The Month of Nerves

Thirty days from today, Pam and I will leave Short Pump at some as yet to be determined hour of the night to make the drive to Maine for a month of lake living twenty minutes from the Atlantic Ocean. Due to COVID-19 concerns we will be making the drive up straight through for the first time in probably twenty years to eliminate the need for a hotel. I’m thinking we will leave around 1:00 in the morning which will put us at or near Camden, Maine somewhere around 4:00 in the afternoon. However, this arduous journey is the least of my worries.

It’s probably a dangerous reality of my life that I place so much significance on my time in Maine. It is the central event on each year’s calendar, the measuring point for everything else. How many days before Maine? is a question that is eternally asked in my house. In recent years even the month of July isn’t enough to scratch the itch, so we’ve added a two-three week fall trip. This year its even worse. I’ve thought of little else for the past eleven weeks of this insufferable pandemic. But now that it is so close I can practically smell it, the reality of the risks we face have become clear and are as follows:

1. Suppose one of us gets sick in the next thirty days? 

2. Suppose someone we love gets sick in the next thirty days?

3. Suppose there is a catastrophic surge in cases nationwide that forces another lockdown quarantine to be declared A. Before we leave or B. Once we are there?

4. Suppose one of us gets sick after we arrive in Maine—where the medical facilities aren’t as numerous or as well-equipped?

I’ve often thought that it was possible to love something too much, to desire a thing with too much intensity, transforming it into something close to an idol. For me, my time in Maine is getting close to that status. So, this year, I want it even more, which means that for the next thirty days I will be sweating bullets. June will be a month of nerves, a time of great caution in the Dunnevant household.

Maine has been and continues to be my get out of jail free card. Can’t imagine losing it in 2020 of all years.