The other day, loud banging suddenly disturbed the rhythmic progress of pointless respiration emanating from my sector of the couch. Dogged residuals of traditional masculinity fired urgent messages to my brain that I needed to see what was up.

Chalmette, as I was told as a kid, was built on reclaimed swampland. It was said, when you dug in your backyard, you might unearth an old refrigerator or a window air conditioner. I never believed it until I saw my father dig up an old a/c and tried to get it to work.*

Then there was the day at Our Lady of Prompt Succor that we were all marched out of our classrooms and onto the playground at the school’s main entrance. It was not announced as a fire drill. The entire school stood in lines and waited. After a time, we returned to our classrooms. Later, a story circulated that we had been marched out in the open to determine whether the school was harboring any black pupils. Who was doing the verifying I never heard.

The house my parents bought on Patterson Drive in Chalmette, Louisiana represented the very lowest rung on the ladder for the fledgling upwardly mobile middle class of the mid 1950s. The salad days for the neighborhood was when crawfish was 30 cents a pound, the big oil refinery in town could go a whole year without a major explosion, and the aluminum plant had built a huge smokestack that now sent its particulate pollution over the river to Algiers rather than letting it continue to rain down over Chalmette.

Most anniversaries celebrate longevity and joy. Then there are the anniversaries that widows know. Where do you find something to celebrate or be joyful about there?

Each of us has our own way of converting all family memories into fond ones. These are mine.

The other day Carol announced she was going out. Back in a time that is now lost to history, she would have said simply: “I have to run to the store.” But since running to the store nowadays is a call to arms for the warrior class, Carol’s announcement carried the weight of a loved one deploying to Iraq.

One positive of the coronavirus quarantine is knowing that your spouse’s sudden preoccupation with the UPS guy is merely the result of increased online shopping. I’ve been struck by how many things we’re finding we need to buy, now that we can have it delivered instead of fighting traffic and mall crowds. And, yes, I understand that there are people who enjoy the bustle and interaction of traffic and crowds, especially after weeks of not being around them.

I’ve been 70 for a year now, which is perhaps a deceptive way of saying I’m now 71. Actually, I’ve been 71 for almost two months. Which, of course, is an offhand way of saying I’m going on 72.

We’d planned to meet for the first time on this day, two years ago. I’d fly in the evening before from Seattle, and meet Carol for a tour of the mission and then lunch in San Juan Capistrano. Flying standby and not wanting to risk not getting a seat on the last plane of the day, I arrived at the airport early the morning of May 3rd, and got a seat on the first flight out. That put me in California around 11:00 a.m., now a full day earlier than planned. Trying not to appear over eager, or worse, that I was bending the terms of our plans, I casually texted that I had arrived, and would hang out somewhere until I could check in to my hotel. Carol texted back: “Tell me why we’re not having lunch together?”