Change is the only constant

We packed the food, the water shoes, the layers of clothing, the waffle maker, the bags of fruit, the ingredients for the birthday cake, the sunscreen, our pills, our jackets, and some specially-purchased toys and art materials for the kids. We emptied the trash at our separate houses, turned off the appliances, closed the curtains. Just as Sue was leaving to come get me, a neighbor came over to borrow some chairs, so that made her even later. I backed up my laptop and put my most recent photos on external drives (just in case something might happen to the laptop on the trip). You’d have thought we were leaving for a month! We had planned to leave at 10 a.m., and we made it by 10:30. Sue felt a little headachy, so I drove.

When we were about an hour down the road, Sue’s phone pinged. Eliana has tested positive for Covid. Sue spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday caring for Eliana. So we got some Covid tests and pulled into a pretty little park in a town called Dallas, Oregon. Sue tested positive. We sat there stunned for a few minutes. I called my daughter-in-law and shed a few tears. Then we pulled ourselves together, put on our masks, rolled down the car windows, and started back to Portland.

On the way, I said at least we got out of the city for a few hours—and wasn’t the Queen Anne’s Lace beautiful? What do you call those heads—umbrells, is it? umbilicals? Um-something, what’s the word? Sue, the gardener, laughed at my city-girl ignorance. And didn’t the new-mown hay look gorgeous in its vast blondeness? We wouldn’t have seen it if we hadn’t driven south. I pulled over to make a photograph of a hay field, and Sue (note the mask), got close to some of those “umbrells” with her iPhone; I spun around and made a photo of her.

Now I’m at my apartment and she’s at her house. Sue tested again and it was negative, so we aren’t sure what’s going on, but something is a-foot, or a-virus. Cristina canceled the kennel reservation for Felix. The kids are sad, we’re all sad. It would have been a great weekend with people I love and a chance for them to be together and for us to eat food and investigate tide pools. Instead, it looks like it will be a quiet weekend in the city. We enjoyed the high summer of the countryside for a couple of hours.