Appreciating the Little Things During Coronavirus Lockdown
Thursday evening I was sent home from the office with an official missive from HR directing all of us not to return onsite for the time being due to the general safety protocols being put into place across the metroplex for containing the outbreak of the coronavirus. Just this morning the governor acknowledged that certain reports he’s received indicate that there may already be as many as 300,000 infected in Texas, a wild number considering the much smaller official counts. It started to sink in during the drive home that this meant not just a return to working out of the office, as I’d been accustomed to doing at my little cluster of preferred hangouts, but a real sequester of sorts at home, as a number of those places would now likely be unavailable or frankly just unwise to visit under the circumstances. For how long? I guess that remains to be seen. I like everyone else am watching and waiting to see how all this plays out.
Yesterday while I worked Kassi braved the mobs in town to try to procure the things we’d need for a prolonged sit-in at home. She was gone hours and sent back many pictures of empty store shelves at nearly every place she went. We’ve heard this experience described as surreal, and it’s certainly not like anything I’ve ever experienced. Together we tried to impress upon the kids the seriousness of the general situation without panicking them, so that they’d understand why we’re limiting outside contact and activities. They seem to be pretty understanding about the whole affair, which I’m grateful for.
In the end, I suppose if we get it, we get it. We’ll deal with it. Given the high communicability of the disease, it might actually be more probably than not, especially if we’ve already been exposed to a population of carriers who either aren’t exhibiting symptoms, or who haven’t isolated themselves in time.
In the meantime slowing down somewhat and staying home can be a very good thing. I have a comfortable little workspace we’ve built in the bedroom, and I’ll have more time to work on personal projects, this site included. Thursday evening at dusk as I was thinking about all this, and about squeezing in some time for mowing on the weekend, I was struck by the light and the grass in the back yard and so decided to get out my camera to play around with the reversing ring I bought for my Sony Zeiss lens for doing macro photography on the cheap. It wasn’t until I was pouring through the photos on my computer later that I was surprised anew at just how complex and self-contained is the little world at our feet, come alive as it only does at this time of year.
Happy spring, and stay well.
