almost life as normal

I’ve spent the past few months as I usually do – fishing and gardening and mowing grass. The tomatoes are coming on, as is the corn. The fish have been biting, and twice I’ve impaled myself with treble hooks.

It’s almost life as normal.

Almost.

My son-in-law Elder is in quarantine after a co-worker at the restaurant in Livingston where he tends bar tested positive for covid. Now he’s out of work, both at the restaurant where he worked part time and at the warehouse where he worked fulltime all during this pandemic.

Even in an economy touted as the “best ever,” a lot folks needed two paychecks to survive.

Elder will be isolated from his family for at least two weeks. The rental house he shares with my daughter Leslie and their two sons is too small for him to quarantine there. Park County is putting him up in a motel.

Not surprisingly, he’s been waiting days for the results of his coronavirus test. A number of other co-workers have already tested positive.

When the lockdown eased and restaurants and bars were allowed to reopen, Elder was called back to work. I remember Leslie telling me at the time that it was like watching him go off to war. I told her not to worry, that guidelines were in place to keep people safe.

What a hollow reassurance that turned out to be.

But who would have ever guessed that in a bar,where people always engage in responsible behavior, something would go wrong.

While the loudest voice in the land tells us to get back to work, quit listening to the doctors, and retweets some lame game show host’s nonsense about the virus being a hoax, people are still getting sick.

Leslie told me she and the boys were in their backyard the other day enjoying the glorious summer weather when a robin landed on the fence above the flower bed. One of the birds they had watched fly from a nest that spring had stayed around and they had begun calling him Fred. Danilo, my 4-year-old grandson, spotted the bird sitting on the fence and announced: “Look Mommy, Fred’s waiting for Daddy to come home.”

Leslie said she almost lost it.

Livingston, like a lot of other towns in Montana, is seeing a surge in coronavirus cases. People are sick. Families are hurting.

Life isn’t normal.

Not even close.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected].