Without zombies

Always, when my family joked about the Zombie Apocalypse, we would make plans of where we were all going to meet. That, I thought, would be the advantage of having four grown kids who all live within fifteen miles of me: in any kind of disaster we’d all be together.

Our houses have nicknames. My husband and I live at HQ, the home that all the kids still regard as headquarters. Beautiful Smart Wonderful Daughter and her partner live less than three miles away, in the Palace. It doesn’t look like a palace, it looks like a house in the woods. It’s the home where her partner was born (and I mean that literally), the home where he grew up. My son Boy-in-Black, his wife, and their six-month-old baby will soon be moving to the Kitchen, a house they are in the midst of renovating. It’s a modern house with lots of glass that would not offer much protection against zombies. My middle son Shaggy Hair and his wife live at the Farm, which might be ideal in a post-apocalyptic world since they raised chickens and have room for a huge garden. My youngest son With-a-Why and his partner live in the Cottage, walking distance from my home, which gives us a place to run when the zombies infiltrate HQ.

Any post-apocalyptic scenario has always involved lengthy discussions about where we’d gather and who would bring what. Never did we imagine this, each little family staying in their own house, communicating only via smart phone or computer, sending videos to each other as if we lived thousands of miles away.

Anxiety is high, of course. I live in the state that so far has been hit the hardest: more than 102,000 cases of coronavirus as of this morning, more than 300 in my small county alone. Those numbers will be higher tomorrow. The hospitals are overwhelmed already, which means that no visitors are allowed. I worry about my parents, who are 86 and 89, and live about six miles away, in the house that my father built. Living on their own lowers their risk considerably, but they are used to lots of contact with family members. We can deliver groceries to them, and send emails, and talk over the phone, and wave at them through their picture window, but none of that is the same as the family gatherings that we are all used to, when they get to hold babies on their lap and listen to the ridiculous conversations their grandchildren have.

It’s been three weeks since I’ve left my house, and more than a month since the last family gathering. I've already cancelled Easter dinner. My husband is an essential worker, so he’s now working crazy long days, seven days each week, with a skeleton crew. I’m alone most of the time, with my computer and my smart phone connecting me to the rest of my family and the rest of the world.

One thing that’s saved my sanity over the last few weeks has been a long visit from my grandpuppy Appa. I’ve always been a cat person rather than a dog person, but I’ve come to value his companionship. Like me, he loves long walks in the woods behind my house, and he wants to go outside no matter what the weather. So rain or shine, I’ve been tramping through the woods, noticing the brilliant mosses, and looking for signs of spring, which surely must come.