Ten.Nine Hundred & Eighty-Nine
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As I write the title for today’s page I realize that I will reach 1,000 ten-ish things posts while under the shelter-in-place order and that seem significant.
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Today feels different.
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I decide that I need to get to the store for toilet paper. I can’t risk it. Not enough if the Amazon delivery is pushed back again.
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The parking lot here is full but the store is so big surely they have some left. So many people inside. Long lines already. It’s just barely after 7. The man stocking the shelves says everyone just took everything out of the boxes. People keep coming too close to me. I leave.
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I drive to the Safeway. I can see that the line wraps all the way back to the produce section. I go to the main entrance. So many people. I try to walk back to where the toilet paper would be but then two bodies sidle up beside me. Too many people. I run back out to my car.
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Target doesn’t open for another 15 minutes. I am number fifty-something in line. There’s no point in going anywhere else. People do not understand what 6 feet is. Space please. I think about today’s alternatives if I can’t get the toilet paper. I can figure it out. I leave with toilet paper and bleach.
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I tell my husband that it wasn’t the anxiety about not getting toilet paper. What made me anxious was the amount of people. All I could think, every place I went, was “We are all going to be sick.”
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I schedule the day’s posts for the winery and then decide to clean. I clean the bathrooms, wipe down all the doors. I vacuum. I light the sage and walk to every corner of the home. Usually I have a short prayer I say, but today all that’s in my mind is the chorus of this song. So I sing that instead.
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"Please just go easy on me baby, go easy on me baby…” - Matt Meason, “Go Easy”
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If it all ended tomorrow, would I be happy with how I showed up in the world today?
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I read him some lines from the book. They send a chill down my bone. He says it’s just coincidence, a common phrase. I think of it as prophecy.
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What really matters?