A few days later, John and Darla drove up from Florida after spending a month in St. Augustine—a trip I would have found arduous—but they arrived on our doorstep with smiles, their overnight bags, and Katrina, their Coton de Tulear.

Darla handed me a plush bathmat with the words “Squeaky Clean” and a copy of Jeanette Walls’ Half Broke Horses. “I was needing a new mat for our guest bathroom,” I said, and told her I knew I would enjoy the novel, having loved The Glass Castle. Somehow, Darla always knows the exact right gift—not just for us, but for everyone she knows. Intuitive shopping is her super power.

We spoke in whispers—it being a tad past nine and Bob already retired—while Katrina padded through the house, finding the food and water bowls that I had set out. I wondered if she remembered them from her last visit.

“This house smells like Nana’s house,” John said, nose lifted. We both knew that Nana’s house represented the very best moments of our childhoods. I blushed, realizing that my ovearching life goal has been to make a space where others would feel as at home as I had been at our Nana’s. This, I thought, was my super power.

What was that smell, we wondered, trying to pick it apart. “Do you use Calgon bath salts?” John asked.

“No, no bathtub here. Windex and fried onions, perhaps.”

“Remember that face cream Nana kept in the downstairs bathroom with her makeup?” And we drifted down memory lane, thinking about our grandmother special smells and our days as children on her acre of paradise.

The next morning the five of us sat in our yellow dining room and when our plates were empty, it was time for show and tell. First, John went out to the van to fetch a small alligator head that Darla had picked up for someone back home in Pennsylvania.

Next, Bob gave a tour of his gorgeous orchids. Like Bob, Darla wears the green thumb in their house. She, too, has a few orchids.

Show and tell is boring for little dogs, but Katrina is made of patience. She lay down in our living room, bathed in orchid lights, and waited for a good smell to appear, or for her people to move toward the door.

We soon said our goodbyes on the lawn, promising to drop in on each other as often as possible, no matter for how long or short. We’ve often enjoyed John and Darla’s hospitality and were pleased to return the favor. They are the kind of hosts who leave chocolates for their guests, and post “Welcome, Camille and Bob,” on their refrigerator.

After their van had vanished down the road, I went inside to strip the bed and looking out the window, wondered when I’ll get around to finishing washing the others. Maybe next week, I thought, and turned my attention to other, less productive pursuits.

On June ninth I woke to the sound of an acetaminophen bottle hitting the dryer and found a large black snake on the laundry room shelf. At eye level. Moments later it dropped to the floor to hide beneath the washing machine. This led to an unwholesome rodeo, with Bob wiggling-walking the dryer away from the wall, then loudly smacking the washer.

Frozen and barely awake I stood by, clutching a bath towel and later, a broom. “Put on your shoes!” I cried, slipping into my Teva flats. Bob ignored the shoe cue and kept banging until the snake came out and then we herded it out the back door. We don’t know how it got in or if it’s come back, nor do we know how many snakes there might be inside our house right now.

I immediately noticed an uptick in nightmares. Bad people doing bad things, with me trying to defend myself and others from murder, rape, and dismemberment. Yes, my Catholic upbringing—all those martyred saints—has proven fertile ground for night sweats.

A week later Tami saw a sizeable Black Bear ahead while riding her bike a couple of miles from our house. She moved to the other side of the road and once she saw that the bear was more interested in eating leaves than chasing her, she pedaled like hell.

So now I am hypersensitive to night sounds, and also self-soothing with sugar which does nothing good for my sleep patterns. I know I’m overreacting, but hey, try telling that to my sympathetic nervous system.

The other night I was awakened by something scratching or bumping against the wall behind my head, and with my high-alert synapses firing away, I nudged my hero and woke him up. Unperturbed, he jiggled the mattress to recreate the sound I thought I’d heard, and then he got up and pulled the bed away from the wall. Nevertheless, I lay there for another hour before falling back to sleep.

When I woke to morning light—arms at my side, stiff as a corpse—I heard something moving underneath the dresser. My mouth was so dry I couldn’t muster enough spit to talk so I got up and got a drink of water before crawling back under the sheet next to my unflappable husband.

Bob has been all patience and fortitude throughout all this snake business. He always comes up with a plan and has not teased me once for waking him up or wimping out. He hasn’t even said, “I don’t know what’s come over you,” even though he must be thinking it. I surely am. All my life, I’ve been unafraid, good in a crisis, always ready to chase down dogs, wasps, and cockroaches. Then suddenly I turn seventy, find a five-foot snake where it’s not supposed to be, and I’m all a-puddle.

After hearing Tami’s story, I asked Bob to set the trail camera up near the compost pile in case a bear shows up to gnaw corn cobs and cantaloupe skin with the possums. But the notion of a bear in our yard doesn’t concern me nearly as much as a snake in our bed.

As I lick the last pretzel crumb and set down my empty mug, a black vulture lands on the lawn between the persimmons. I watch the mockingbird chase it out to the ditch. You badass, I think, and wander towards the road to see if there’s a carcass I need to move before getting out the pitchfork and the wheelbarrow.

