The Lady in the Blue Box: Love Story: "How I Met Your Mother" 2020 version

or, How I Met Your Father: The Honest and Serious Answer

By Rachel Beth Ahrens

A real How I Met Your Mother TV series twisted story based on a true story during the Corona Virus epidemic of 2020.

TRIGGER WARNING: Very emotional themes, some profanity, not suitable for the young at heart, not suitable for adults who think I’m a crazy person that is too neurotic and needs to grow up and “take crazy pills”. Reader discretion is advised.

This article is a typical 10,000 word feature story for a magazine or a memoir. Please be advised. You are warned.

Kids, before I tell you this story, you should really watch a little of the TV show How I Met Your Mother that used to be on CBS, which was a very popular show when your mommy was going to college. It lasted less than a decade, about nine years, telling the story of a guy named Ted Mosby, who’s an old middle aged man telling his teenage children the real story of how he met his friends, their Aunt Robin, and of course, how he met the girl of his dreams, Tracy McConnell, the kids’ mommy.

Ted Mosby also had the same bedtime rule that your mommy has with you: Nobody should stay awake after two in the morning, because nothing ever happens after 2 a.m., with the exception of the day Ted’s son Luke was born. So, kiddies, remember your mommy’s rule still stands that nothing good ever happens after 2 a.m., so go to sleep before midnight like good little boys and girls.

But the How I Met Your Mother story does not apply to the romantic story of Rachel-meets-possible-future-husband. In fact, your mommy’s story is not very romantic at all, because it’s actually very depressing.

Your mommy and daddy met at the worst possible time for ANY HUMAN to be dating anybody. Now I know what you’re thinking, why is this? There is no possible time of year that is the worst time to meet your Prince Charming. How about this…

Your mom met your dad through ONLINE DATING. During A WORLDWIDE EPIDEMIC CALLED THE CORONA VIRUS.

It was the month of May in the year 2020, 100 years since the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, the Jazz Age, Prohibition, the Roaring Twenties with the flapper generation, the ratification of the 19th Amendment for women’s rights, and the historic year F. Scott Fitzgerald published your mom’s favorite classic American novel, The Great Gatsby. In January that year, your mom hoped that New Year’s Eve would bring her joy and a promising career where she could stand on her two feet again, after your grandpa Bobby Ahrens started cancer treatments for colon cancer a year ago and also went back and forth to the hospital for his diabetes, the dehydration, the infections, and spent more than a month in physical therapy due to losing his ENTIRE LEG above the knee from a staph infection in his left foot because your grandpa was terrible at looking out for his diabetes.

But then that year, your mommy, and your grandpa and Grandma Julie who your mom still lived with her parents when she was 31, never moved out of her parents’ house because of your grandpa’s health reasons and because your mom had the worst timing in finding a job with her mental illness of bipolar and anxiety… The newsmen told us there was an epidemic in China spreading like a flu virus, but it felt like a very bad cold. The Centers for Disease Control in the United States called it COVID19, as it was first discovered in a tiny Chinese town in 2019, a month or two before your mom celebrated New Year’s. Nobody knew what the cause was to lead to this virus and the President at the time, who your mommy and daddy, even your grandparents HATE- Donald Trump, who was on that horrible reality TV show The Apprentice, said nothing but lies about how it spread and that there’s an easy fix, and he had no accountability. There was no cure, no vaccine, and not even a real medicine available to suppress the symptoms of this thing they called the Corona Virus. Weeks after Corona Virus reached the West Coast in Washington, Oregon, and California, then hitting New York City and State the hardest like a two ton anvil, Corona Virus hit Maryland where your parents live, but still hitting it in the south, close to D.C., in Montgomery County first. The governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, who by the way is not an evil man even though he’s a Republican, Governor Hogan is the good guy in this story, he declared Maryland in a State of Emergency, closed all the schools, and in weeks, towards the end of March, Governor Hogan put his Stay Home Directive in place throughout the state- it’s a kinder, more positive way of saying “quarantine”.

People had to wear masks and bandannas in grocery stores and drug stores, even the Dollar Store. All the restaurants were shut down, no shopping mall would ever open for business. Playgrounds and dog parks were permanently closed until further notice. You could never go shopping at a Five Below, and you weren’t allowed outside to get a breath of fresh air at all, unless you were shopping at a grocery store buying milk and water for your refrigerator. People went crazy and started buying ridiculous amounts of soap, hand sanitizer, medicines, alcohol (both kinds of stuff to fight bacteria and to get drunk on) and toilet paper so much that all the grocery stores had completely empty shelves that the next customer, such as a 90 year old elderly woman, had to walk away with nothing to provide for her family. People were getting laid off from their jobs because their businesses and restaurants felt that they couldn’t maintain their businesses during the epidemic with Governor Hogan’s order to close everybody except the essential places. The only places you could shop for clothes in 2020 were Walmart, Target, or on the internet, where you could never try on any new clothes until you buy the shirt or dress, and you have to return it immediately if it doesn’t fit so you can get a better size, only to find out that the internet store doesn’t have the correct size you’re looking for that’s a perfect fit. Amazon’s business was booming on their website while the economy and the Stock Market was forced to shut down forever. President Trump, the villain, was getting as angry and impatient like his citizen followers, like your great grandma Joan Hawk, my mom’s mother, screaming that we must reopen America and the economy, while Governor Hogan, the hero, said that if we reopen Maryland too soon, more people will get infected with the Corona Virus and die like the millions of people dying from the virus around the world.

