Sweat dripped from the tip of my nose. Although I was hot all over, even in shorts and a tank top, my nose was the only place the sweat managed to bead up and escape. Where most people have an HVAC system, I have a window A/C unit, and a small one, at that.
I rode my bike with an empty, plastic bucket balanced on one handle down the gravel road.
The road would later be paved, but that wouldn’t happen for years, after our old farm house burned down, after the ash trees that lined the drive-way were eaten from the inside out by beetles, and long after our nucleus of four exploded into four very different directions.
With just a little farther to go, I dropped my eyes to a mosquito that landed on my arm. I swatted at it with one hand as the lace in my shoe worked its way out of a loose knot and around the chain of the bike, completely preventing it from any additional movement.
The bike stopped and bucket pulled the handlebars in one direction as my body tried to fly the opposite way, held back by the shoelace, firmly wrapped around the chain. I toppled like a tree in a windstorm, skidding head-first along the road, dragging my legs and the still-connected-by-a-shoe bike behind me.
As I lay on the road, with my foot hopelessly twisted and blood trickling from my knees and elbows, I only thought of the empty bucket. Remaining empty.
There would be no cherry cobbler that night.
Just like this Thanksgiving. There will be no cobbler. No family around the table or extra shoes lined up by the door. As painful as it may be, we will make do without seeing each other in person, but because we must do our part to stop the spread of Covid-19 until a safe vaccine is available, until the hospitals clear out and until we settle into a new normal.
For now, at least we have Zoom.
And like swapping a Pop-tart for a homemade cobbler, it is a pretty disappointing substitute.