essential services.
The last few days have been an interesting sorting exercise. What are essential contacts, and what are non-essentials?
Grocery store, obviously essential, even if the only peanut butter they have left is chunky.
Gardening store, you might think non-essential, except that the two hours I spent working in the yard yesterday were the only thing that kept me from crying all afternoon.
Playgrounds I would have called essential, have you met my kid? He’s a giant ball of energy. Except the risk factor suddenly feels too high, so no playgrounds.
Haircuts. Probably not, although ugh, we needed these haircuts two weeks ago and kept putting them off. Now it’s too late.
Car repair. Look, it needs to be inspected this month, and when I had it in for servicing last month the guy said it would need new brakes soon. Brakes are a big deal! I brought it in and he’s doing the brakes this morning.
Ice cream. I mean, obviously not, except. Except that I worry about my local businesses so much. The local economic ecosystem feels very fragile some days. The ice cream place is new, and we love it so much. It’s just down the block, it’s right near the park, it’s friendly and adorable and affordable. New businesses hang on by their fingernails. When this is all over, will the ice cream place still be there? Will the Korean barbecue place on the corner, by far my favorite of all the local restaurants, still be there? What about the diner — not the best diner, but good enough, much better since they changed owners a couple of years ago. Our regular waitress works extra shifts, she sent her kid to a boarding school upstate where he could get better learning support and therapy, I think she needs the money. When she saw Declan reading a Big Nate book last summer, she brought us a huge shopping bag full of her son’s old Big Nate books, practically a whole library of middle-school miscreants to teach my kid new insults, but so much joy. Will the diner make it through this? Will my best-beloved coffee shop?
The dentist? I have terrible teeth and I’m a month overdue for my cleaning. They sanitize everything at the dentist, I think I’ll keep that appointment, unless they cancel.
The backyard, obviously that’s fine. Declan adores the four-year-old who lives next door and they play catch and blow bubbles over the fence between yards. Is that too much? Are we doing a good enough job of being the dots that don’t move?
Running. Yes, yes, and yes, essential, and safe enough—mostly empty sidewalks and I’m by myself anyway. I’m not a good runner under good conditions, and I haven’t had a good run in the last week or two. I can’t get out of my head. Even my teeny-tiny slow-two-miles-with-a-walk-break runs usually clear the cobwebs but yesterday it just made me cry. Maybe the cobwebs are what’s holding me together right now.
The park, but not the playground. Essential. It’s another one of those resonances between dogs and young children, they both need to be walked sometimes. Two laps around the park today and then I asked Declan if he was ready to go home and he said, how about we go visit Robin? And he pointed at her house, right near the park. We can’t, I said, we’re not visiting people. But what about Lucian and Jeremy? Not even them. We can do more phone calls, like you did with Kiera last night, like we’re setting up with some other friends this week. He was quiet for a long time.
It’s going to be a long time.