Life and Breath

I’m in my car in the parking lot of Round Top Mercantile where business looks good. It’s the beginning of the Fall Antique Shows.

The parking lot gives me a front seat view of humanity hereabouts, sifted through the filter of simple daily need or want.

Much is revealed by bearing and stride—self-consciousness; arrogance; physical frailty. Clothing adds its notes of harmony or discord.

Some years it’s easy to pick out the people here for the show, but I’m not seeing that as clearly as I used to.

And I’m not talking about eyesight.

In days to come Fayette County officials will calculate how successful the shows have been. This year, they’ll have one more data point to draw on for their tabulation. That is the uptick in November of our COVID-19 infection rate. No blame attaches to this. People need income. Stores need to oper

No blame attaches to this. People need income. Stores need to operate. And the expected uptick might not happen, if…

If everyone wears an effective mask. If everyone respects a 6 to 12 foot social distance. (Mask + distance = safety.)

We now know the virus is airborne, that virus trails behind a moving maskless infected person, and floats like cigarette smoke in still air.

That person’s mask protects you. Yours protects them. It requires both parties to wear the dang things if everyone is to be safe.

So the very weeks when we are awash in people from other states and counties seems a strange time for our County Judge Joe Weber to petition the state for removal of our mask requirement.

Leaving it up to us, tired and frustrated though we are.

Whoopie.

You hear about a “herd immunity” theory. But no one knows if “herd immunity” even exists for COVID-19. We don’t yet have enough data on reinfection and antibody duration to establish that.

We do know that younger people can get very sick. Some become afflicted for life by the neurological and cardiovascular effects of the virus. Long COVID is real.

We also know that older folks are a lot more likely to die from this virus that the infected person doesn’t know he or she has until it’s too late.

That’s why everyone should wear a secure face covering in the presence of other people.

So I’m sitting in my car in the Mercantile parking lot and what I’m really looking for are masks.

Do people put one on in the car before getting out? (Making sure they won’t leave virus floating in the air.) Do they hurriedly hook it on to go inside? Many do that, at least.

Except some don’t. A few with the glazed eyes of a ruminating steer in the middle of its herd. A few with the glint of a person who’s spoiling for a fight. They flout their unclothed faces.

While I sit imprisoned by their thoughtlessness or irascibility in my uncomfortable car, double-masked and parched for air, as I wait for the staff person to bring my groceries. (And huge gratitude to her for doing it.)

I’d like to go shopping, eat in a restaurant, go to a concert. But I have responsibility, not only for myself, but for a person in his hundredth year—a beloved person who is still functioning despite his age.

He is imprisoned along with me because some people won’t tolerate the temporary discomfort of a mask.

Or because they’ve allowed politics to soil a matter of life and breath.