The Week That Was

​Dear well-loved and appreciated readers,
I’m wondering if I might ask you favor.
If you’ve read and enjoyed either of my books, 

...would you leave a review – just a sentence or two would do – on Amazon and/or Goodreads?
Here are the links:
For Amazon:
"Equal and Opposite Reactions":  http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
"Hail Mary":  https://www.amzn.com/1684334888

For Goodreads: 
"Equal and Opposite Reactions": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35521059-equal-and-opposite-reactions
"Hail Mary": www.goodreads.com/book/show/53468697-hail-mary

​   Online reviews are the best kind of word-of-mouth for helping an author’s book make it in the world and a few words from you would be much appreciated.
    Thanks so much, and enjoy today’s Ailantha!
​

​THE WEEK THAT WAS

     It no doubt hit weeks earlier for some Americans and that much later for others depending on the region of the country in which they lived, but for me - and I expect for Ohioans generally - the second week of March, 2020, was the week when the reality of the COVID-19 epidemic swept in and changed life as I used to know it.
     Prior to that week I'd felt the undercurrents of anxiety that were all around: We'd been warned that the epidemic was coming, approaching like an invading army, but we weren't sure exactly when it would really happen, how bad it would be, or what we should be doing in the meantime, other than stocking up on cleaning supplies and disinfectants,

---

...and going to town on the germ-killing,

...and hand sanitizing.

      Still, I cancelled with great disappointment my flight, hotel reservations, car rental  and RSVP for my son-in-law's niece's March 13 quinceañera in Arizona,

...and wondered if I was being overly cautious and just a tad paranoid about the whole coronavirus thing. 
     I had a piano recital, for which  my students had been preparing for half a year, scheduled for March 19,

​ ...and the unthinkable idea of cancelling our recital even started poking around the edges of my brain.  
      I even wondered if I should discontinue my daily visits to my 99-year-mother in the memory care unit of the Sunrise senior care facility.

      In retrospect, I think that back then it was so unthinkable that the country was actually in the grip of a deadly wildfire epidemic that I couldn't in my mind decipher caution from paranoia. I, for one, needed knowledge, however frightening and troubling  that knowledge might be. And I needed to be told what to do so I could bring myself do what needed to be done, whatever that might be.
      All the answers came the following week, the week of March 9, 2020, when the COVID-19 epidemic officially arrived in Ohio. 
     Monday, March 9, was the last time I fetched my mother at Sunrise to take her out to eat. (I recall that at the sign-out desk there was a pen-sanitizer. How optimistically naïve we were back then to think such a little gizmo as this:

...would protect us from this: )

     I was in truth nervous about taking my mom to a restaurant - and even going myself - but the Sunrise staff gave permission, and my mom was craving "a really good hamburger," as she put it. So I took her out to the LongHorn Steakhouse,

...where we did, in fact, split a really good burger followed by a most memorable apple dumpling,

...while I angsted the whole time about us catching the coronavirus.
     That day, Monday, March 9, was the last time in her life that my mom was at a restaurant. It was also the last time I was at a restaurant.
      The following day, Tuesday, March 10, I composed a notification which I handed out to the parents of my piano students ― I teach ―used to teach― in-home lessons ― asking them to please clean their piano keys and to go over them with a disinfectant wipe before my arrival and also to make sure that their children washed their hands immediately before their lessons.
      One of the mothers read my note and laughed. "Are you freaking out over this coronavirus thing?" she asked.
          I had to admit that I kind of was. 
​        The next day, Wednesday, March 11, our Governor Mike Dewine came on the air and announced that starting the following week all schools in Ohio would be closed for a month.

        That day was the last day I taught an in-person piano lesson. I cancelled all lessons until further notice. And I cancelled our piano recital. 
         Friday, March 13, was the last time I saw my mother in person for months,

...until summer when she turned one-hundred and when weekly half-hour,12-feet apart outdoor visits would be allowed,

...followed, in autumn, by brief weekly indoor visits,

...which ended after my final end-of-life visit.

   Saturday, March 14, all non-essential public venues in Ohio were closed, senior care facilities no longer allowed public visitation, and the state was put under quarantine, we its citizens admonished by our Governor and Public Health Director to stay inside  our houses and "shelter in place" for our safety. 

     That was the day when we knew without a doubt that the invasion had begun.    
      And that beginning marked the end of a week that I will never forget.