Love in the Time of Corona #7
Some of you have never watched someone you love die of respiratory disease.
Some of you have never been awake at 3:30 on Thursday night, wondering how you were going to make sure all your payroll checks cleared when you passed them out on Friday.
Some of you have never travelled to a place where the government tells you what to wear, when to go out, who to associate with, and what to say every waking hour.
Some of you were not raised by people who lived through the depression, who know what life is like when the whole world's economy grinds to a halt.
Some of you have never held the hand of a 25 year old, listening to the life rattle out of his shrunken chest.
Or built a company on nothing but a plan and hard work, only to have politicians shut it down.
Or woke up with a prowler standing in your bedroom.
Or spent the night in the ER on oxygen because the person in the next cubicle came to work with the flu.
Some of you have never tried to imagine how terrified people are who are lie awake thinking about different demons than yours.
And it shows.
We're all scared shitless. Some of us are afraid we're going to die. Others because we might infect someone else and they could die. Some of us are afraid that the company we dreamed into existence will not survive another week of social isolation. Some are afraid that the job they left won't be there when the Angel of Corona finally passes over. And others remember our grandparents stories of scrounging coal from the railroad tracks so they could light the stove and heat the house and make coffee on winter mornings before the whole family, parents, grandparents, and children went out in the snowy streets looking for work.
Of course we're scared shitless. We'd be insane not to be. We're just all scared of different things.
Let's put aside the whole idea of "I refuse to live in fear." We know it's a lie before we click the send button. Of course we're afraid.
And it shows.
It shows in how quick to take offense we are. In how hard it is to feel like we've been heard and understood. It shows in how impossible it is to understand how people can make the choices that they make, or accept the limits they accept. It shows in the way our influencers tickle and trigger our fears to keep us alert and on edge and obedient. It shows in our lashing out. Our refusal to acknowledge doubts. Our hatred of strangers. Our deathly fear of getting it wrong and sinking in the storm.
But, fear will not get us through the storm. Fear IS the storm.
Each one of us is afraid, and nobody else can ever really understand what it's like to feel what we feel. Calling someone a fool because they don't fear the same things as you is like you telling them that they don't have a toothache because you have a sprained ankle.
There is no victory for us to win here. This war is lost. The field is littered with dead bodies and dead business and dead dreams and there are no winners in the Time of Corona. There will only be survivors.
But how will we survive? By winning the argument or the election? By breaking one another's hearts and wills? Will we survive by trying and failing to convince half of our neighbors that they are stupid? Will that leave us a world that was worth fighting for?
Or will we walk out of the valley knowing that we found a way to help one another through the dark?
Fear won't get us through. Love will get us through. Respect will get us through. Listening. Caring. Compassion for one another will get us through the Time of Corona. Love someone enough to believe that their fear is real, even if you can't feel a drop of it. Care about someone enough to know that they had a good reason to vote that way, even if you can't make a lick of sense of it. Feel for someone enough to help them find their own courage and strength, even if you aren't sure either of you has a crumb of either. Corona will never be a blessing. But we can learn how to bless one another, even if it really is the end of the world.
If we can't learn that, if we can't learn to love each other, fears and all, we will have wasted the Time of Corona.
We may survive. But not as winners. We will be the most contemptible kind of losers. And you're damn right it will show.
He was calling from his car. In the background, I could hear rain and traffic and engine noise. In the foreground, I heard terror gushing like a firehose.
The YMCA where I work is closing down to our members. A mass email had just announced that we were being converted to a child care center for the health care workers who are staffing our hospitals during the pandemic. My young colleague at the front desk, a handsome high school senior with chiseled features, a golden heart, and a glass jaw answered the call, then turned, wide-eyed and silently extended the phone to me.
“Hi, this is Bob. How can I help?”
“Let me just explain to you fuckers what you’ve done. You've killed me. I have a heart condition. My life depends on being able to get exercise every day. If I don’t exercise, I will die. Now I get this email telling me the family membership I’m paying almost a hundred dollars a month for... that nobody else in my family uses... that we only got so my son could play soccer which I’m sure will be cancelled anyway. You realize, right, that all these kids they are sending home, they can carry the virus for 14 days before they show symptoms? Right? Closing these schools has just guaranteed that their parents will all get it. And now you’re telling me I can’t use the membership I’m paying for? I want to cancel. This email is a fucking death sentence for me. You get that, right?”
I’ve spent hours training on process and procedure. Listening skills. Customer service. Learning the right thing to say to get and keep customers for everything from store fixture manufacturers to theatre companies. I’ve performed for crowds of thousands of people who laughed and cried with me. I’ve studied the scriptures, helped lead congregations, fallen in love with church communities, and had my heart and mind broken by them. I’ve read psychology books, sat for years on head-shrinkers couches, and given speech after speech about the wonderful history and culture of the YMCA.
