Spring Drinking

I made a promise to myself after that dreadful day in February. Stowed away in my winter cabin for months, with my quiet wife and loyal but lazy dog, there was not much to do but get drunk and eat and then repeat. By now I had every inch of the cabin memorized. I could tell someone the number of nicks there were in countertops, the number of chips of paint there were on the old wooden window frames, the number of cracks in the paint in the ceiling. That is not a knock on the old cabin, the place suited my purposes.

The cabin was nice, clean, and heated. Out in the middle of nowhere, the cabin allowed me to be detached from the world. I did not have a television to watch sports, I was not receiving a local newspaper, and I surely was not checking emails or taking phone calls. I was isolated, tired from the hectic and dangerous life I had been leading for twenty years. I was in this cabin to get away from it all. After reading all the novels I could, and reliving every memory my wife and I had made over the same period, I had climaxed on events to do to keep myself occupied. Over the months of my remote living, having a beer at 5 o'clock turned in to noon, and the days began to become shorter and hazier, the sleep worse, and my weight was climbing higher. Sensing I lost focus on my reasons for this period of isolation, I made a pact with myself to reset my life when spring came. This pact became non-negotiable after my bender on groundhog's day.

My main promise to myself was that once I was out of this isolation, alcohol would become a thing of my past. Not something to keep me company any longer, not get me by hard times. No, I planned to leave my best friends Miller and Bud behind forever, on the first day of spring, when I would head back to the city, to my house, and my crazy existence. I had it all planned out in my head. Clean the cabin for a day before the first day of spring, pack up, and head back to the city on that first, fresh, crisp, beautiful day of spring.

In my mind, I envisioned smelling the renewed earthly energy of spring in the air as I left the cabin. I envisioned a beautiful sunrise and a beautiful drive through the country as I headed off to the city. I envisioned seeing cars on the two-lane roads and people out enjoying the weather. I envisioned traffic increasing as I made my way closer to the city. I envisioned neighbors walking their dogs, doing yard work, playing outside with their kids, exercising, doing any number of activities one does when the weather outside is as beautiful as I expected it to be that first day of spring. I expected to have my jacket on when I left the cabin in the morning, but by the time I returned to the city in mid-afternoon, I would need a sweatshirt to be comfortable, if that. I expected to return to normalcy, despite how abnormal my normal was to others.

And the weather was perfect, the sunrise was beautiful. The air was crisp and I needed my jacket. The car was loaded, the cabin was locked. I was ready to make the trip from the cabin and through the woods, off to my own house, I would go. With my wife and dog nestled in the Jeep, ready for the trek ahead, I said goodbye to the cabin for the summer and took off down the rocky driveway to get to the two-lane road, to get me out of the one-stoplight town.

Making the right out of the driveway, leaving behind the crunch of the gravel for the smooth sailing on the concrete roads, I was off, ready to get to my reset. While I drove through the one-stoplight town, traffic was minimal, but that is expected in the sleepy little town which played home to my cabin. Mama 'Bel's diner, though, was empty. The one place to get a cooked and served meal in town, Mama 'Bel routinely had customers from sunrise through sunset. The emptiness of the place was an odd sight to see. As I passed by the one-pump gas station, it too did not have a car at the pump nor anyone in the convenience store. If this was not already a sleepy town I may have been spooked, but I thought nothing of it as I ventured towards the freeway. The freeway is where my mind truly began to turn.

Entering the freeway could sometimes be a hassle when there were a lot of cars on the road. Today the roads were empty. Something officially was wrong, but I had no idea what. My quiet wife even noticed how empty the roads were, but for her, the situation did not set off any alarm bells, as she saw this as how the world was working at present. She had the ability to take life one breath at a time. I already had the gut feeling that something was off in our world.

This proved to be true as we moved ever closer to the city and saw none of the normalcy of life happening. Traffic was still minimal. Those drivers we did pass by were wearing masks over their faces as if they were all coming from, or going to, a drywall demolition competition. People were not out walking the streets, stores were empty, restaurants closed. I stopped at the grocery store near my house to re-stock after the long winter break. Lo and behold, I found all the people. In masks, fighting over toilet paper and hand soap. Hoarding steaks and chicken breasts as though each family was cooking for a small army. I attempted to speak to someone and ask what the hell was going on, but they yelled at me for not having a mask on and for being within six feet of them. One lady yelled at me "You're going to get Corona". In my head I replied, no I quit drinking, so I turned around and scurried away.

I get back to the car with my oblivious wife and snoring dog and ask her if she knew what was going on. She had no idea either, so we returned to our home. On the final leg of the trip, no one was outside. No kids playing, no one doing yard work, no spring cleaning messes at the ends of the driveways. The situation was as if the zombie apocalypse had started, so I had to find out what was going on.

I reconnected with the digital world and what I see on the television was unbelievable. The country had been attacked by a mutating virus, killing the young, elderly, and immuno-compromised. The disease was odorless, silent, was passed through the air, and was as visible as the wind. The disease was everywhere, nowhere, and spread from person to person. There was no cure. If you caught the disease, your body either fought it off or you died. No third choice, no do-over, nothing. People were scared and did not want to leave their houses. At this point, I realized what I had to do.

I had to become like them, like the insane people at the grocery store. I needed to go out and get the items we needed to survive. I needed to get a lot of it, whatever we needed to survive, I knew I needed a lot of it. I went to my woodshop, got a safety mask, and made my way to the grocery store. While in the grocery store I plowed and prodded through the aisles and stocked up on what remaining morsels and paper items there were. I had enough food to last for two weeks, long enough for the panic to die down, I thought.

I thought wrong, as two weeks into the panic and crisis, the situation worsened. Small businesses collapsed, tourism ended, travel ended, all people had left to do was eat, drink, get drunk, and repeat. As crazy as life is right now, I still go back to that first beautiful day of spring. The day my life was to reset. The day I left Miller and Bud behind. Well, that day has come and gone, I think the time is right for another beer.