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?”

Carol watched as I completed fastening the top of one of the pergola posts to one of the cross supports. The idea of leaning the post on a steep slant by balancing it on our kitchen step stool in order to reach it and secure it to the cross support had been my idea. That way I could work at ground level and once fastened together, lift both the post and support back into an upright position. It was still a struggle to align the pieces correctly, but I finally succeeded.”I told you this would work,” I said smiling triumphantly.

It arrived in the middle of southern California’s first heat wave of the season. The directions to assemble read like an IKEA divorce decree. Ever the optimist, even Carol was doubtful. “I don’t think we can do this,” she said, as she surveyed the posts, arches, cross structures, staves, supports and enough hardware to start our own Ace is the place.

As I slowly morph into the couch I occupy daily, Carol strives to maintain social distancing from the spore of a mushroom I am inexorably becoming. The problem for her, I believe, is that she fears I’m not afraid of becoming “fungible” (to coin a new and unexpected meaning of the term), And in this, Carol is correct.

In 2017, Mike Madigan’s life ended abruptly on April 19 in a car accident. The end of Carolyn Marquardt’s life began on April 17th, with hospital treatment for a leukemia she was not to survive. For Carol and me, April has been the cruelest month for the past three years.

One positive thing the coronavirus has demonstrated is the broad adaptive range of the human mind. People have been doing amazing things to remain active and engaged within the confines of stay-at-home quarantining. Still, there’s great impatience to get daily life back to normal. In other words, hitting the snooze alarm and wishing it was Saturday rather than Tuesday. Getting the kids up and ready for school, figuring out a meal plan for dinner, fitting the routine errands around your work schedule, commuting traffic, blowing off the trip to the gym because you’re just too exhausted from all of the above. In other words, you want back what used to drive you to the edge of insanity day in and day out.

I was thinking of those film clips of Germany’s invasion of Poland at the start of WWII. The rampage of men, tanks and cannons over the Polish countryside looked a lot like the way Carol was attacking the mildew on our porch roof. It was a blitzkrieg of cleaning, with Tilex and mops and brooms scouring the porch landscape like it was the Poznan forest being overrun by German panzers.

Carol’s attempts to get me off the couch have taken some unexpected turns. The initial rollout of chores and errands demonstrated the impregnability of my Fortress of Decrepitude. Her occasional clarion calls of “the weeds are back,” or “the car could use a wash and wax,” or “we’re out of food,” were met with a level of unresponsiveness usually associated with talking to a wall.

One afternoon Carol spotted the little frying pan and spatula that I use for breakfast on the stove. “Did you fry something for lunch?” she asked.

The raw numbers suggest a story that doesn’t fit the reality. Carol was married in a civil ceremony on Gibraltar on May 14,1973. She reprised those vows in a Roman Catholic service in New York City on May 28, 1973. I married my first wife on August 23, 1974, and then married Carolyn in August of 2013. And then on February 13, 2020 Carol Madigan married Reid Champagne. For those of you among the anal retentive set (of which I am your president), that amounts to six ceremonies covering a total of five marriages.