up & east - a pandemic intervenes

It was a Saturday at 6am.  My roommate put on his flip flops and lent me his tire gauge before I was on my way. I grabbed my coffee and looked at my packed in my car. The sun was bright, the air was cool, and I realized, then, that this was part of the world that would go on without me, too. 

Coming back north and east, clouds covered the blue sky. I listened to country star Ricky Skaggs on the radio and NPR’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, which repeated instructions on how to wash your hands three times an hour.
As the road went on, El Paso sand turned to wavy North Texan pasture, then to red Oklahoma dirt, then to the bristly grass of the Midwest: Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana.

My return to Ohio doesn’t call for anything romantic on my part, but also nothing cynical.
It’s the same grocery store, bank, right turns, left turns, and stop signs.
It’s the couple days when I have new eyes for the things in my town that didn’t change, and find novelty in my old bedroom.

Along the way, I read the billboards and bumper stickers around me. I drove through suburban, urban, rural, and town. Rested in motels and stopped at a ravaged Walmart. 

Those towns, today, are other people’s grocery stores, banks, right turns, left turns, and stop signs. Some people, anywhere, have only just turned 10 today. 

And I’m happy for us all, living in today.

Happy for me, driving all this way.

April 1st, 2020