Coronavirus by Mail?

Something "funny" just happened. Right after I read and shared a NYT article assessing the risks of being infected by handling delivered mail, my doorbell rang. I walked to the door wondering if it was my neighbor or notification that a Costco grocery package my wife ordered Monday night had been left on the porch even though we weren't expecting it for several more days.

Looking through the peephole, I discovered that it was neither. It was a mail carrier holding a small package I wasn't expecting. So, I opened the door and greeted him and asked if he could just leave the package on the porch. But, of course, he couldn't. It was a package from Thailand and I had to sign for it. So, I signed for it by holding the mail carrier's electronic device and using his pen that had been handled by heaven knows how many people before me, and then I took the package.

The aforementioned article I read and shared said the chances of becoming infected by handling delivered envelopes or packages appear to be minimal although not out of the question. Okay. But what about taking and handling the electronic signature device and pen from the mail carrier and then the package?

Had I thought to be more careful, I could have asked the mail carrier to leave the signing device and package on the porch and step back at least six feet. But, under the circumstances, my mind didn't work that quickly. Actually, I've always been kind of slow on my metaphorical feet if not on my actual ones.

Yes, I washed my hands thoroughly with lots of soap after the encounter. But I've recently been reading, somewhat confusingly, that we're much more likely to become infected by breathing in virus particles expelled into the air by infected people in close proximity than by transferring virus from our contaminated hands to our mouth, nose, or eyes. So, it would seem that I incurred my greatest risk not from the signature device, pen, and package but from the mail carrier himself.

I surmise that the risks from all were vanishingly small. Or were they? These are very uncertain times that leave one anxiously second-guessing so many things.

Not Just Another Birthday Post

For years, I’ve published birthday blog posts where I’ve said I don’t know if I’ll be alive for my next birthday. Well, that’s never been truer than today.

This is not only because I’m a year older and closer to my end whenever that will be, but also because a deadly viral pandemic called Covid-19 is raging around the globe sickening people and claiming lives at exponential rates of increase, and older people are especially prone to die from it with respiratory failure and cardiac arrest.

I am now closer to 70 than I am to 60, placing me squarely and ominously in the “older people” camp, and I may even have one or more co-morbidities of an, as yet, undiagnosed nature that render me even more vulnerable to the virus’ death grip than does my age alone. I’ve never lived through such a time of overt existential threat, discounting, perhaps, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and I’m far from certain that I’m going to come out the other side of this one.

So, this could be my last birthday blog post. Perhaps even my last blog post of any kind. Or maybe there will be many, many more if I not only come through this plague intact, but also renew my desire to write and publish after having passed through an extended dry spell of disillusionment with trying to write anything worth saying and sharing.

It’s not that I have something profound to say here today. I just want to indelibly mark this occasion rather than let it pass unrecognized. I want to express my deep gratitude for the life I’ve been fortunate to live. I say “fortunate” because I don’t begin to deserve the comforts I’ve enjoyed or the pleasures and joys I’ve experienced. I’ve wasted my life and burdened others unconscionably and let them down and worse over the decades.

But if I can make it through this pandemic with my modest passions and abilities intact, maybe I can accomplish something before the end finally comes. I wake up every morning grateful to be alive to greet another day, and I go to bed each night reciting the following prayer of my own composition:

“Lord, please forgive me and everyone else for all the unjustifiable harm we’ve caused ourselves and others and for all the times we could and should have helped ourselves or others but didn’t. And, Lord, please help all of us to do and be our very best from now on and to mindfully shine as bright beacons of wisdom, strength, equanimity, compassion, and lovingkindness lighting the path of goodness, truth, and beauty.”

If I have appreciably longer to live than I think I might, my greatest hope is that I can become a fuller and more radiant embodiment of my nightly prayer for everyone in my life.

Happy Birthday to me in the Time of Covid-19, and thanks to everyone living and long passed who’ve made it possible for me to sit here this evening writing this post in gratitude for my bountiful blessings, remorse for my failings, and deep desire to do better with the time and opportunities that remain.