In April, there was no cure, no medicine to treat the virus, no vaccine, and no end in sight. The scientists at the CDC said they would most likely find a vaccine no problem, but it would never take a day, a month, or a summer. They said that all human life in the world would need to wait a YEAR for a vaccine for the Corona Virus, so the people were told to stay home and never leave home except for buying toilet paper and groceries, until a year from now when they find a cure and a vaccine. Any person who tested positive for the virus was ordered to never leave their bedroom for 14 days and no more, even if the person sick with COVID19 had no symptoms at all. This horrible super virus could not be easily detected as the flu bug—it was actually easier to test for AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases than the Corona Virus, which is why it was so frightening! The virus symptoms usually felt like a super terrible cold with a high fever, a nasty cough, and wheezing, but no sinus problems most of the time. And the people the virus killed already had severe chronic diseases or were older than 65 years old- people with diabetes, cancer, lung problems like COPD, asthma, and chronic bronchitis, heart disease, heart failure, high blood pressure, and people with weak immunity problems.

Sad to say, as the story goes, your Grandpa Bobby got asthma when he was a little boy, and he’s had the worst case of asthma ever since, for more than 50 years. Grandpa, who was only 58 when the virus hit Maryland, had ALL of these severe diseases, mainly because of the asthma and his bad diet and no exercise. He had heart disease, colon cancer, diabetes, gout, sleep apnea, and afib on top of his asthma, making Grandpa Bobby the #1 victim that the Corona Virus wanted to kill. The President of America may have been one of the villains, but the Corona Virus is the biggest villain of all in this story.

That is where this story begins. In the middle of the Stay Home Directive by Governor Hogan in May, 2020.

Mommy Rachel was going back to school at CCBC, a two year community college, to get her second degree in business, because your mom’s Bachelor’s degree in journalism at Towson was useless—it’s hard getting a job as a reporter or a secretary in Baltimore, really! And a few years before that, she tried to get help from the state government working with people who had mental disabilities like her, but even they discriminated against her too by calling her a nervous wreck to her face! (A job coach said that to her when she closed out her case with them and decided to never come back. That job coach was hired by the state to work FOR me to help me find a job, and she said my behavior was “disgusting and intolerable for employment”! And yet, I’ve held many full time jobs before, some through temp agencies, most of them paid, and those employers never had any problems with my behavior. She never understood how my mental illness worked, since it’s different for everybody. She was abusive and also a flake—in the contract she signed, she promised to meet with me 4-6 times a month, and she met with me no more than ONCE a MONTH, if I was lucky!) Your mom was a GREAT student, for the most part, because in the fall semester, don’t know how this happened, she made it on the Dean’s List again for the fifth time since spring 2019, and she’d just got into the Essex campus Honors Student Program! Your mom was also GREAT allies with the President of the COLLEGE- Dr. Sandra Kurtinitis, another hero in this story, who is a friend to your mom’s former mentor and the former Director of Student life at her college, Rashida, who now has a Ph.D and lives happily in New Orleans. Your mom one day wants to visit the Big Easy so she can listen to a real live jazz band, eat a beignet, and hope to be reunited with her old friend Rashida, just to say hi at her. After all, many years ago when your mom was a college student, she was the secretary of Student Government for two years, which is how she and Rashida met, and how she got to meet Dr. K!

When news of the Corona Virus hit Maryland, and no one could have predicted this in their whole lives, Dr. Kurtinitis was left with no choice but to shut down all three college campuses of CCBC immediately on March 12, 2020, because she was worried about the virus spreading to the students and the teachers. She also never saw the Stay Home Directive coming, she had to move ALL classes, including face-to-face classes, to be online through Blackboard ONLY. The entire spring semester of 2020 was cancelled then and there, spring break lasted two whole weeks, and everybody learning at the college was forced to take the rest of the semester through the internet with little to no help from tutors, no help from their classmates, no library meetings- all the libraries were closed- and all teachers had to talk to their students through the college email or Zoom video chats only.

This frustrated the HELL out of your mother. You know that ever since she turned 25 years old, mommy HATES TECHNOLOGY! That’s why she’s broken so many electronic devices, you remember the story of how your mom “inadvertently” murdered five laptop computers and abused the heck out of her government issued cell phone from 2015, which she used throughout going back to college, but was horrible because it had features dating back to the year 1999 in the Stone Age of technology, decades before you were born! And worst of all, that 2015 government cell phone was indestructible, no matter how hard she smashed it!

