STAND BY THE FIRE March 20-22
Updated: Mar 29, 2020
The malls are now closed. Like totally closed. Like not some of the stores are open and others are not but the mall is closed. I don't know why this seems like the end of the world to me, and many others. Malls are town squares, where people gather, spend money or don't, but it has always been for me a place to get out of the house, walk around, get some air, so to speak. They are closed. I'm really not sure why this seems so cataclysmic but it does. I can freely admit to being terrified. Even though not a lot of people have been diagnosed, the ones that have seem to be getting sicker, faster, and more serious. Every day in Boston, where my oldest is holed up in her house, is getting even worse, people are dying by the scores. Where we are in Michigan you can feel a bad moon rising. Each day seems to bring with it a new level of stress, a new level of reality that is going to be truly shitty, that people are going to get sick and die, and I and my friends are going to either know them or be among them.
Do we stay home? I have an office to go to and work to do although that is sort of becoming treading water, and some of ti is I guess important but yeah slowing a lot. Courts have long since been closed, most discretionary work is cancelled, the Governor has as of Tuesday put out a shelter in place order. Most of us don't know what the hell this means, but it meant for me three trips to the grocery store in 12 hours. Stores are not even short of food, I just feel this great unease of what is coming and a need to make sure we are taken care of. I find myself calling friends to ask what they need, I have 14 rolls of toilet paper in my car. I am trying to decide what businesses to give money to? Chains, local stores, which grocery store. I am eating carry out, we got Red Lobster carry out. I love America.
I have stopped watching the news. Except for some local news, a quick look at the paper, I just cannot take it anymore. Just the constant barrage of news, the constant barrage of opinions that seem to be pulled out of the air with no basis in reality, not that it is all bad, it just seems like no one really knows what is going to happen, but it it going to happen, and most of all how bad this is really going to get........because we know it will.
