I am not much of a speller. It’s a little embarrassing, but my lack of letter order mastery has done quite a lot for my vocabulary—I can always come up with another, more easily spelled, word to communicate what I mean. In the last few days, however, my spelling prowess has greatly improved. I no longer have to look up or rely on the trusty squiggly red line to help me spell:

• apocalypse

• Armageddon

• quarantine

• sequestered

• Saskatchewan

I have written these words in texts, emails, mail-forwarding forms, and notes to loved ones and strangers more in the last few days than at any other time in my life—except for maybe apocalypse—I’ve always been partial to that word if lazy about spelling it.

In addition to being partial to words that describe catastrophic endings, I also rather like me a portmanteau—invented words that meld two other words together to create a nuanced meaning that is missing in English or to identify a reality that we did not have before. For example,

• TPocalypse: the state of your world ending for lack of freshly-milled and bleached paper with which to wipe your ass.

• Corona-pocalypse: not my invention but how my work colleagues (English professors) describe the current state of higher ed now that all of our classes are online for the rest of the semester.

• Arm-and-a-leg-ageddon: what a bottle of hand sanitizer costs—if you can find one.  (I just came up with that one because I needed a third item on my list, but it’s not bad.)

The spellchecker on my computer still doesn’t know “covid” but I can always use corona. Or Corona. Do I want a beer or celestial illumination? When I ask, Google says I want a beer.

But I want light. A corona is a halo of light that we see only because of darkness. During an eclipse, the tendrils of the sun’s corona become visible as the moon comes between her radiant brother and us. The moon oblates the overpowering and obvious eye, skewing the sun subtle and nuanced, which is not the same as gentle. The corona flares, erupts, and disrupts; we just don’t usually notice it.

Until now. Like in an eclipse, the darkness of this virus has moved between us and what we thought we knew, showing us the wonder of what has been present, but obscured. What seemed routine in the sun takes on a certain slant in the light of the corona. 

Hoarding what others want doesn’t get you what you want.

I’ve heard a lot of people say that this event will show everyone’s true colors. I think they are right. In the last week, I have seen many, many people out themselves for their greed, stupidity, and irrationality. I’ve had conversations with people once champions of the greater good turned ardent defenders of personal rights. I’ve read countless Facebook posts purporting to know the true best by condemning everyone else’s best. Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should.

You can’t social distance your family.

You know you are socially distancing when you are working from home and the kids are out of school; when it’s cold and rainy—kind of winter but not really spring—and the only entertainment is walking the dog who would rather nap; when the museums, movies, and theatres are closed, the WiFi is gurgling like a beached whale that just ate a car, and the only entertainment is yelling at your kids, your husband, your dog, and the wall. You can social distance you, but you can’t social distance them.

We were born for this.

This morning I read an article about how GenX has been preparing to stay inside and avoid people all their lives. As the original Latchkey kids, they (we) know how to make great meals out of whatever we can find in the pantry and we know how to entertain ourselves without iPhones or siblings or even cable TV. We don’t talk to anyone on the way home and we never open the door to strangers. Our laissez-faire upbringing bordered on abuse and neglect by today’s parenting standards, but when the millennials are crying unfair because someone else got the toilet paper they should have got and the boomers are sending snail mail to their congressmen because their social security checks didn’t arrive on time, we’ll be rolling our eyes, shrugging, and making-do. 

Tonight, I plan to take two tin cans and drill holes in the bottom of each and tie them together with at least 6 feet of string. I will give one end to my neighbor on her porch and sit on my porch with the other. We’ll talk and drink from the safety of our own stoops and recall the days when elbowing someone was considered rude and it didn’t occur to us to wonder if “shelter in place” required hyphens or not. It doesn’t. I looked it up. Now I know. I will always know.

Photo by Laura Skinner on Unsplash