July 4th in The Year That Wasn't

My neighbors were having a backyard barbecue on the Fourth of July with some guests invited over.  We are friendly, banter across the fence lines, and if I needed something that I couldn't do for myself, I would ask them if they were around.  Like the time I had a splinter in the back of my head and I went over to their house and asked A to dig it out with a needle, which he hesitantly did (I had to tell him at the moment of hesitation, Go Deep, Man, I know it's bleeding but I'll be alright) did, since I couldn't do it to or for myself because I couldn't see the splinter directly.

The brother of the lady of the house is my gardener and has become a friend of mine, although he is notably a proud, prickly man, easily offended.  He was there so I knew if I went outside my door where they would see me, they would call me over to join them.  But six feet of social distancing over there more like four feet or even much less and not one of them was wearing a mask.  They were engaged in eating and drinking, after all.  I knew if I joined them they would pile me with food, which I always enjoy since, being from South America, the meats are made the South American way and is invariably delicious.  In these extraordinary times, I did not want to join that party.  The pandemic, you know.  I don't want to become part of the problem overwhelming this forsaken (by its leaders) nation by becoming sick with Covid19 or maybe, getting it again.

I surreptitiously drew my curtains and went up to my bedroom to read.  My dinner was slowly roasting in the oven.  My cell phone had rung, I saw it was from my gardener but I did not answer it.  I left my phone downstairs, recharging.  But then I heard thunder in the sky.  A low, loud roar was coming nearer, from the east, the direction of the National Mall.  I knew from the morning's paper that The Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds and some WW2 vintage planes were flying over the Mall at about that time and perhaps they were flying west to Dulles to land.  I ran to the door and stepped out and was rewarded with the majestic sight of a B-29 bomber flying overhead at about 500 feet accompanied by four much smaller P-51 Mustang fighters, one on each of the four corners of an imaginary large square with the plane that dropped the two atomic bombs on Japan and ended WW2 before a million more Americans (and untold Japanese) had to die, one of them being my father with the First Marine Division.

Those twenty or thirty seconds as I watched the formation recede to the west imprinted in my memory banks a sight that I will never forget.  I saw vintage WW2 planes fly over the Mall in 2015 in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the end of the war but they were much higher and not so easily distinguishable.  This was special and worth what followed, I think.  (B-25 bombers fly over the Mall in 2015.)

I was immediately called over to my neighbor's backyard, now that I had emerged.  I went, sat in a lawn chair between two people who were each perhaps six feet away, or perhaps five feet of four feet.  I ate the food heaped upon my plate with insistence and pride, and enjoyed myself with my neighbors and some strangers for about an hour, being neighborly.  I went home then, turned off my oven and saved that food for dinner the next night.  I saw that I had been called four times by my gardener the previous hour with voicemails calling me over.  I hope he doesn't think I rebuffed him by not answering, did I say he's prickly?  Leaving, I was going to go out their front gate but someone in that direction executed a robust sneeze, without a mask or covering the sneeze in any way, so I executed a hard right and went out the other way using their back gate.

I like my neighbors and most of their relatives and many of their friends, a lot, but anxiety gnawed at me throughout the hour as I thought about reckless exposure.  Anxiety still gnaws upon me eleven days later because now I'm still a few days removed form the outside festering time for the deadly disease.  I've quarantined since then (i.e. I haven't changed my behavior of the last four months one whit) but a few nights ago I awoke in the early morning hours and had severe shortness of breath that didn't abate even when I sat up in bed.  It reminded me of my acute oxygen hunger I experienced for three or four days in Leadville in 2001 when I stayed at my sister's place there at over ten thousand feet with my three children during my interminable divorce (it was altitude sickness) and I was desperate to get a true or deep breath.  That was how I felt in February for two or three nights, except then I was coughing violently, when I was sick for two weeks with respiratory problems.  But those night terrors haven't returned the last two nights so perhaps it was just anxiety.  I don't have a cough, I just feel vaguely "off" with semi-sore lungs, as I have felt since February.

That was my Fourth.  How was yours in these extraordinary times?