At the end of February, at the laundromat, when several choice top dryers finished around the same time, I removed the clothes from a couple of them and heaped the clothes on the table. Less than 60 seconds later, their owner walked in. I apologized immediately and said, “I hate to take people’s clothes out of the dryer, but you never know whether the person is coming right away or never.”
He said evenly, “There are dryers available.”
I said, “Bottom ones.” Yes, that was lame. I should have used the bottom ones. I compounded my error by mumbling, “That’s the nature of the urban laundromat.” Something about this person’s feet made me think he was a tech bro, and tech bros are of course always in need of having their balloon of self-entitlement punctured a little. (If there is such a thing as puncturing a balloon just a little.)
A cool silence fell, and then I noticed that among the items this person was folding were nurses’ uniforms from the very hospital system I work for. Oops. I said, “It looks like we work for the same hospital. Now I feel a little bit worse.”
It turned out that he is an ICU nurse at the exact same hospital I report to. We ended up having a good chat. As he left, I apologized again, and he said, “I could have come a little sooner.” I said, “The dryers had finished just moments before. I could have waited for a few minutes.”
A few days later, I went to Rainbow thinking I would buy some extra garbanzo beans—the coronavirus was upon us—but found they were sold out, along with much else.
Early in March, the spiritual care department at my paying job had a staff retreat in Burlingame, which was really fantastic. I won’t recount all the touchy-feely things we did, but it was a wonderful day shared by all of us chaplains, plus our harpist, our administrative person, and our boss. At lunch, I took a long walk and enjoyed looking at the houses, trees and gardens. It was a gorgeous day.
A couple of days later, the San Francisco public school where Tom teaches closed immediately upon learning that the relative of a student was being treated for COVID-19.
I was due to travel to school for graduation on March 10. I had pushed it back two days because of Hammett, and was dreading being away from him for three days. I also was not looking forward to flying because of the virus, but I was prepared to do it. Fortunately, at the last minute, they canceled the in-person program and made it virtual instead. This was extremely lucky, because it was just then that Hammett fell apart. His sitter had warned me not to leave her with an obviously ailing cat. I would have had to not go to school, which would have meant graduating a year later, which would have been a giant problem when it comes to my board certification application. (As it is, they are scrambling to figure out how to get me my certificate of completion, since the teachers who sign these are scattered all over the country, and the office staff of the school aren’t coming in.)
One evening along in there, a friend from CPE asked if I’d like to have dinner, and we went to Udupi Palace for vegetarian Indian food. We had a great time and were howling with laughter as we walked back to her car. The next day, I went to Publico to have lunch with one of the people writing a recommendation letter for me. We arranged to meet right at noon, when normally the place is packed, but there was no one in line at all and just a few other patrons standing inside.
On my next trip to Rainbow, I found not one single roll of the toilet paper I usually use. They had other kinds, including an expensive one made out of bamboo, but I wasn’t desperate enough to buy any of that.
On March 10, we had a brief meeting for school to confirm that each of us would be able to use Zoom to share his or her final presentation, and over the following two days, most of us did our final presentations. I took a walk each of those days and was relieved to find the corner store full of toilet paper, as some uneasiness about this had set in. I said to Joe, the owner, “I feel kind of stupid doing this, but I’m going to do it, anyway,” as I paid for four packages of four rolls apiece. There was much, much remaining.
We did the last of our presentations on Friday morning, and in the afternoon, we had council via Zoom. That afternoon, I bought 15 more rolls of toilet paper from the corner store, where there was noticeably less of this product than a day or two earlier. There was no strong rubbing alcohol in any of the few stores I checked. When I went into Walgreens, two security guards were telling a young woman to leave and never come back. She was yelling and swearing at them; her arms were full of stuff. Apparently she had come in and just started grabbing things from the shelves. A few minutes later, I heard the guards say to a young man, “You can’t cut in line.” As the young man went to the back of the line I was in, he said loudly, “I’ll just snatch it, then,” meaning that he would just steal the item.
By then, we knew to leave some space between people (three feet), but most people in line weren’t doing that. I left three feet between me and the person in front of me, but the person behind me was inches away. I didn’t say anything about it.
That evening, as I sat reading, Hammett walked over to me and stared intensely into my eyes for about ten seconds. He has never shied away from eye contact, as his predecessor did, but this was unusual.
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