Corona, Cat Poop and Lessons in Letting Go of Control

It’s 8 p.m. and whatever time zone Maui is in. Time switched a week ago, but Hawaii doesn’t do daylight savings time. Why would it? There’s an overabundance of rainbows and sunsets and what the mainland does with time really does seem insignificant out here. So, I actually only count time as what’s on my watch, adding 6 hours whenever I need to know what back home might or might not be doing.

Yet I am in this twilight zone sort of place. Yes, it’s paradise but it’s also a very weird place to be. Most of the mainland is going into a weird quarantine and curfew state of affairs yet as relevant as it feels, I am thousands of miles away from the heartbeat of this unprecedented frenzy.

Half of this tropical island is aggravated that mainlanders have continued to travel here and possibly shed the gosh awful corona virus to a vulnerable and very isolated locale. There are still plenty of alohas shared but social media can’t hide the growing sentiment that most of us should have just stayed home. You know, over there in that time zone that just jumped a full hour to add extra daylight to an already dreary situation.

I choose to think that I am helping to keep an area financially afloat that depends heavily on year round tourism money by continuing my vacation in a non-panicked mode. Truth be told, as the cases of this novel virus start to really climb, I am acutely aware that my husband and I escaped 10 days before anyone really knew exactly what was happening.

Back in Brooklyn, one of the hotbed areas, our daughter works in a retail company based out of Los Angeles that has yet to understand what is going down in NYC. I listen to her during one of her daily check-ins, frustrated that most of the businesses in her area have shut down while she continues to work for a company that somehow doesn’t recognize the gravity of the mainly international customers passing through her store. Our other grown kid works in the financial world back in Maryland and has come down with what I imagine is simply a cold virus but is struggling to figure out if he should or should not return to work and possibly risk exposing older colleagues to whatever he has. In the meanwhile, my 88 year old Mom is in a whole other state in an assistive living facility where I can only trust that the system there has already been hyper vigilant with an already fragile population.

As a daughter and mom, I want to run home and remove all of them from this insane scenario that is playing out. But as God would have it, He has placed this praying but very concerned momma 4900 or so miles away from all of them. This used to be our family’s way of escaping reality for a couple of weeks at a time every couple of years, but oddly this trip is the first time to any Hawaiian island without either kid. My husband and I knew one day they wouldn’t join in on the fun because let’s face it, the goal all along has been to kick them off the parental payroll. Success can have its drawbacks you know.

And then there’s the equal opportunity pooper. Because doesn’t everyone need a rescue project like a cat who has a dermatology budget the size of a 72 year old botox queen who often expresses his displeasure with how life is playing out by crapping on whichever bed has the most recently cleaned sheets? This rescue cat who also shares a dermatologist with the monkeys at the Baltimore Zoo somehow throughout the years developed the disgusting habit of rotating bedrooms as his litter box of the day. Only when pissed off though. Problem is, how do you know exactly when and what ticks off a cat?

Drew’s girlfriend, Taylor, has been beyond gracious over the past couple of years whenever Andy and I have traveled to keep an eye on our house and to keep Oliver, the resident pooper, content—or rather medicated. And she has learned throughout her "keeping of Oliver” the value of an industrialized size jug of Nature’s Miracle—an enzymatic cleaner that works nothing shy of a miracle. This past Hawaiian trip has not disappointed. This cat has cornered the market on passive aggressive maneuvers. Oliver kind of sums up this whole crappy situation. One poop at a time.

Sometimes I think that all our country and world need is a really large jug of Nature’s Miracle. The liquid magic inside removes all stains and odors and fixes the bed linens back to pre-pissed off (or pooped) Oliver. Whether God is angry with this world or just watching society screw up things again all on our own, it would be nice if a little bit of warmth, sunshine and fresh air—basically nature’s miracle, could fix this whole crappy situation in which the entire crazy world seems to have found itself.

It still remains to be seen how this whole virus thing will play out and resolve itself—weeks or months maybe of disruption that we could never have imagined just a little while ago. In the meantime, I will keep the prayers going for all of us and each day that I get a little closer to having to check the airline for our return flight, I wonder if I might be forced to delay the return to reality. And to be honest, I’m not sure that would be too terribly awful. Way out here in the middle of the Pacific, I have days to contemplate what is happening to our world as I wander lava fields, gaze at the biggest rainbows ever painted across the sky and watch humpback whales and turtles frolic in the sea completely unbothered by anything apocalyptic or menacing.

I like to think that God approves of my inability to control any of this crappy situation while finding beauty amongst the uncertainty. Maybe it’s way past time that we all give up a little control and begin to fight to find the blessings wherever we are right now—regardless of time zone. God bless and be well!