Friends in the time of COVID-19*

My good friend… no, that isn’t right--she is my bestest friend in the whole wide world–had an operation on her back in early March and has been isolated at home for about the last 8 weeks and forbidden to drive.

She grouses on the phone: “I was taking more opioids for the pain before the operation and than I am now, and I was driving just fine, and if he tells me I can’t drive because of pain meds then I am going to defy him…”

Well, fortunately, she was given the all clear to drive, but he told her to wear the brace. Not a problem.

I had a prescription that I picked up for her a couple of weeks ago and needed to give to her, and she had some things to give to me, so on her first day out and about she came by the house.

The county I live in shares a border with Arkansas and has a population of about 40,000. There is one city of about 13,000, everyone else lives on farms or in small towns of a fewer than 3,000 that are scattered along the highways 10 to 20 miles apart. So I think we have sort of thought that we might escape the virus. Silly us. At last report, there are now 4 cases of COVID-19 in our county.

Not a lot, but it is a wake-up call. It is not going to pass our rural county by. Social distancing is now a reality and isn't something we are just "thinking about doing". Consequently, the visit went a bit differently from how it normally would have gone.

I put out lawn chairs, and so when I saw her drive up, I went out and got my chair and sat down. She got out of her car and got her chair and sat down about 10 feet way. We had nice visit sitting in our lawn chairs.

 It was great to see her again.

Only problem is that I really wanted to give her a hug...

but that wasn’t going to happen.

*With apologies to the novelist Gabriel García Márquez