Amy Lu's View

It’s not only St. Patrick’s Day and Day #7 (?total guess there) of “Shut It Down It America,” (#TBTL) but it’s my mom’s birthday.

If my mom was still alive she would be 84. She died almost 20 years ago. I miss her at moments big and small (she never got to experience any of my mid-life crisis acting or band performances).

I do NOT miss her experiencing COVID-19.

Or maybe I do in a weirdly perverse, darkly comic way.

I know imagining my mom living during the COVID-19 pandemic is an absurd thought exercise. Am I thinking of my 64-year-old mother from 2000 alive now or my imaginary 84-year-old who never was (at leaast not in this timeline?) Or some amalgamation of the two realities?

I don’t know, but I do know if my mother was in “quarantine” with my father out in the tundra of Wisconsin there would be HELL TO PAY.

I also can’t imagine my mother dealing with social isolation very well. “I’ve lived my whole life in social isolation!” she would cry.

This is NOT to say that she would support Trump in any way. She would NOT blame immigrants for COVID-19 or think she should drink bleach. The pandemic CLEARLY (whether he was still alive or not) be my dad’s fault (All those chemicals he used on his garden? All the drinking he did? All those “questionable” satellite TV shows he watched? All that fatty bacon he bought?). She would probably also be pinning her hopes on Chad to save us.

She would care tremendously about her students when the schools closed. (Yes, my 84-year-old mother would have kept teaching unless Wisconsin has instituted mandatory retirement in the last 20 years). She would care about the people who own or work at restaurants and other small businesses. She worry care about the people who don’t have housing that no longer have a public library or any place else to go (but would want them to stay the hell away from me).

She would be convinced I’ve been in peronal contact with everyone in Minnesota who has been diagnosed with COVID-19.

She would regale us all of tales of her youth and growing up without toilet paper and being thrilled to get the Sears catalog and cartons of peaches (peach paper is super soft).

She would be anxious, and she would be exasperating, and she would be hilarious (unintentionally), and she would be brave and loving and strong.

Well, I just made myself cry (in the rural German Lutheran sense that I have some slight evidence of moisture in my eyes) so I’m going to stop now. Let’s all find our inner Colleen people.