Which brings us to the story. Grandma Julie had to sell your mommy’s one and only house she ever lived in her whole life, 20 years of her life, because Grandpa Bobby wanted to avoid foreclosure and eviction- another phrase for becoming homeless and poor- and also to hopefully find a better house to live in that had room for grandpa’s wheelchair, prosthetic leg, and walkers. Mommy and Grandma Julie looked everywhere for a new house we could buy with the money we made from selling our house, but nobody wanted to take our money because all three of us, your mom, grandpa, and grandma, all had no jobs! The social worker told your grandma that the only thing she was allowed to do with our money was rent a house or an apartment, at least for one year, until one of us got a job, or at least until Grandpa Bobby got his special Social Security Income for people who were disabled. But Social Security denied us four times, the last time being in February, when grandpa was in the hospital the seventh time in the span of a year since he was diagnosed with cancer.

All the houses mommy and grandma searched were either too small for a family of three, had antique appliances dating back almost a hundred years into the 1950s or 60s, or the bathrooms were too small and had tiny sinks and no room for grandpa’s wheelchair, not a good thing for a nurse’s or physical therapist’s requirements for a disabled person. By March 7, while grandpa was in the hospital, mommy and grandma made our last arrangements in my childhood house and said our last goodbye, and just like that… We were HOMELESS. March 12, the day Dr. Kurtinitis shut down my school forever, was the day grandma sold the house, signing the legal papers with the lawyers and handing the deed to our house to the new owner and his real estate agent. My mom and I lived in a hotel for almost a month, up until the end of March when Governor Hogan issued his final executive order for the quarantine on the state, because stupid people were doing stupid things: not washing their hands, not wearing any masks, throwing their disposable gloves on the street or on the floor and not the trash can, touching their faces, and touching other people, like kissing, hugging, and shaking hands, when the CDC had the biggest rule to “not come within six feet apart from people” to stop spreading the virus.

Grandma and your mom were not allowed to visit Grandpa Bobby AT ALL when he was in the hospital during the virus outbreak in Baltimore. All visitors, even family, were banned from your grandpa’s hospital where he did his physical therapy. Grandma Julie hated this because she wanted and needed her husband to help her get through this on her own, and she was scared. Your great grandma was terrible at helping her daughter and granddaughter. Since Great Grandma Joan’s sixth husband died on Christmas, she was ruthless, mean, and rude to her own family all over again, just like all the other times that she was widowed or divorced, only this time, she was also twice more racist and homophobic to everyone else as well.

And your mommy felt your grandma’s pain TENFOLD. She missed her dad, she missed her cute pink bedroom, she missed having her own bed because she now shared a hotel bed with her mom and her loyal and perky dachshund puppy Cinder, she missed being in the classroom physically in school, she desperately missed her friends… but most of all, your mommy’s heart had been broken by another evil man in her life, her emotionally, verbally, and mentally abusive ex boyfriend, and she was lonely. She was having fights with your grandma almost every other day, your grandma even threatened to beat up your mother for stupid reasons, thinking that your mom’s behavior was the problem and she could turn off her mental illness with a switch. But that’s not how bipolar disorder works, and you should know that: with bipolar, the brain never sleeps and never shuts off. During the Corona Virus, your mommy would stay up all night long until 4 or even 5 in the morning! And then she’d sleep for what felt like forever- sleeping until 1 or 2 o clock in the afternoon, completely missing both breakfast and lunch! This made your grandpa very angry at her. The mood swings would hit your mother in waves, spanning seconds or minutes, depending on the day, or depending on the problem at hand most of the time. Your mom’s crying spells of depression or her angry rage she calls mania would drive your grandma crazy because she thought, “Now I have to fix my daughter’s problems, because my daughter is sick and broken, my husband is sick and broken, why do I have to be the wife and mother who does everything around here? When can I finally do something for myself!”

At the end of March, finally, your mom got a real home, but it was only temporary. Grandma Julie had no choice but to settle for a tiny apartment in White Marsh. Mommy Rachel HATED it, she was furious! Her bedroom was only half the size of her bedroom at the house she used to live, and her new closet was only 25% of the size of her old closet! The movers stored her gorgeous dresser the wrong way in the storage unit and now her favorite dresser was broken; she could never use it again! Now her parents had to buy brand new furniture to replace EVERYTHING, and worse, mommy’s new bedroom door was broken too- it was falling off the hinge already! Even Grandma Julie hated the apartment- the breakfast bar in the kitchen was a disgusting excuse for a dining room- the apartment had no dining room in the first place, and the kitchen was horribly too small to fit a dining table! Grandma and grandpa hated islands in the middle of a kitchen, but the kitchen with a “breakfast bar” island was all they could afford to have. The breakfast bar had a big empty wall above with no cupboards, unlike the model apartment home she saw, and grandma kept banging her head against that wall- literally- all by accident, the last time she did it, grandma got a big skull contusion that led to big massive migraines for an entire week! If grandpa didn’t put something squishy up there soon to protect his wife’s head, Grandma Julie would have gotten a big concussion and would have stayed in the hospital for days!

