Having my wife around to help get the girls up and running in the mornings has been very helpful.  An earlier start allows us to do everything we need to get done in the morning and creates some wiggle room for the unexpecteds.  And the girls like to see their mom in the mornings.  This morning, my wife needed to leave for work too early for it to make sense to get the girls up.  I usually wake up when her alarm goes off and then try to stay out of her way while she gets ready for work.  So, I was up and wide awake this morning after she left and had some time before I wanted to get the girls up.  I decided that it would be nice to just sit in the quiet, drink some coffee, and read the newspaper. 

I went into the kitchen, filled my mug, dropped the paper on the kitchen table, pulled a chair out and sat down on it.  I was confused and alarmed when I slid my chair under the table and heard nothing.  There was no sound of chair legs sliding across the tiles.  None of the squeaking, honking, or scraping noises that I expected to hear.  I sat completely still and wondered if I’d lost my hearing.  After a few moments of racing thoughts and silent panic I slammed the palm of my left hand down on the table and said the word, “Sound!” out loud.  I heard my voice and the sound of my hand slapping the wooden table.  I was happy that I could hear but was confused as to why the chair hadn’t made any noise. 

I sat up straight in my chair, turned my head to my right and looked down to see that the floor was gone.  There appeared to be nothing beneath the chair.  Staring downward, I could see a deep void filled with different shades of blacks and grays.  The darkness was interrupted by swooping, moving ribbons of soft colors sliding in arcs and circles and then fading away.  I looked to the left of my chair and around the kitchen and saw more of the same.  The entire kitchen floor was gone.  There was nothing holding me up.  But there I sat, trying to gauge the size of the ribbons of light and figure out how far below me they were.  The longer I looked, the further down I seemed to be seeing.  I was hovering over a void.   

I heard a sound from upstairs and instinctively looked up.  When I looked down again, the floor had returned.  I tapped my foot on it a couple times to confirm what my eyes were seeing and then I slid my chair out from under the table.  I took comfort in the obnoxious squeal the chair legs made, and I got up to go greet whichever girl was awake at the bottom of the stairs.  It was Audio.  I could tell by the sound of her cough before I could see her.  I likely woke her up with my shouting and whacking the table.   

My wife and I are still dealing with coughs, and I’ve had a sore throat.  Dee Dee still has a stuffed-up nose.  And, while Audio hasn’t had a fever for a few days, she has a pretty bad cough.  Last week, she fell asleep after school on a couple of afternoons while watching TV.  It’s been ten weeks since school started, and we’ve all been sick the whole time.  I don’t speak with Dee Dee’s classmates or parents.  But I’ve asked her every day about how many kids are out sick, and the number has hovered between twenty and twenty five percent.   I get to see Audio’s classmates and can see that those who wait for the teacher with us have runny noses and coughs.  And talking with parents, at or away from school, it seems that like we heard as COVID-19 ramped up, we’re all in this together.