Logic

“What do you mean, alone?” I can tell he is trying to be hesitant, kind, not wanting to hurt my feelings. I appreciate this consideration enormously. Contemplating my coffee, I sit at the kitchen table with my husband of so many meaningful years and our whip sharp college-aged daughter, recently retrieved from the clutches of the virus as her dorms closed in New Orleans. I have asked them both to read my last entry.

The daughter, wise in the ways of literature and her mother, seems to understand the comment that I am alone. “I get what you’re saying, Mom, it’s a feeling.”

Her dad, the literal, the logical, the practical (such a refreshing balance to my imagined, emotional and what might be possible) is confused. “I mean, sure we have to stay away from other people, but…” I know he means that we have each other and we do. I see his logic.

A couple of days later, I sit out front in a lawn chair. I’m waiting. Magnanimus, I announced to my husband earlier that day that I had found online and ordered Prosecco to be delivered today! Prosecco, the carbonized white wine from Italy is my Philadelphia born, masculine husband’s nectar of the gods. We are running dangerously low. And so, I wait, for the deliveryman. I think it probably took him an hour to make the drive. He arrived, wide-eyed and twitchy, noting the beauty in the backdrop of the Four Peaks Mountains and being careful to maintain the requisite six feet of distance. I produce my ID, sign his form (making a careful note not to touch my face until I can wash my hands) and take a minute to really look at him.

“Are you staying healthy?” I ask? He replies in an anxiety ridden, “It’s hard, you know. I’m trying to run a business.”

As he drives away, I sink into myself. Without his sacrifice, I couldn’t quarantine like I am. (Unless my husband gives up prosecco, ha!) How is it that our separation is only guaranteed by our reliance on one another? Reliance that the system works, that people do what they say, that for a fee, a person I never met will drive an hour out of their way to bring even unnecessary goods. It takes me a few days to sort out my emotional response.

I think it lives somewhere between gratitude and loss.