My Covid Scrapbook

When I look back on this crazy time, I will think of the Zodiac killer.

Mid-summer, months into Covid's long reign, my family and I took a short trip. That's not important. What matters is that we took the Garden State Parkway to get home, and our tire exploded.

Or something like this. It stopped working.

There we were on a busy highway, and I had a small infant in my arms. My husband reached a towing company by phone, and--with admirable speed--a happy, wheezing, middle-aged man arrived on the scene. He didn't have a mask--didn't apologize for lacking a mask--but this seemed to be a bad time to hop on a public-health soap-box. ("Sure, I died of Covid--but at least I didn't offend anyone!")

We all climbed into the cab of a tow-truck, and as we drove along, my new friend gave a speech about his health problems, and about the advantages of savvy gambling. "I made a pile that weekend, and let's just say my winnings were helpful with my ex-wife...." My friend also shared a rough recipe for shrimp parmesan, and he breathed and breathed and breathed all over my son.

Long story short: The Barrett-Solomons ended up staying in a Motel Six, because, for various boring reasons, a flat tire was something that literally no one in New Jersey could fix without a good twenty hours of strategizing and labor. My husband and I ate Chinese food and watched Zodiac on a small TV screen, and we were awake long into the night, wondering if Arthur Allen really was the killer. (In case you missed this: Zodiac is a great movie.)

The next day, the Barrett-Solomons were back on the road, listening to a much-loved podcast about Dolly Parton. Dolly was struggling to find a way to extricate herself from a toxic bond with her abusive producer, and so she wrote "I Will Always Love You"; she actually wrote this as a letter, and thus she killed several (several!) birds with one stone.

I'm not sure I learned anything from all of this. Pay attention to the state of your tires? If you want to make God laugh, tell Her your plans?

That's my memory-walk down Covid Lane.

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