MY CORONAVIRUS RECEPTION

My garage is as compartmentalized as the rest of my house. There are racks on the right and left walls. The racks on the right are to hang folding chairs, umbrellas, and shopping bags. The racks on the left are to hang brooms, pails, rakes, and step ladders. The floor under the right racks is to store packaging supplies. The floor under the left racks house three big containers: one for storing items to be donated, the second is for garden tools, and the third is for gardening supplies such as mulch and fertilizers. To the far end of the right garage wall, near the garage door, hang the controls of the sprinkler system for the lawn and the vegetable garden. Near the left side of the garage door stand the garbage and recycling bins.

The house is from an era that connected the garage to the kitchen and placed the washer, dryer, water heater, and air conditioning system on an upper garage deck. A talented handyman constructed a wall and a door made of wood and screen between the upper and lower decks. 

The connections between the garage, the house, and the outside world were admirable --up to the Coronavirus pandemic. Right after it, people over sixty five started to claim their favorable status with the virus. Immediately after, my home literally became my castle! No one is to enter it or leave it from its doors, except for myself and my ordered packages. The packages are quarantined for 24 hours! All other humans threaten my very life with extermination, and trigger after-visit maddening sterilization of unseen droplets of death. 

Now I think of the garage door as the moat of my castle. The garage driveway serves as the Coronavirus reception. Visitors call for reservation. I open the garage door. They pick up their chairs from the right side racks; place them in the driveway, beside their cars, under the shade of a huge Ash tree that spreads its branches over them and their cars. Everything in the garage is accessible. The exchange of gifts and delicacies occurs on the top of the washer and dryer, with me behind the kitchen door. And with masks, everyone is safe from the sudden movements of the others. 

What happens in the winter when it is too cold to sit in the driveway under the bare branches of the Ash tree? Weren’t you listening to our president Trump? We will all be vaccinated against the Coronavirus by then.