A drive to PetSmart during a sunny Saturday in May elicits the chills and thrills of falling in love. I have been denied the fresh air, the sun, the breeze, the windows down, the moon roof open, for too long. Even the paved jungle of the highway and the ugly office edifices looming like concrete ogres, even all that, makes my heart palpitate. The stupid songs on the radio. All of it. I have been denied. My last drive was much too long ago. At one point, my car battery died from eight days of never being turned on.

I am sheltering in place during the Pandemic. The Corona virus pandemic. The Plague of the 21st century. At this point, it has killed 100,000 in the U.S. and nearly 350,000 worldwide. We have a lot of dangerous idiots in the U.S., who think the plague is a hoax, or not dangerous, or not something that applies to them, and they walk around their communities and visit other communities, march on state capitals, yelling (spitting their spittle) and potentially infecting each other and then dragging others down with them as they visit grocery stores or elderly parents. They bring their kids to these anti mask-rallies. This is the segment of the nation that has lost its mind, drank the president’s Kool-Aid, the Jim Jones cult of our day. These are the people, along with the illness itself, who have forced the rest of us into an extended isolation. I can get very angry, and feel insane with my anger, but…there is the drive to Petsmart.

The Petsmart I am referring to is a 15 minute drive from my house in Westwood, Massachusetts, and in reality, there is nothing lovely about the drive, nothing to fall in love with, except…

…the sun is open, the sun through my windshield. The a bright sky is open, with the puffy clouds and the deep blue of a clear day that throws you back into childhood, remembered as better times than perhaps they were.

I’ve filled up the gas tank in my car twice since March 17, the day I began to quarantine due to the Corona virus pandemic. At one point, the car battery went dead because I hadn’t left my house in eight days. The farthest I had ventured from home was to the end of my driveway to get the mail, in eight days. Luckily, my neighbor, Ed, was able to jump start the engine so I didn’t have to call AAA and wait for them. Imagine that, I had stayed home long enough for a car battery to die. The last time I was this socially isolated was in 1979 when I was suffering with my first bout of panic disorder and agoraphobia at age 17. Since then, I’ve become almost normal. At least, I have the driving habits of a normal adult with a job and friends and family.

When you are required, either by law or by intelligence, or by morals to shelter in place, driving is one of the first things to go by the wayside, with exercise a close second.