Mom was getting anxious to leave this place, but she actually became a huge shut-in with a big case of agoraphobia- that’s a big word that means a fear of leaving home, a big fear of crowds, and a fear of being outside in a public place or situation. Your mom had issues with calling this new apartment her home, she still could never call it home for months, ever since the COVID19 quarantine order was in place the very same day she moved in- March 31. She already knew her favorite science fiction conventions with her daddy’s friends were going to be cancelled, and they were- both Balticon and Shore Leave were forced to be cancelled for the whole year, or just held through Zoom video chats only. She missed her new friend Rebecca from school, and worst of all, your mommy must have been one heck of a singer, even though she denies that and says she sings horribly- because earlier that month, her college’s Student Life office told her she just made the final cut to perform in their Talent Show! The worst part about that was, mommy hadn’t sung any karaoke since after the fall semester, and before that, not since she broke up with that horrible ex boyfriend she dated for three years, especially when he took her friend’s side of an argument that lasted all year long. And guess what the fight between your ex-Aunt Tiffany Keats and your mom was about? Your mommy’s behavior and her mental illness, that’s what. Her ex boyfriend sided against her and told your mom that she “has to change” and “lock your emotions down, I know you can do it”, but just saying those things over and over again, especially at a karaoke contest while your grandpa was dealing with cutting off his leg and losing his independence and privacy because of cancer in a moment of crisis, this was unacceptable. Anthony Bonvegna, the man who could have been your father, Mr. Almost, turned out to be a total jerk and abused your mom for those reasons. Even his parents were against her, actually hating your mom, lecturing her about how to spend their son’s money, lecturing her about how she should behave, and she was sick of them already trying to act like the in-laws when she and Anthony never married yet, but had been just dating for three years! Stupid!

The talent show at CCBC was supposed to be held on Earth Day, April 22, 2020. It was cancelled immediately before I could ask them. It was a definite no, because Dr. Kurtinitis, the CCBC President, said all classes will be held online indefinitely until the end of summer because of the governor’s orders. This went for ALL schools across the country. Your Auntie Beth and Uncle Thurston were aggravated with your Cousin Weston, because he was still in preschool, four years old, and he was a temper tantrum nightmare when it came to home schooling so he could get into kindergarten for his fifth birthday in August. Worst of all, every high school and every college in the entire world had to permanently cancel the high school prom and every single graduation for all students everywhere! Nobody was allowed to dress up in beautiful gowns and smashing tuxedoes and dance with their friends. All the limousine drivers were jobless. And high school students had the hardest time getting into college, because their appointments to take the SATs were cancelled, and all teenagers had to be home schooled and had to submit nothing but report cards from their parents and their internet meetings with their teachers to colleges in their applications to get accepted for fall 2020. Four year colleges and universities all require at least a high school transcript for senior year and the latest taken SAT scores, and proof that they’ve graduated high school with a diploma coming in the mail, at the very most possible, or at least a GED. Now that Corona Virus cancelled EVERYTHING, nobody was allowed to graduate from schools ever again. Too many teenagers and college students went through depression over not partying in prom gowns with their friends, missing their grandparents, never walking across the stage, never being allowed to kiss their boyfriends or girlfriends ever again. Your mom wasn’t even supposed to graduate CCBC until 2021, and even the Olympics that were supposed to be held in Japan in 2020, was forced to be cancelled too, and it’s now going to be held one more year later in 2021.

This virus thing made your mommy so incredibly desperate…

On May 2, 2020, I made an online dating account on OKCupid.com.

I know, really, I do, I hate technology as much as your father, it’s true. But now that the Corona Virus plague made it impossible to meet a new friend or a new boyfriend in person, and your mom did try looking everywhere in sight, every public place known in her cul de sac, in the entire state of Maryland, for that matter- Club Orpheus, the Goth night club your Auntie Kerensa loved to the moon and back, the coffee shop in the bookstore that proved to be a mistake to find a new special someone, college, but then your mommy met Anthony there and 10 years later dated him and three years after that proved that he was a big mistake, the science fiction conventions, but it was more of a family reunion, she once tried meeting a guy in an elevator or a library, and that was the biggest mistake ever because she still met nobody! For 30 years, your mom lived with grandma and grandpa and got absolutely nowhere with love either. When she went back to college two years before, after hitting the bit 3-0, she realized she had no future and no dream job to pursue. She wanted to help people, but she didn’t know where to go or where to follow the money. She took a medical lab class and failed it her first semester back, that was a big sign she was not cut out for the medical field even as a nurse, because you and mommy all hate math problems that go on for paragraphs. Mom hates calculus, and to be a medical lab tech or a nurse, you need to be very, very good at big complicated math problems like college algebra and calculus. She even tried to see if she could get into the veterinary field because you and mommy love puppies so much, but getting into veterinary school is much, much harder.

