I Think it's going to rain today

I woke up with this song in my head.
This morning I realized it is Friday the 13th of March. Back in the ER tonight.

After a week of summer weather.

Woke up to rain.

Last night was a tipping point I think. People in the United States started to realize that -- regardless of whether they personally got sick -- the next few weeks or months were going to be disrupted. It was the cancellation of major sporting SEASONS -- not just events. The statewide school closures that likely got people's attention. On the way home from school yesterday, my 15 year old daughter said "it feels like this dystopian novel I read at the start of the year."

She said she felt that the coming days would be historic -- something that she would look back on and say that she remembered living through it. The weight of events, piling up one upon another on all of our minds.

This morning, Amy and I went to buy groceries after dropping our daughter off at school. A typical payday morning routine for us. Early morning shopping means empty stories and so we like getting what we need and getting back home before the rest of the world gets out the door. This morning, the stores were packed, but people were patient and courteous. Their smile and kindness reassuring, but I saw a lot of husbands out filling carts with lists from their wives. "Why am I buying bottled water?" asked one. "We have water at home, we never drink bottled water." Another complained that he thought it was all just a big hoax, his cart filled with supplies.

My daughter remarked on this too. Just like in the novel, she said, people fall into three categories -- those that worry and prepare, those that don't believe anything will happen and those that panic and act irrationally.

I've been in the medical field for 15 years, so I don't tend to panic. It doesn't accomplish much and burns energy that could be spent on other things. I also think in worst case scenarios -- because that has long been part of my job. A job I return to tonight.

I have plans to limit the spread to my family. Changing out of scrubs and decontaminating at work -- something I always do anyway. I even have our little camper prepared to go if I need to self-quarantine at home.

I go back to work tonight.

I work with a vulnerable population and I expect to see bad outcomes.

Additionally I worry about the stress all this will cause to compound things. Car accidents in busy grocery store parking lots, domestic violence and abuse. Quack cures that do more harm than good. Despair and the diseases that follow on from despair.

Randy Newman wrote "I Think It's Going to Rain Today" back in 1963 ... wrote it for someone else to sing. It is one of his most covered songs, recorded by dozens of acts in the 60s adn 70s. 

He told Rolling Stone: 

"The music is emotional – even beautiful – and the lyrics are not. The honest truth is the song bothered me because of the darkness."

Human kindness is overflowing.

And I think it's going to rain today.

-30-