None of those things prepared me for this phone call.
Or maybe, all of them did.
“I can hear how angry and frustrated you are feeling. I want to make sure you understand that we are keeping one branch in the city open so people can work out...”
“Yeah, in the hood. So I can die by not exercising, or I can die walking in the shittiest part of town to workout in a place I’ve never been before.”
Now, I’ve heard this sort of thing from time to time. It usually comes from people who don’t like my neighborhood, (which is actually much closer to the shittiest part of town, if I’m honest about it,) and are nervous about the fact that the branch where I work is located beside railroad tracks, down the street from a major drug rehab center, and across the road from a homeless men’s shelter, near a street that the locals still call “Crack Alley.” I’m not used to hearing people say they are furious because they aren’t allowed to come up to the ‘hood.
“All of this is such bullshit. There is only one person in Lexington with the virus. It’s all politics. They are fucking with us and killing me. I had a blood clot that almost killed me. I will die without that elliptical machine, goddamit.”
Now, I do make an effort not to play the cancer card at every opportunity. Don’t get me wrong, I’’ve milked that old cow dry more than a few times. But it’s a little game I play with myself: How long can I go without telling someone I had cancer. It’s like my secret super-hero identity. I call him “The Amazing Cancer Boy.” Something told me it was time to pull on the tights and cape.
“You know what? What you’re saying makes absolute sense to me. I am a cancer survivor. I don’t know how I would have lived this long without the Y.”
“EXACTLY! People don’t understand how important this shit is to our sanity. I almost died, man!”
“I feel you, brother. After two months of radiation treatments and chemo, I threw a clot, saddle embolism.”
“THAT’S WHAT I HAD! The fucking widow maker."
“That’s why my doc called it, right! So you know what I’m saying. I would have lost my mind if I hadn’t found the Y 10 years ago. I think the most important thing for us to do right now is to find you a place where you feel comfortable working out. Do you agree?”
“Yeah, but... Everything is closed.”
“Listen, Planet Fitness is still open. I had a membership there for a while. It’s clean. Friendly people. Good equipment. Now, look. It’s not the Y. But for 10 or 20 bucks a month, you can have a place to work out until this corona thing blows over.”
“I don’t even know where... Where are they?”
“There’s one right around the corner, right next to Krogers on New Circle Road.”
“Man, that’s all the way across town.”
OK, something isn't right about this. Kroger is emphatically not all the way across town. It is 5 minutes away at rush hour.
“Brother, which Y branch do you use?”
“I can’t drive all the way over there. I am literally 3 minutes from the Beaumont Y. That’s why I called you!”
Dude dialed the wrong number. He thought he was calling the big, beautiful Y on the south end of town. The one with three swimming pools and thousands of members and a whole studio dedicated to martial arts. The Beaumont Y is bigger than many shopping malls. He thinks he’s complaining to the president of General Motors, and he’s got a clerk from the local bike shop on the phone.
“OK, first things first. It sounds like you’re driving, right? There’s a Planet Fitness on Nicholasville Road. Get over there and get a membership. I don’t want you to cancel your Y membership. I want you to call Beaumont on Monday and have them put it on hold for four months for you. Surely to god, this will all be wrung out by July. You can reactivate your membership anytime before them, and your boy can keep playing soccer. Listen, man. It’s gonna be OK. Get in that gym. Your family needs you, OK?”
“OK, that’s a good idea. I’ll do that, then.”
“You be careful, man. We’re gonna get through this.”
Love in the time of corona is a complicated business. Things aren’t always what they first appear. Sometimes, a package of toilet paper is really a life preserver. A doorknob can turn out to be patient zero. For me, an entitled, bigoted bully turned out to be a man so afraid of dying that he had to go out in the rain and make an angry phone call from his car so his wife and kids couldn’t see the terror in his eyes.
I just realized. I never even asked his name. I don’t think it matters.
And I can’t help wondering... Why in hell did that guy call my branch? How did his voice wind up in my ear? Reason tells me it was just a coincidence that out of all the bright faced, part-time staffers in the city that he could have reached on a Saturday afternoon, he managed to get on the phone with an old guy at the wrong branch who had survived exactly the same life-threatening condition that he had. It’s ridiculous to infer some kind of providence that put me right there at the desk at that moment instead of washing towels, disinfecting exercise machines, meeting personal training clients, or guarding the pool as I had been doing for 98% of my day until that moment. It is absurd to think that in the middle of a plague, God busies himself routing customer service calls.
But in my absurd, ridiculous, irrational heart, I can’t help but take comfort from the thought...
His eye really is on the sparrow. Even in the time of corona.
