied to your face if you have to wear something tied to your face.

In spite of everything, we are lucky and we know it.  No one we know has the virus,  we have food in the freezer, we are retired so don't have to worry about jobs, our children are employed, our grands are tired of this but healthy.  We have friends who are worried about their elders, worried about spouses in the hospital and they can't be there with them. We are worried for them, too, but are in the position of not being able to do a darned thing about it nor support them with anything but empty talk.

So.  While Rome burns and Nero plays his fiddle, we cope.