A Man Who Fears No Plague
Atlanta, GA
March 8, 2020
I learned a couple days ago that I have been quarantined. Or perhaps Columbus has been quarantined. Whichever side of the door is locked, I was told not travel there this week.
Apparently a bug flapped its wings across the Pacific and over the Himalayas, causing tornadoes in hospitals, airports, and cruise ships around the world.
We don’t know if it will begin to disappear like a six pack or continue to spread like ice nine. But planes, conference rooms, and hotel bars are natural habitats (for it and for me), so my company has asked employees not to frequent those places.
That’s fine. Rather than fly to Ohio to attend meetings, I’ll drive to a golf courses and watch my son.
Columbus is not the only name shared by cities in Ohio and Georgia. Yesterday, David played his first high school tournament in Canton, just north of Atlanta.
It was wonderful. The day started cold, became cool, and ended warm. The air was crisp, clear, and dry. Unlike the last several weeks, it was sun-drenched rather than just drenched.
I was fortunate to remember sunglasses, but negligent in forgetting a hat. In the bright sun my hair lightened, and my face reddened. But the periphery of my eyes were shielded, and remained pale. This morning I resemble Rocky Raccoon. Or Donald Trump.
The day also reminded us that a world tiny enough to globalize a virus is small enough to haphazardly pair two golfers sharing the same aunt.
Molly’s nephew Andy is a junior on the Decatur High School team. He nodded toward me when I saw him on the first tee, knowing as I did that we’d met before. Quickly recalling the connection, we went out on a limb, rolled the dice, tempted fate, ventured onto thin ice, played with fire, lived on the edge…and shook hands.
My first instinct is to think the government and media are blowing this contagion out of proportion…another example of fabricated hysteria to invite new laws and tools to monitor and control us.
But because that is their method does not mean these precautions are madness. Still, I can’t help but worry more about the official and popular reaction to this malady than I do about the medical effect of the virus.
Regardless, we have replenished our toilet paper, renewed the Netflix subscription, stockpiled books, planted seeds, loaded up the wine cellar, bought more gold, and unlocked the gun closet. We are set for a long hibernation and a comfortable seclusion.
But our sterile safe space has its own problems. Late Thursday, after weeks of almost incessant rain, we noticed that a corner of the basement, beneath our new carpeting, was wet.
This also happened a few years ago when the remnants of a hurricane pushed thru north Georgia. We thought we had sealed the leak, but water…like the bohemian son of a Boston Brahmin…must find or carve its own path. And so it did.
It crawled beneath the wall and under the baseboard, finding refuge in our house. The ground that wall resists is supported on another side by a stone retaining structure. It is solid…sturdy and stately…but lacks a drainage outlet to relieve water pressure.
After sledgehammering three feet of the wall and digging seven feet into the earth, we found at the end of a forlorn French drain…like a prisoner avoiding a searchlight…a reservoir of water standing flush against the base of the house.
We extended the drain, added supplementary pipes, and replaced the retaining wall. Inside, the carpet is overturned, windows are open, and fans continue to blow. The air and ground should soon dry, with moisture and mold at bay.
Meanwhile, upstairs, I confront a touch of writer’s block. Like Joe Biden, I struggle for words. But like George Bush, I know this isn’t rocket surgery. I’ve meditated, poured another cup of coffee, walked the dog an extra block, and taken a second shower. Still…nothing.
I’m cautious about bringing up the subject I want to raise. I know that insults, even if unintentional, are like government entitlements…easy to dish out, but hard to take back.
But I simply can’t conjure an elegant transition to my next topic, particularly in a missive devoted to pestilence, floods, and vermin. So I’ll just say it.
Today is my brother’s birthday.
Brett was with us the first time our basement flooded. And he is not one to fear something so meager as a plague. In fact, he doesn’t fear much of anything. This is a man who, as a small boy, strapped a towel to his back as if it were a cape, and jumped head-first off his mother’s Ford Pinto as if he were a superhero.
The pavement assured him he wasn’t.
Brett once waterskied barefoot across an oyster bed. As my mother can attest, that was quite a feat, especially since she had to foot the bill (I know, I know: Get thee to a Punnery!).
He has dared to play golf outside Florida, enduring undulating courses despite the inherent “unfairness” of their hills.
As a ten year-old he was stupid enough to slice his knee on a clay flowerpot in his grandparents’ backyard. Oh wait…that was his brother. As Gilda Radner used to say, “never-mind….”
Brett pilots small planes, and once jumped out of one (tho’ not at the same time). He wisely refrained from telling our grandmother about his skydiving till he showed her the video. I vividly recall her bewildered reaction, mouth grimaced and brow furrowed, as if he had made spaghetti sauce from scratch.
“Dahlin’….you did whaaaat?”
He is now engaged in his most daring undertaking…raising two teenage daughters, with a third more than halfway to that daunting phase. Anyone who meets these girls knows that, at this endeavor, he has been eminently successful.
Brett’s personality makes him the life of any party, the straw stirring every drink. He is (figuratively, of course) what Theodore Roosevelt aspired to be…the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral. The lights glow a bit brighter, champagne bubbles rise a little faster, and laughter lasts a lot longer when Brett is in the room.
I wish we could be in the same room today, and regret we aren’t more often. Perhaps next year will provide an opportunity. We won’t reveal Brett’s age, but next year it, like that of many receiving this note, will start with a different number.
Such a decennial pandemic suggests another family gathering. If necessary we can be quarantined. With plenty of elixir.
These days, you can’t be too careful.
JD
