March 30, 2020
My house sits in the curved elbow of a San Antonio street. A lawn mower hums, then the whir of a leaf blower, welcome sounds that remind me of the way life sounded three weeks ago.
A man walks past my house connected to two frisky dogs on leashes. Two young parents push baby wagons shaped like classic Chevies, blue, each carrying a baby boy with curly hair, an adorable matched set of humans.
Nearly three weeks into isolation, I watch the outside from my window and porch. The plants are spring-greening. A canopy of pecan trees spreads itself over our street. An occasional car passes. The conversations that used to enliven the slow walking of neighbors have been replaced with an eerie silence. Families are juggling work-at-home and helping children learn to tele-school.
Like me, my house is a septuagenarian, though we didn’t know each other in our youths. She’s a squatty little house in a grand old neighborhood, and I know every interior crack, nail hole and bubble in her walls. A silent and peaceful cottage, this house is as perfect a place as I could imagine in which to shelter during this quarantine.
The trees are beginning to bud, oblivious of the news floating through the cables below, dire warnings and predictions. A few feet in from the hushed streets, my big pomegranate tree sports only four tiny coral flowers.. The bougainvillea and crepe myrtle have yet to announce their upcoming parties of pink.
Happy patches of poppies and yellow Esperanza are blooming in the community garden, stand-ins for Fiesta. Instead of the usual Fiesta wreaths and streamers that announce San Antonio’s April week-long party of parades, we see lone walkers, unadorned doors, and a bounty of birds, bees and flowers.
At Central Market, a mile away, people wait in long lines to be admitted. A man stands at his prescribed six-feet distance playing “Brown Eyed Girl” on a saxophone. Yellow tape and police remind shoppers of social distancing guidelines.
Because I’m among over seventy the higher risk pool, I venture out in my car only once a day. I drive past Central Market, but I don’t go inside. I mail cards at the drive in post box. Some days I park in the lot and watch people while talking on my phone to my mother, my children, or my friends.
My mother, Carlene, is a healthy and vibrant 94-year-old. By the time we thought of the possibility of her coming here from Georgia to wait this out together, it was too late for women our ages to travel. So we talk every morning, sometimes venting about Trump, sometimes laughing as if these were normal times. We remind each other to count to 20 when we wash our hands. She reminds me to spray the door handles of my car.
The saxophone stirs and soothes me, a tonic after too much news, too many talking heads, too many voices of caution on NPR. A few shoppers, bee-lining to their cars with babies, bags and carts, sway to the music. A young man wearing a green fuzzy animal costume, all but the face which might identify his pretend-species, walks across the parking lot, head down, a sad cartoon character with a human face.
My face in the rearview mirror softens as the honey of stranger’s sax drifts into my skin, behind my eyes, then lodges where music meets memories.
*****
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