But, wouldn’t you know it, when I walked back into our house I saw them with terrible clarity and decided that something must be done. And Bob, bless his heart, gave me total support. Never mind that we’d lived with what previous tenants thought was cute for fourteen years, our walls now desperately needed a makeover.

Chaos followed. Not immediately. First we had to find a contractor because we sure as heck weren’t going to do the painting ourselves. The first guy said he’d get to us in a few months, then couldn’t. The second painter didn’t pan out either. But the third one did—I know, this is starting to sound like a fairy tale—and soon we were taking all the art off the walls and looking for places to hide the knick knacks.

As for the colors, we’d already spent months taping painted poster board samples to our walls until we picked five that worked for us. I’m not gonna lie, we went for bright knowing full well that we were bucking the current trend towards neutrals.

Our friends grasped their hands when we showed them our paint strips. Some came right out and said, “I couldn’t live with those colors,” while others wished us well before retreating to the comfort of their reasonable decor.

But we were undeterred. We wanted bright and we weren’t choosy about where we got our ideas. For example, a scene from “The Bear” inspired our blue kitchen. Never mind that it was one of Carmy’s nightmares.

We thought the deep blue “Flyway” would look great against our warm cabinets.

Our newly-hired crew of professionals patched drywall goofs and door dings, painted over the wallpaper, and were finished in two days.

No more falling asleep while doing laundry. That “Osage Orange” will keep us on our toes, blood pumping.

I spend most of my indoor time bouncing between kitchen and desk so the colors we chose for those two rooms had to get along. The blue and brown remind me of my childhood parakeet sitting on the curtain rod in my bedroom, his blue feathers contrasting nicely against the wood paneling.

After many failed greens, we picked “Teddy,” which matches our morning coffee. Brown was Carrie’s idea because we had a lot of framed art on the wall and she said brown wouldn’t fight with everything else. And it’s a bright room, windows facing south, so we knew it could handle the dark color.

We had the orange wrap around the outside of our dining room on the kitchen side, and painted the interior “Lemon Twist.”

I can’t think of a better color for dining than the color of a good macaroni and cheese. Makes me hungry just looking at it!

We didn’t have to think too hard before picking “Peri Wink” for the living room, a color that plays nice with the greenery of Bob’s orchids.

Here is the other side of our living room with its double-sided gas hearth and wood mantle. What you won’t see here is all the knick knacks because I only chose a few to display and left the rest in a cooler nested in towels.

We wrapped the entrance from the living room to the dining room in periwinkle, another nod to my childhood because these are the colors I repainted my bedroom when I was about twelve years old.

Our raspberry pink hall also got a makeover. I thought yellow would help lighten it up.

We’ve been having a whale of a time rifling through our art collection picking and hanging. One of my favorites is “Wired Wanderings: A Quest for Identity” by Robyne Plaga in back entrance. Not only does it pick up the blue from the other side of the hall, but we find the robot’s expression—a mix of elation and despair—totally relatable.

“It’s like living in a bag of Peanut M&M’s,” I said to Bob after the painters left. And that’s okay. We like Peanut M&M’s. At our age, we need bright colors to pep us up and thanks to Kathryn, we’ve got them. Also, thank you to all our friends who weighed in and supported us along this confusing journey.

I picture five strangers in a floating prison with four gallons of water and three weeks of rations, stonily regarding the infinite, blue seascape. Conversation long ago exhausted, their eyes shift from the tarp covering their meager supply to the deepening lines in each other’s faces, and back to the sea of undrinkable water.

My browser feeds me news of asymptomatic ballplayers and senators testing positive for Covid-19 while the untested hoi polloi hover in limbo, staring at their kitchen cupboards. A family in Freehold, New Jersey, my childhood stomping grounds, is paying the ultimate price for honoring their Sunday dinner tradition. The matriarch and three of her eleven children have died, while others wait out their infection.

In the absence of community testing, we assume that we and everyone around us are carrying the virus. All are guilty until proven innocent. And, should we test negative, that status evaporates when we touch the next community-accessible hard surface, or pass downwind from someone with a dry cough.

The only rational response is to distance ourselves. Bob and I bang around our little dingy, embracing each time we cross paths. We’ve shrunk our world to house and yard, meandering from our news feeds to the garden, to the refrigerator. We subscribe to a spring CSA and start planting potatoes.

This morning I wake from a dream where I am hugging an older woman in a red dress, a familiar stranger with whom I’ve formed an instant bond. What I wouldn’t do for a hug from an outsider.

The United States took action too late. Our curve will look like most other countries, a hockey stick of terrible decisions, drastic action, overwhelmed health care, and triage. I click on a satellite image of two limed trenches in an Iranian graveyard, while our hospitals draft guidelines for who to turn away. The governor extends North Carolina school closures to mid-May. Many of our friends are now sidelined from work, while friends and family in healthcare, food service, and delivery scramble to keep up.

As the sun bears down, the water lures you from your rubber seat. The cooling relief quickly turns to panic when you feel the first bump of a fish against your dangling legs. You claw your way back into your life raft and watch the salt crust bloom across your arms. The fins appear, and you try not to lick your lips.

