Through Dr. Geist's Looking Glass

We would meet EVERY Tuesday at 4:15 during Covid. As the world was shut down, stores and schools, libraries and stadiums, playgrounds, doctor's offices and gyms I would drive to him. The streets were empty except for my red-wine Hyundai, which I would park several houses down, so his wife wouldn't see. Then I would sneak in-between the tall tight bushes that lined his front yard. I would hastily walk to the side door, leading to his workshop. Before Covid we would meet here, same day and time, only he would invite me in, with a wide tooth grin and enfold me in his arms. But now I drove the forty-minute round trip for a few minutes to eye him behind the glass. I felt like John Travolta in "The boy in the glass bubble" who lacked an effective immune system, so he had to stay away from people in an isolated chamber and suit (if he ventured out)

It's a blurry picture because I was taking it from outside with only my phone of him walking toward me. And I did fast. But the memory still lasts of that year, like hieroglyphics carved on a tomb of yesterdays, when doors opened up to me and children played merrily and traffic lined the streets, and harried drivers beeped their horns. Now we don't talk...........