Your mother, unfortunately, killed all of her biggest dreams: to be a reporter, a journalist, a veterinarian, a famous book author, even a princess! Your mom’s first childhood dream when she was little, she said, “Mommy, when I grow up, I wanna be a princess!” But this dream died when Grandma Julie called your mom into the living room of our Parkville apartment when she heard about the death of Princess Diana of England, who was married to Queen Elizabeth’s son Prince Charles, until they too divorced. Both your grandma and mommy still believe that the paparazzi newspapers killed the People’s Princess, because instead of calling 9-1-1 for an ambulance in Paris, they instead took pictures of her while she was dying in the car.

Even your mom’s dreams of getting married died. Her dreams of a singing or acting career died with the breakup with her ex too. After the CCBC Talent Show was cancelled, your mom vowed to never sing in public ever again, that was it, no more singing. She swore to herself that if Anthony was not her future husband, this was her very last chance of ever finding true love and getting married… Your mom vowed to herself to never get married, never have sex again, and die alone… but if your mom never married, you would have never been born.

So… How did your mommy get back to finding a new boyfriend and finding true love one more time???

Blame Katy Perry for that, for introducing her new song about Orlando Bloom, your mom’s first high school crush, “Never Worn White”, which Katy sang while she was pregnant in 2020.

The real story: Out of sheer desperation, loneliness, and yes, ok, boredom, your mom signed up for an internet-only dating website. She hated the idea. But she knew what to say. She hoped that she would make the absolute WORST profile in the WORLD! Hoping to make herself appear desperate and prove to the world that she’ll never find anybody on a dating site, and to prove to her friends that online dating is a sham, your mom opened up and overshared a little too much information about her life and remained a little too honest! She went on for miles and miles describing how poor she was, how deadly her father’s condition was, how she hated President Trump, how she didn’t like politics, she loved dogs and was deathly allergic to cats, she blasted to the world how she despised and loathed dating men who already had their own kids or had been divorced before, because she hated thinking about the day she’d meet her husband’s ex wife, or worse, telling her new boyfriend’s children, “I’m your new mother now! I’m your stepmother!” She still wanted to date someone her age, definitely nobody 40 years old or older, who had never been married and never had kids, and was a dog lover and a complete nonsmoker, no exceptions. The men who messaged her either said stupid things, stupid pick up lines, or never even bothered to look closely to every word of her profile. And 90% of the men who responded to her profile said nothing! And some of them ran away, as she thought. A good amount of men who asked me to talk to me in their messenger were Jewish men who thought their religion was a big deal and wanted to convert me into their Synagogue, while your mommy at the time never wanted to think about God and your grandparents were slightly unofficially devout Christian Baptists through Pastor Dave, our family friend in Christ.

Your mommy was certain she lost all hope of finding a husband. She just knew that online dating was definitely a last resort and was going to be a failure, just like her whole life was a complete pointless failure. She lost all hope for that matter, she knew that in the midst of this virus, she knew she would die alone.

May 4, 2020, or Star Wars Day (may the fourth be with you…), was the day your dad saw your mom’s profile, and the first thing he thought of was, this girl has a lot of guts that her profile she wrote is twice as long as mine, I NEED to talk to her!

His message came very late at night at quarter after 11 on May 3rd, saying some very sweet things after taking everything I wrote on my profile in. I don’t remember what he said because we both deactivated our accounts at the same time, after we finally talked on a video conference call. I know it’s not even remotely romantic, but that’s what happened during the fears, infections, and millions of deaths by COVID19. People were afraid to hold hands with their lovers, even their spouses. Your father and I were never allowed to TOUCH each other—we were never allowed to LOOK at each other in PERSON, until the governor removed the quarantine order! This was already turning out to be a meeting just like the story in that old TV show Pushing Daisies, where the lovers Ned and Chuck could never touch each other, but they found loopholes, like kissing each other through plastic wrap.

But your dad basically said: “Hi, Rachel, I’ve read your very, very long profile and already, I’m intrigued. It hurts so much that you’ve been through a lot, and honestly, I feel like I’ve met you somewhere before because I also went to Towson University. You seem very sweet, and on that note, I feel very sad about how you go to bed and wake up each morning with a nightmare holding a squishy stuffed animal wishing you could have someone to hold after a nightmare like that. I feel like I could be that person next to you. If you’re too busy or you’re not interested, that’s fine. But I would love to talk to you. I won’t be at work tomorrow (May the fourth be with you), I’ll still have time to talk before bed, so I look forward to hearing from you. -Alexander”

I thought that those were the things I needed to hear right away. I wanted to cry from all the things he said. Already, I appreciated him. He was the nicest guy I could ever meet, even though he lived in Bel Air, Maryland, a 40 minute drive from here.

I wrote him back immediately, but not expecting anything back because I had a migraine that night. Minutes later, the message dinged, and there he was. We texted each other constantly. The following day, Taco Tuesday and Cinco de Mayo on the same day, we had our first Zoom video conference meeting online, since the government still never let us meet in any physical place except on the internet or behind plexiglass. Our first video call on our first ever Facebook meeting lasted seven and a half hours (your dad swears by this).

Already by the time we entered the second week of our video call/ Messenger friendship, we were already making pretend kissing noises to the screen. Appreciation grew to attraction. He actually liked me for what I was. I liked him even more.

