Ray, a Drop of Golden Sun

I had such a good weekend. On Saturday, we celebrated my dad’s birthday by grilling steaks out on the back porch. That evening, Susan, the kids, and I met some friends to watch a local car cruise. On Sunday, my buddy Jeff came over and we hung out for a few hours in my new workshop and on the back porch.

Each one of these activities brought a much needed break from the weeks of social distancing and “shelter in place” we’ve been practicing. It felt good to see friends again, to go outside and socialize a bit. But with each meeting there was also trepidation. The kids have been going to 7-11 on occasion to pick up drinks and snacks. What if one of them is an asymptomatic carrier of the coronavirus? What if one of my friends has come into contact with someone who is sick? How do we know who our friends and family have been around, or who the people they’ve been around have been around?

No matter how hard all of us have tried, we have all left the house at some point in the past month. Our family has done our best to practice social distancing to avoid contracting the virus, both because we don’t want it and we don’t want to spread it, but we still need groceries. We still need toilet paper. We still want to support local businesses. We still, on occasion, come into contact with other people.

In the “one was enough” sequel Amityville 3D, one of the characters states that “reality is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes.” The quote (which is attributed to Timothy Leary and was sampled in at least one song) has always stuck with me. Everything each of us knows about the coronavirus has been culled from many sources, strained through the media (some with their own agendas), and applied with a “I’ll do my best” attitude. No wonder no two people seem to be taking the exact same measures. I know people who are too afraid to leave their house, people who haven’t changed their daily habits one bit, and a whole lot of people who fall somewhere between those two endpoints. The White House press conferences are a mess, experts are disagreeing with one another, and every state is handling the crisis in a different manner. I can’t think of a better time to start putting quotation marks around the word “reality”.

On Friday, April 24, governor Kevin Stitt began reopening Oklahoma, a plan the president of the Oklahoma State Medical Association called “hasty at best.” WhiteHouse.gov advises that states should not reopen until they’ve seen a “downward trajectory of covid-like syndromic cases reported within a 14-day period,” and yet last week Oklahoma reported some of its highest numbers of new cases since hospitals began testing patients. Despite that, “personal care businesses like hair salons, barber ships, nail salons, spas, and pet groomers” along with state parks have all reopened. On May 1, churches, movie theaters, sporting venues, gyms, and tattoo parlors will follow suit. I hate that customers may be putting themselves at risk, but at least they have a choice. Come May 1, thousands of Oklahomans will be forced to return to work (potentially risking their health) or lose their jobs. Has the social distancing we have all been practicing been enough? I lose sleep at night worrying about how that question will be answered.

Last weekend, the clouds parted and for the first time in over a month, I felt the sun. Nothing felt normal, not yet, but it was a reminder that normal, along with “reality,” will eventually return.