~*~

On the weekends, we break our quarantine for a walk at the dam. We’ve altered our route as more people take advantage of the park. We test the breeze, doing our best to stay upwind of other strollers. Like us, many take calculated risks: the occasional trip to town for supplies, dinner with the folks, or a walk beyond the confines of home.

I’ve given up my Tuesday walk with Shelley and Amy. Instead, we text and talk on the phone. I compensate by walking out our back gate and disappearing down the trail into Tami’s woods. At my destination, I stand on the big rocks and regard Stinking Creek, hoping to see a deer come down to drink, or perhaps another human being. On the way home, I stop and sit on Carl’s bench, beneath that stately beech. Sometimes I lie back, staring up at the beyond, thinking about what I’ll do with those peppers when I get home.

I have vivid memories of my grandmother, my mother’s mother, arriving a day or two before Mom was released from the hospital with her latest newborn. Grandma’s clean, starchy aroma preceded her, and there she would be, her long, white hair pinned up and the crinkle of a smile behind a pair of unadorned wire rims. She would set down her small, smooth-sided suitcase containing a starched white uniform — day-wear for the job ahead.

My younger brother, Johnny, and I would move forward tentatively and give her sturdy stockinged legs a light embrace, our eyes never leaving her avocado-colored bag. After greetings, Grandma would reach down and trigger the scuffed brass locks, lift the lid, and pull out a package of Chicklets. We stood, excitement scarcely contained, hands extended in humble reverence. Shaking the green pillow squares onto her calloused palm, she distributed two each to Johnny and me, and when he was old enough, Bobby — the big kids who knew how to chew gum without swallowing it.

Sufficiently sanctified, molars already at work piercing the candy gum coating, we would wander off to play or do homework depending on the season. Grandma would go upstairs to change out of her traveling clothes, tie on an apron, and get to work, the sound of her white thick-soled shoes reassuring on the gritty kitchen floor.

For a few days, order would assume its rightful place, everyone relaxed and well-fed, while Grandma swept the remnants of chaos from our home. By the time my mother arrived, all would be calm, laundry caught up, and a hearty stew simmering on our four-burner stove. Mom refers to her mother’s postnatal visit persona as “the eye of the hurricane.”

Mom would ritualistically hand the flannel-wrapped child to her mother, and Grandma would peer at him, arching her neck to inspect his fingers and toes. Her smile of approval made Mom glow with pride, Dad hovering casually in a doorway, one eye on the proceedings as was his custom. Grandma would nod at my mother her secret signal of “I’ve got this,” and Mom would sigh in grateful exhaustion and retire to her room.

I have waited a long time to pay my Grandma’s legacy forward. Somehow I missed out on little Nolan’s early days, but soon I hope to make up for that. Inspired by my Grandma, I envision myself cooking and cleaning, homing in on the rhythms of their household, and helping out where help won’t be intrusive.

I imagine Bob and I making it possible for Emily and Tyler to get the rest they so need at this time, while getting to know little Nolan and Evie. We’ll find out what they like to eat and how they like to play. We’ll see what attracts their attention, take them for walks, read them stories, and cook mashed potatoes and gravy.

When it came time for my grandmother to leave, the family would gather around the ’54 Ford Sedan, both women wiping at their eyes. Dad and Grandma would disappear in the direction of the bus station, Mom would go back to bed, and the baby would sleep on for a while before waking.

Johnny and I would stand, blinking at the disappearing car for a minute before turning to each other. Then we would climb the stairs to the room where Grandma had slept and find the bed turned down, sheets freshly laundered, her scent lingering with a sense of calm purpose. As the house below roared back into anarchy, we would find our compensation prize on the nightstand: a pristine box of green chicklets.

Now that I’m retired, I am finding all manner of diversions to keep me occupied. I weeded our vegetable garden, planted broccoli and cauliflower, took a pick ax to the pampas grass, baked enough cookies to feed an army, re-homed thirty-five pounds of plates, painted sealant on the back porch steps, and tore apart our hall closet.

Everything came out. All boxes exhumed and examined. Decisions were made, items pitched, a portion repackaged and returned to the closet.

This is what made it back into the closet:

• The kid’s childhood sketch books
• 42 rolls of toilet paper
• Hobbles and a green halter in case we need to restrain a wandering horse
• A vacuum cleaner and a cobweb duster
• Letters dating back to the 70’s from friends and relatives, living and dead
• Art, mostly mine, dating back to 1961
• Four picture frames in case we suddenly notice a bare wall
• Supplies for water color, candle-making, embroidery, and crochet in case we decide to get crafty
• Christmas ornaments
• Three soapstone chops and a tin of orangey-pink chop paste we bought in China twenty years ago

I’ve got a big plastic bag headed for the landfill with stuff I couldn’t imagine ever needing for any reason. Things that had been in our closet for eleven years, and some that were shipped from Colorado to Guam to Oahu to Maui and back to Colorado, then Texas, Oilseed, and Troutsfarm.

Hell is not other people. Hell is the stuff you shackle yourself to and haul around from place to place, carefully placing on shelves in a succession of closets in case you might one day find a use for it.