Last fall, my husband and his twin sister decided they should celebrate their 75th birthday together with a trip to Arizona.
We rented a five-bedroom house near Tucson, purchased plane tickets, and contacted relatives in Arizona. My stepdaughter, Amanda, a registered nurse at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Vancouver, planned to join us for a few days. Our daughter, Nora, whose Washington State University spring break coincided with the birthdays, would spend the week with us.
When we talked about skipping a trip to the Grand Canyon, Nora complained. “I’m going to spend my whole spring break with old people and don’t get to see the Grand Canyon?”
We penciled it back into our plans.
As our trip approached, I worked frantically to finish interviews with clients in Portland and Vancouver before we left.
Then the coronavirus hit King County.
The lyrics from a 1981 song by The Clash, resurrected in Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” reverberated in my mind: “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”
Nora suffers frequently from colds and allergies, so before she returned home for spring break, she visited the Cougar Health Center. They told her she probably had a common cold but recommended she not fly and limit being around old people.
She couldn’t accompany us.
But should we go?
We live 80 miles from what was at the time the virus’s Ground Zero in the U.S., but at that point, nobody south of King County had contracted the disease. Arizona had no cases, so it actually seemed a bit safer to go south for a week.
Larry’s sister, Laurel, and her husband decided to drive from Colorado rather than fly. A cousin and her son drove from Bellingham. Another cousin canceled at the last minute. We flew from Portland, using antibacterial wipes on our trays, arm rests, seatbelts, and everything else we touched on the plane, which was fairly full.
We picked up an 86-year-old cousin in Phoenix the next day and headed south to Tucson. Larry and Laurel’s cousin, Delbert Zander, who grew up in Winlock, and his wife, Berta, hosted us twice at their home near Green Valley. We played pinochle. We sang happy birthday (in addition to humming it frequently as we washed our hands with soap) to Larry, Laurel, and their cousin, John, who turned 87. Larry and Laurel met an Arizona cousin they hadn’t seen since they were toddlers.
We watched the news or checked our phones, reading articles with updates on the spread of the coronavirus. I haven’t immersed myself in the news so much since September 11, 2001, and its aftermath.
From afar, we learned about the first cases in Thurston and Lewis counties, the run on toilet paper, the lack of face masks. Arizona had its first case, then its first death. We read about a woman brandishing a knife over a fight for TP in Sydney, Australia. We learned of people sewing coveted face masks at home to give to health care workers.
I wanted to hunker down at home in Toledo and hide under a rock until this craziness passed. Instead, I prayed. The Bible tells us to pray without ceasing. I’ve never been as good at following that directive as I was last week — praying for my son in Helsinki, Finland, my daughter in Washington, my stepdaughter and her family, my stepson, my siblings and their families, my friends and their families, my elderly clients, our nation’s leaders, our state leaders, people I know, strangers I don’t know. In China. In Italy. In Washington. King County. Arizona. Throughout the nation. Throughout the world.
We asked our AirBnB host for more toilet paper, which he provided, even though we couldn’t find any on Tucson shelves. We visited Old Tucson, where many western movies were filmed. All activities took place outside where social distancing could be achieved. We were surprised to see so many people there. A tour guide said the sparse gathering was about a fifth of what they usually had. We enjoyed dinner at a restaurant Thursday evening — the day before all eateries in Arizona shuttered their dining rooms.
We canceled the trip to the Grand Canyon, which had closed its visitor center, and spent the night with cousin John in Sun City near Phoenix. We ordered brunch from IHOP via Doordash. Finally, we left for the Phoenix airport and our return home. Most of the travelers were young; a few wore face masks. Our airplane, which held probably 180 to 200 passengers, flew about three dozen to Portland.
Leaving the nearly empty plane took little time. We gathered our luggage and waited for our ride, happy to be so close to home, wondering if we’d need to shop for supplies or whether we had enough to stay put for a while.
Now we’re ready to hunker down, stay home, and pray this pandemic passes quickly.
While we need to stay away from others to halt the spread of the disease, we have plenty of mental stimulation at our fingertips thanks to the internet. Audible made hundreds of audiobook titles available to download free. The New York Public Library is letting people download more than 300,000 books free. Many museums have made tours of their collections available online.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at chaptersoflife1999@gmail.com.