My parents, your grandma and grandpa, hated the idea of meeting a man before the first date through online dating. I told them at least I’ll be smart about it and I already knew who to call if there’s an emergency—if he turned out to be a stalker, a thief, or a sex criminal—I trusted mom and dad to make sure I was safe and I would run to them when something went wrong. Thinking that the Pirate Fest had moved to be on my birthday on the exact day, but Governor Hogan’s initiation of Phase 1 of recovery didn’t start until third week of May, I thought that pretty much ALL events like Pirate Fest, Fourth of July, and even the Renaissance Faire would all be permanently cancelled forever until some doofus doctor found a CURE or at least a VACCINE to destroy and prevent the virus—That wouldn’t happen for a full YEAR. So I resolved that maybe the fireworks in July and even all the New Year’s Eve party events had already been destroyed—one of my favorite bands, The Black Keys, had to cancel their U.S. “Let’s Rock” tour that year because of the virus, and their concert in Maryland was supposed to be in August. Even my favorite convention, Shore Leave, got cancelled too; Shore Leave 42 was now going to be held in July 2021. It made me furious.

So your dad and I actually met, during the first week of Phase 1, in a Dollar Store. Actually, it was more outside the strip mall outside the ACE Hardware store on Ebenezer Road around the place where I lived.

Again, we didn’t have a choice. Even at Phase 1, all the other stores were closed. Our County Executive of Baltimore, he had the weirdest last name, but everybody called him Johnny O., a former schoolteacher at that, said that even at Phase 1, he couldn’t open even the hair salons at this time. Stores and restaurants were ordered to use delivery or curbside pickup only, no dine-ins. Salon appointments had to stay in shutdown, and all doctors’ offices for eye glasses or even orthodontics had signs on the door that all patients must get their temperatures checked first, everyone must wear a mask, and the patient must be in the room with the doctor alone, no siblings allowed, parents only. Dollar Store was the only store that was open because all Dollar Stores sell groceries and paper towels as well as bric-a-brac, so they are essential. It was either that or a Walmart, and your dad worked at a Target as an essential worker, so he hated going anywhere near any disaster area store called Walmart.

I let my parents go finish up their grocery shopping at Giant while I went on my way to walk to the Dollar Store on my own, taking my headphones off and keeping a close eye out for the streets—You know your mommy, kids, I’m always way too careful because of that story I told you about when I got hit by a car on the street when I was in a crosswalk trying to walk across the street for a snack at Seven Eleven. That’s why I always say “Never let go of mommy’s hand”, because I don’t want either of you to go into the scary emergency room, or worse, shock trauma, if you get hurt. I will give my life for you to stay safe. Take care of you, as I always say.

We saw each other outside the ACE Hardware, and I didn’t believe it was him because he had a black mask on his face; very confusing during the Corona Virus epidemic!!! I was wearing a cute pink bandanna over my mouth and nose, and even though it was a little humid that day, it was unusually colder than what May weather should have been, so I wore my pink raspberry beret hat that I crocheted and styled myself.

When he stopped at six feet apart from me and I was going to walk past him again (abiding by CDC guidelines), he said something to me I’d never forget, because he wasn’t going to let me leave that early. We had actually met each other MANY times, but NONE of us even said hello! He said we both graduated from Towson in 2011, the same year he broke up with his ex girlfriend. He said he used to shop a lot at Games Workshop, full of all the figurines and games associated with Warhammer and D&D, and I’ve been in that same one several times before they closed down and became a cupcake shop at The Avenue! He’d gone to several social groups with The Hussman Center for Students with Autism at Towson University, almost every week—I had gone to that event at least three times myself! And you know what he said when he first saw me at last?

“You look vastly familiar,” he said.

He couldn’t see me smiling through my bandanna, but I was giggling. I loved that about him- I love men who are smart, charming, and funny. Men with a sense of humor are sexy, just look at Ryan Reynolds and Jimmy Fallon! Sexiest funnymen alive! (And mommy’s favorite ice cream comes from Jimmy Fallon’s TV late night series- Ben & Jerry’s Tonight Dough. Your daddy likes it too!)

It took us 31 years to finally meet each other in person. I know meeting on internet online dating websites is not romantic. Your dad and I never liked the idea of meeting at a Dollar Store or the grocery store like Giant Market on Belair Road. I wanted to meet the guy of my dreams in a more romantic place, your father agreed. We planned something else entirely to meet in a nicer place to have our first date, at least one restaurant, and we didn’t care. I kept thinking to myself one night, what if Anthony and I still dated during the Corona Virus, would we still have made it work? Then I said that Anthony was part of the past and he wasn’t in my life anymore, he’s no longer my boyfriend, he should be forever gone.

