How Long Before We Set Aside Our Covid-tinted Glasses?

Like you, I watched with horror as the coronavirus besieged China, Italy, Europe and New York, and then silently invaded the remaining U.S. states.  Sheltering-in-place and gearing up to venture out became an unwelcome protocol to fend off the unwelcome international visitor. Within weeks of toasting a new decade, we were thrust into a global pandemic. Now, it seems that everything we do, watch, read and think about is tainted by the virus.

In mid-May, my husband and I returned from our winter getaway in Sarasota to our home on Indiana’s lakefront. This coincided with the state’s reopening from the Covid-19 lockdown. 

As we pulled into our driveway, the tense muscles in our legs and backs eased up, but the Lysol wipes and paper masks on the console were a reminder of what we hadn’t left behind. While Lake Michigan’s cool breezes promised a reprieve from the lung-tightening heat and draining humidity of Florida, our journey home meant more self-quarantining. Nonetheless, being home felt delicious and I was eager to slip into familiar routines.

This morning, I took my first cup of coffee out to the side porch, plopped into one of the wicker rockers, and waited for the sun to peek through the neighbor’s forsythia hedge. Tucked under the eaves in my nubby gray bathrobe, the dune grass did little to conceal me from the two-lane county road below. I could’ve cared less. With my feet folded up under myself, I gripped my coffee mug and set the dusty rocker into a gentle glide.  Steam rose off the scalding brew and fogged up my glasses. I slid them over my nose into a makeshift headband and closed my eyes, savoring the scents of the lakeshore that drifted up to me.

Eyewear absent, I pressed my lips to the coffee mug and dared a sip. (What is it about one hampered sense that intensifies the other four?) The scalding java wafted hints of dark chocolate under my nose, while overhead, two large crows circled and cackled like grandmothers. When a flock of robins added to the cacophony with their maniac chirping, I stopped the rocker, unfolded my legs, and grabbed my glasses.

Something had set nature on edge. I scanned the ridgeline of the dune. Nothing.  As I zeroed in on the roads below, something in my periphery moved. Whipping my head around, my breath hitched in my chest. Two feet away from my rocker, masked eyes studied me. Unperturbed by my seated presence, the critter crept closer to the nearby barbecue grill. I clapped my hands together with such vehemence that both palms stung. Pounding my feet on the bluestone patio, I hissed an order: Get outa here! The raccoon tossed me an annoyed look, squeezed through the porch railing and sauntered across the road. It stopped on the other side, cocked it’s head in my direction as if to check that I was watching its retreat, and then vanished into the forsythia.

I have a long and turbulent history with raccoons, and with each encounter my disdain has escalated.  Picture books portray them as cute, cuddly animals, yet they are anything but.  They’re dangerous, disease-riddled pests.  Unwelcome, just like the virus. Thirty years ago, I left my two daughters, ages four and two, playing with their toys in our screened-in porch.  I’d gone to the kitchen for something and when I returned there was a raccoon on the other side of the screen door watching the girls play.  Freaked out, I chased the scoundrel off and vowed never to leave my children at risk.

Just as epidemiologists have warned us to expect a second wave of the virus, naturalists warned me that my nemesis, the raccoon, would show up again.  Early one evening as I pulled into my driveway, I witnessed a raccoon scaling the garage gable. Nimbly, he breeched the cupola and disappeared into the second-floor storage area. Yikes! Not only had the creature broken in, it had been using our storage area as a toilet room.  Wildlife experts were called in to capture and relocate the furry hoodlum, and then a clean-up crew bedecked in hazmat gear spent days disinfecting. Sealing up the cupola with metal screening was the final insulting expense.

This morning as I fixated on the forsythia hedge and tightened the belt on my robe, I knew that the creature’s return was inevitable. I left my coffee to grow colder and scanned the patio for weaponry, retrieving a gnarly piece of driftwood from under a table and a handful of hefty rocks collected on a beach walk.  When the raccoon re-emerged, I was ready. Aiming carefully, I whipped the rocks (my grown son, with whom I played countless games of catch during his little league years, would have been proud of my aim). The torrent of rocks scared off the persistent scoundrel, and I never had to swing the driftwood.

As I reflect upon this nerve-racking morning adventure, I can’t help but compare this brief battle with the one we wage as a nation against the coronavirus. To defend ourselves against the virus, we grasp about like I did for every available weapon: PPE, social distancing, sanitizer, remdesivir, steroids, plasma, ventilators, and vaccine research.  Undoubtedly, some of them, all of them will vanquish Covid-19.

And, as I consider my insignificant experience with the raccoon, I’m left wondering. How long will it be before we stop evaluating everything that happens to us from the angle of the virus?

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