On Monday night, the San Francisco area announced a policy called “shelter-in-place.” This was a directive asking all non-essential businesses to close and for families to stay in their homes unless seeking groceries or medical care.
I knew our area would be the next to issue such a decree.
After my haunting experience at the grocery store, I was beginning to feel a little uneasy about the whole situation. As I was preparing a french toast bake for friends the next morning, I suddenly thought, “Should I be wasting eggs on this? There were NO eggs at the grocery store.”
“Nonsense,” I told myself. “You are called to be hospitable. It’s not dependent on circumstances. Treating friends to breakfast is a joy.” I cracked six eggs and trusted God we would somehow get more.
A couple of friends came over the next morning, and our kids had fun playing together. We ate french toast and chatted and let the kids paint and go on a hunt for Shamrocks since it was St. Patrick’s Day. We were a group of nine, and the current limit on social gatherings was ten or fewer. I knew we probably wouldn’t get to have friends over again for a long time after that…
Sure enough, in the late afternoon, a shelter-in-place was issued for Orange County. I had sipped my last latte in the coffee shop the day before. We had our final playdate for the indefinite future that same morning. Micah even worked out our gym twice on Tuesday, once in the early AM and once on his lunch break, when he learned it would be shutting down at noon that day. We did everything we could before we could do nothing at all.
I was scrolling the Nextdoor app later that evening and noticed people discussing car robberies in our neighborhood. Apparently, people were breaking into cars to steal recently purchased toilet paper and other items. A friend texted me and said her brother’s car had been broken into and someone had stolen their diaper bag, probably in search of coveted baby wipes. It turns out my instinct to hide my pathetic liquor store toilet paper in the back seat the day prior was not so crazy after all…