But again, because of the fact that all the stores were closed except the “essentials”, even as early as Phase 1 of reopening Baltimore, because County Exec Johnny O. said that he would never open the hair salons until further notice with given permission by the Governor of Annapolis, we had no other choice. We were already pretty certain that our ideal meeting on my birthday at the Pirate Festival in Fells Point would be permanently cancelled forever, because Larry Hogan would only open big events and concerts that would draw thousands of people only IF we reached Phase 3: opening everything else, but ONLY if some crazy mad scientist doofus found the PERFECT formula to cure or even hand out a real VACCINE to Americans and the world everywhere. But the doctors and scientists at the CDC said, “We’ll never have a vaccine until at least the New Year 2021. You’re all fucked.”

So unfortunately, your dad and I had no other choice but to meet in person at the Dollar Store. Mom didn’t like this because she wanted us to meet amongst my friends so I could be safe.

But after I met him, we were so proud we met. Daddy was already a goner- he was IN love with me and just couldn’t get enough of me. But it wasn’t until the final, very last day of the spring 2020 college semester on May 21st, 2020, after I finally finished my final exam for business law, and flunked the exam, as usual, but still passing the class with a C, when I broke down in front of him on my web cam, after having yet another nightmare. My nightmares, kids, are so surreal they look real, or they look like a part of my past that I was trying to get through. That Thursday afternoon when I woke up (your mommy was a big late sleeper and had a bad, bad habit of no set bedtime as a late-night night owl) was the morning after the worst migraine hit me in the middle of the night that I decided to shut off my laptop and just say goodnight to your father without video calling him, even though I was dying to talk to him. I was feeling very, very sick. I had a horrible dream of being in a food market buying stuff and I forgot my mask, other children were terrorizing me, I was reprimanding the mother’s kids to wear masks and stop touching me, and then the parking lot disappeared and there was a forest outside the front automatic door… And I fell into a big lake of pure mud and deep water puddles, getting myself, my purchases from the grocery and my favorite store H&M, completely soaked and filthy, I felt like I wanted to die. My mom grabbed my hand and started dragging me out, yelling at me as if I was five years old and being a whiny brat, and instead, I woke up screaming, “KILL ME NOW, GOD!!!”

I woke up that morning, or really, it was way after 12 in the afternoon, and I was totally alone again. He wasn’t there. I moaned in pain; my right shoulder was burning. I left my bedroom, there was nobody there. Grandma and grandpa went off to the store. I rinsed my mouth guard in the sink and felt like I was starving. Typical aftermath symptoms of a reverse migraine with light sensitivity, no aura- that’s what I call those migraine headaches I get when I’m sick: I get intense burning sensations in my eyes that even my computer screen bothers me, my skull and blood vessels are pulsing with pain, throbbing, my knees are weak, I’m sore from the neck and shoulders down, I feel like I can’t sleep, and instead of feeling nauseated, like puking, I feel like I haven’t eaten in a week, I just want to eat EVERYTHING at the buffet table, plus the kitchen sink. Right before I hit the bed at 4 a.m., I had just taken a half tablet of Imitrex, a very strong and powerful migraine drug that puts you OUT, but within an hour kills any headache stone dead, but the number one side effect is nausea or acid reflux. So it was only normal that when I woke up that following afternoon when I slept entirely through both breakfast and lunch, that I was so weak and hungry I couldn’t stand up. So I made two blueberry toaster waffles, glass of milk, and grabbed a yogurt from the fridge for my “breakfast at 2:45 p.m.” when I took my Trileptal at last.

I suddenly thought of him and said it would be really nice if he was lying there next to me, kissing my hair after a night terror like that, telling me to wake up, bursting to talk to me, and saying, “It’s a dream. It will never be real. I have you here and you’re safe right now.”

And then I got scared when I heard the television in the living room next to the breakfast bar and the dark kitchen I stood in, about commercials that said no contact delivery, we protect ourselves with masks and gloves, we never touch customer food when it goes out the door, we take our staff’s temperatures and test them to see if they’re healthy to go to work…

It terrified the hell out of your mother.

What if hugging, kissing, and touching in public was made illegal? What if people who date each other were never allowed to kiss or touch until they were married? What if I was never allowed to hold a baby in my arms ever again and I was only three years and a few months away from being 35 years old, an at-risk mother for health problems and complications in pregnancy, and giving birth to a baby with Down Syndrome where someone needs to stick a six-foot big needle into my stomach, a procedure called amniocentesis?

Your Grandpa Bobby’s colon cancer scared me the most. My dad was diagnosed with cancer at 57 years old, but it was already at stage 3. Ten years before that would be age 47, but I don’t want to hesitate and wait when I’m 47 to get the colonoscopy test then if dad’s cancer was stage 3 in his late 50s. So… do I have to get the scary-as-shit colon pooper test when I’m 40? 38? 35? Or wait, I’m 31 now… Why should I wait to get a colon cancer screening, maybe I should get the anesthesia knock-out gas and have the nurse stick a scary wire camera up my asshole and look what’s inside my pooper for scary cancerous polyps in the colon on my 32nd birthday right now???

