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On the road again:
Greetings from Green Valley, Arizona.
Al Kaline, the All-Star right fielder for the Detroit Tigers major league baseball team, died yesterday. Kaline was a great hitter, a terrific defensive player, a humble gentleman, and a hero to me and many other boys and girls during our youth. I’ll post a tribute to him on a later date.
Because, today, I want to move right into …
Today's Story
I have an image from a bad dream.
I’m being chased by a vicious dog with a collar of large, gleaming silver studs.
I can’t see the dog’s entire body, but its head is huge and round, its teeth are bare and razor sharp, its mouth and lips drool gobs of gross saliva.
This dog is almost close enough to grasp my heels as I attempt to run away from it.
Then the image changes.
Now, it’s a net that’s closing in from the rear and the sides. It might be closing in from the front too, but I can’t see that far ahead, and so I race on, forward, toward what I cannot see.
The grizzly beast, of course, is COVID-19. Not that I have it; I’m confident that I don’t. But I’m aware of its presence in places I’ve been in my recent past.
Florida in January: Cyndy and I were dancing with hundreds of people on two different weekends.
At that time, we knew nothing of COVID-19, although it was known to some in our federal government.
Florida and Michigan in February: Another dance weekend and, before that, a flight and ten-day trip to Michigan to be with a dying friend and his family.
How to avoid COVID-19 was a part of our conversation, but, mostly, the virus was still a distant blip on our radar.
A campground near New Orleans, March 5 to 16: Cyndy and I went into the city on most of those days.
We visited museums, rode buses, took walking tours, and enjoyed jazz in bars, on a paddlewheel steamboat, and the packed, standing-room only Preservation Hall.
Our last days in New Orleans: COVID-19 dominated the news. The places we had visited were closed.
That’s when the nightmare dog first appeared, chasing us as we moved from east to west across the southern states.
Texas, but not New Mexico, in mid to late March: The closing net first appeared from the near-north.
A chili cook-off and music fest that we planned to attend was cancelled. Campgrounds in New Mexico, where we had reservations, notified us that they were closed.
Arizona in the first days of April: The net tightened.
Behind us, Texas state parks closed today. National parks in Arizona and Utah, where we expected to go next, are closed.
So Cyndy and I headed for safe haven in Green Valley, Arizona, 45 miles north of Mexico.
This is the community of Cyndy’s brother John.
We are in his townhouse as I publish this. Within a few days, we hope to rent a furnished townhouse or apartment on a week-by-week or month-by-month basis.
John says there are many vacant units owned by Canadians who were told by their government to come home.
“But,” we have wondered, “will they be willing to let wayfaring strangers into their homes?”
The great irony is today’s date: April 7.
It was exactly one year ago today when we moved out of our apartment in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and became full-time RVers.
Yesterday, we put our travel trailer—our “home on the road”—into storage in Green Valley. We paid the fee for the first month.
The dog hasn’t caught us, but it is at bay outside the door.
And the net is here, surrounding us, holding us in place as we wonder how many more monthly storage fees are ahead of us.
We are both sad and grateful.
Sad that we can’t continue to travel, but grateful to have gotten this far. And grateful for John’s helpfulness.
Are we safe here? We believe so. John is conscientious. His house is spacious and clean. Like us, his contact with the outside world is limited.
We are grateful for our health and for not still being in places on our trail where COVID-19 has become a hot spot.
In a strange way, I’m grateful not to be in our previous apartment in Kalamazoo. I would feel even more confined by the presence of friends so near and yet so far.
I’m grateful for Facebook—and I truly never thought I would say that!—and for the music, banter, and personal news that allows us to be “together alone.”
I’m grateful for our world’s internet and communications technology. Where would we be without phone calls to and from friends and families?
At the same time, I’m aware of the plight of others from the past and the present. Our ancestors who endured previous pandemics didn’t have the communications networks that we have today. How lost they must have felt!
And what about those in dire straits today? The families detained and divided at the United States’ southern border. People in prisons and other institutions where six feet of separation isn’t possible. Police officers who find themselves literally face to face with angry people in domestic violence situations. Those without adequate water supplies to wash their hands.
As I read yesterday on Facebook: “Self-isolation is a privilege that not everyone can afford.”
My heart literally wrings with grief when I hear of an elderly parent—or anyone—who is hospitalized and dying in isolation while a spouse and children and grandchildren are barred from seeing them, holding their hand, and saying “I love you.”
The nightmare is true. COVID-19 is a vicious dog, snarling in the faces of many. The net of death is casting a pall over our world.
Most of us will survive. But we will be forever changed. The “old normal” is gone. In what shape and form will we fashion our new normal?
I pose this question for us as individuals and as a society.
When this is over, will we see that this time of individual isolation has brought us closer together with our neighbors and our international brothers and sisters? I hope so.
Regardless of what happens with the COVID-19 dog, let’s banish the beast of greed and hostility.
Let’s, instead, cast a wide net of friendship, peace, and harmony.
Thanks for reading my stories.
God blesses everyone ... no exceptions.
Robert (Bob) Weir
