In the eye of a viral storm

These days, we spend our time on Amazon, the best way to avoid the dreaded Costco (Collection of Stupefied, Terrified Coronavirus Oafs).

In San Mateo, the Starbucks are closed, along with the bars, restaurants and everything else, so we try to recreate the cushiony variety of modern life in a 778-square-foot condominium, lining Jeff Bezos’ pockets, making do.

The Mr. Coffee brewer comes tomorrow, along with some plastic gloves for my wife. My bean grinder was delivered yesterday, along with a nonfiction book called Yellow Bird, about a woman who sets out to solve a murder on a Native American reservation.

Maybe a good murder mystery will take my mind off all this viral-dealt death.

For just about everybody else on the planet, the world is suddenly spinning more slowly. It’s a kindergarten-like time out, a pause for reflection, imposed by humanity’s stern minder. 

The athletes and their games have vanished, the rat race is now a fast walk, plans are on hold, large gatherings curtailed, as the financial markets teeter, rally and then fall again.

A friend bought a rifle and shotgun because he felt he had to so something.

If this is the end of the world as we know it, then I feel fine.

Because as most people go reluctantly into this period of forced isolation, this new dystopian vision of social-distancing, I’m experiencing something else.

A second honeymoon.

Normally, my wife and I live in two states, pursuing separate careers. To keep the home hearth lit, I fly to San Francisco from Las Vegas every other weekend, rain or shine, for a few days of cozy togetherness.

There’s a romance to our time together. I open doors, say nice things, pretend I’m on a date, forget to lift the toilet seat, consume wine and coffee and toast in bed, drop crumbs, walk too heavily, get on her nerves.

And then I go home. 

When I’m not with her, I call, several times a day, just to reinforce our intimacy-from-afar.

It has been this way for a decade now.

"How do you do it?" people ask.

"Are you two all right?"

Some of her female friends ask my wife, "How do I find a husband like that?"

Like me, my wife is incredibly independent.

We make do.

Late last week, however, as the virus spread and the pandemic settled in for the long haul, I postponed my freelance work, packed up my Benzo and made the ten-hour drive to San Mateo.

My wife’s company has offered a work-from-home option and so, here we are, together at last, for more than just a few fast-depleted days.

They say couples eventually become not two separate people but one-and-a-half. They overlap. They can fit into tighter physical and psychological spaces more easily.

And that is certainly the case for us.

Most often, we sit a few feet away from one another, both lost in a book or online article or video, not speaking, but content, knowing the other is there.

I don’t know how long I will be here, but I am prepared to stay for weeks, even months.

I could stay forever.

We eat in, my wife experimenting with new recipes. But we do venture out. 

On walks. To pick up this or that.

Inside a CVS pharmacy the other day, where I bought some coffee filters and creamer, a man asked the checkout clerk if they had milk.

“Next door in the Safeway,” she advised.

“I’m not going in there,” he said.

She wore gloves to check me out, and said her husband wanted her to quit.

That’s because he loves you, I said.

Both my wife and I know we have a lot to be thankful for. We are not sick. We are not salaried workers with demands to show up at a job site or sacrifice our pay.

We don’t have to emerge from our cocoon, unless we choose.

My partner is more nervous about these viral transmissions than I am, but her caution is growing on me.

The other night, we made one last-minute Costco dash and she crafted a homemade mask — a folded paper towel with staples and rubber bands for the ears.

I donned it in the parking lot.

“Remember,” I said. “I’m only doing this because I love you.”

Only a handful of the panicked crowd inside wore masks. At least that word had gotten out. Perhaps a solution for toilet paper hoarding will be next.

At home, we wash our hands often, always counting to 40. We use different utensils. In a new nightly ritual, she watches as I gargle with saltwater to kill any contagion that might have snuck in there. We sip hot water throughout the day.

When I go to kiss her forehead or hold her hand, she playfully withdraws.

“Social distancing,” she says.

I don’t mind, actually, because remain close, reunited in mind and spirit, and for now that is enough for me.

Of course, we both hold our tongues. When I made a salad, she said she didn't like how I touched all the food. I offered to wear gloves. She claimed the French cheese as her own, so hands off for moi.

We persevere.

How do I describe being around her after these years of distance? I feel like some 18th Century explorer returning home after years at sea. Or a parent welcoming home a child he believed left the nest too soon.

Just to behold someone you love each day is a reward in itself.

And the days pass.

On walks, I’ve watched how the leaves are turning green, how spring is in the air, how ducks sink their heads into their downy backs in the rain.

Nature moves on without us.

I have used all this free time to read.

And write.

I’m in the middle of a biography of Mark Twain and wonder what his drawling boyish view-on-life would make of all this.

I watched Hotel Coolgardie, a documentary about two Finnish girls who go to work as barmaids in the middle of the Australian Outback, and Sea Gypsies: the Far Side of the World, about some young adventurers who sail to Antarctica.

Sometimes, in times like now, travel has to remain an armchair state of mind.

But I’m still learning as a student of life. I know now that a growler is a broken-off ice berg. And the witticisms of writers and thinkers past remain relevant.

Nuggets from my reading and film-watching:

“Now and then we had a large hope that if we were good God would allow us to be pirates.” — Mark Twain. 

“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.” — Werner Herzog. 

“Below 50 Degrees south there is no law. Below 60 degrees south there is no God.” —  Sailors proverb.  

“We had seen God in His splendors, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man.” Sir Ernest Shackleton.

With a heavy heart, I also keep an eye on the news, and was struck by a phrase in the New York Times: “The ultimate metric of pandemics and plagues are the bodies they leave behind.”

And this image from a village in northern Italy, where the corpses are so numerous there are long lines for cremations: “In the nearby village of Zogno, the local priest has decided to ring the death knell just once a day, to keep from ringing it all day long.”

And so we remain here at home, my wife and I, in our cocoon, watching out for one another, and ourselves, as together we gaze out at this new dangerous world at large.

Seeing perhaps the naked soul of man.

But together.