I Will Hold My Breath For Two Weeks.
I feel like my world is falling apart.
To be fair, everyone’s world has fallen apart – at least a little. But I just got some great news that is, for me, awful news.
In fact, I got awful/great news twice.
I found out that many of my senior softball friends are planning to play softball this fall. They are gearing up for a short, but intense, season. Our teams are comprised mostly of men aged 60 and up. Some of these guys are 80+.
Playing sports, to me, is a glorious team effort, where we high-five each other and yell in each other’s faces with both anguish and glee. It is a jumping-up-and-down, try-not-to-run-over-anyone-at-the-plate kind of experience.
We can’t play that kind of game right now. We can’t even safely stand near one another, for fear of killing our friends.
My former softball coach died of coronavirus. Next spring, I expect to read a roster of deaths the same length as a full softball team. And some of those deaths will be from playing fall ball.
I also recently learned that my beloved extended family – the cousins and aunts and uncles who form my most solid base of “family,” – are planning to hold an event that will put everyone I love together in one place. Everyone is older than me (55), and three of them are over the age of 90.
This frightens me. But the worst part is that they will be inviting hundreds of complete strangers into the fray. They are having a yard sale. People will come – with and without masks – and stand two feet away from them, and they will talk and spew and exchange money and probably shake hands. They will break bread together in the most literal way, and they will do it for two solid days with only a short break to rest in between.
I’ve been to this yard sale annually for ten years, but I will not be a part of this endeavor.
Instead, when it is all over, 250 miles away, I will hold my breath for two weeks. I’ll wait and see if they all escape without coronavirus. I’ll wait to see if everyone lives.
In my hometown, an immensely populated area, our county has recently declined to 105 cases per day. Where my yard-sale family lives, the number of cases has recently risen to 100 new cases per day. And while my family canceled the same yard sale in May – when there were only 14 new cases per day – they are forging ahead with the same event just as their area experiences a 700% increase in COVID cases.
I’m so scared – for them, and to live without them. I’ve been hopeful that this virus would eliminate only those people I didn’t know. (I am a selfish sort.) But already, that’s not been the case.
While my two mature, responsible teenagers stay home from school and talk to their friends only on Instagram and Facetime, my teammates and family have decided they’re tired of waiting for this pandemic to pass.
They’ve decided it’s time, right now, to risk their lives.
The way I see it, we have to work together. We have to hang in there for a few more months, and be responsible, and get this under control before we go back to doing fun things.
But I can’t make decisions for everybody.