Worst of all, I heard the worst news concerning Corona Virus coming from Africa- a South African pregnant woman tested positive for COVID19, leading her to give birth to her baby prematurely, and two days after her baby was born in the NICU, the newborn baby died of Corona Virus immediately. I felt so horrified for the trauma that family had gone through. This terrible virus showed no shame and took no prisoners with no accountability. It was ruthless murder, it was genocide by disease. If a pregnant woman in 2020 was giving birth on a due date during the quarantine, she would never be allowed to leave her house to get medical care, and even her husband would never be allowed to see his first child being born, or even comfort his suffering pregnant wife, because the pregnant woman must test negative for Corona Virus before she would be challenged to push the baby out of her uterus. And if the husband never got tested, he would never be allowed to even cross the window of the baby nursery unit to see his new baby boy or girl.

Which is why my therapist and I strongly agreed with each other that anybody who tries to have sex during a murderous world epidemic is basically committing suicide on themselves and their babies in question. The only type of sexual contact that was physically allowed by doctors was abstinence- no sex- or playing with sex toys like vibrators through masturbation. Of course, there are states in America, one of them is Texas, where masturbation with sex toys are strongly illegal- Texas is one of the five states that banned vibrators because of their Republican government’s “let’s save Trump the Chosen One” “Make America Great Again” “I love Jesus” “God needs to be racist” beliefs, and you know your family, both your mom and dad, are strongly against all this. Sex education lesson number one that they don’t teach you in school: Masturbation is totally SAFE. And to masturbate is healthy, it’s good for you too. If you don’t masturbate, you’re insane! Sex ed rule number two: Masturbation is ok in only ONE place: your bedroom. Do it anywhere else, expect a punishment.

But even when I masturbated, which I never did often, and I did it quietly out of sight of my parents when my door was locked, I really missed having a man doing it with me. I missed sex. But I also had an extremely bad experience with the one and only man I ever had sex with, the last serious boyfriend I ever had, Anthony. Anthony made me feel like he was only using me for sex, paying me back in food. He even gave me $200 to give to my parents as a way to help grandma and grandpa pay for the medical bills and surgeries. I kind of paid him back by going to BronyCon 2019 with him, I spent more than $1,000 on that trip, but I still felt like I was his prostitute. He was playing me, feeding me selfish lies, getting my stories all backwards, accusing me of lying to him and then telling me he loves me, accusing me of being a “loose cannon” with my emotions and bad behavior, when really his mother was the biggest loose cannon of his whole family, for she always had a problem with me and she was a drinker… Anthony made me feel so jaded and wretched when I came home after my fight with Tiffany at the Captain’s Grill and Bar for that horrible karaoke contest that I knew I would never win a goddamn thing. I may have been a GOOD singer, but I never was GREAT. I’m not the best singer in the world, no matter what daddy tells you that when I sing, I break people’s hearts. The best singers in the world are the wimpy whiny baby singers who win contests on reality shows like American Idol or America’s Got Talent, and unless you’re Darci Lynn or Kelly Clarkson, all those stupid winner singers of those shows can’t write their own shit worth a damn. Yet, all the bozos rooting for them in America have NO IDEA what music should be if it hit them in the eyes.

To be honest with you, I thought the absolute worst of Lin-Manuel Miranda. But it was that same day the same year, May 21st, when I finally broke free of my hatred of him and became a newly converted fan of his, because of his musical-turned-movie In the Heights, because of Mary Poppins, and because of all of his tweets on his Twitter profile that either screamed cuteness or messages of sweet love, prayers, and kindness. He also had the stamina to spend five years of his life writing a musical where he was the star of the show, writing rap and R&B songs about the American Revolution for him to dress up in Colonial period costume and break dance with a gun in his hand- I still HATED his multi-Tony and Pulitzer winning Hamilton, but I appreciated that exact musical because he had GUTS. When AppleTV issued the first commercial for a new show called Dear…, and Lin was one of their guest stars for one of their first season 10 episodes, I felt something pin my heart to the floor when he was reading one of the letters in the trailer, and at the end when he looked up at the camera, his eyes were bloodshot red—he was crying. His voice broke when he said, “Thank you.” That Puerto-Rican New Yorker had more balls than I ever did or will have my whole life to be that successful and still break down into crippling depression from such joy he brought to the world. I was now a newly converted Miranda fan, even though I’ve never seen a Broadway musical my whole entire life.

So that night, when I spoke to your father on Facebook, he finally made me cry.

I had gotten to the final tragic story of when Anthony and I broke up, for it hurt me most of all. He told me that I was not a horrible girlfriend and I deserved better. But I still disagreed with him, that Anthony was the best I was ever going to get and Prince Charming never existed. But I knew deep down that Anthony deserved SO much better than me- I was not the girl of his dreams. He kept saying, “I deserve better, you’re not the girl of my dreams… but you COULD be one day…” That in it of itself was a mixed signal and I wanted him to be more direct.

Alexander did not hesitate to be direct right here.

“I’m sorry. You have no idea how badly I wish I could be near you right now, just to hold you and comfort you. You have so much pain – physical and emotional – and it breaks my heart that I’m not there to help you… I don’t know if “knights in shining armor” still exist in 2020, but that’s what I want to be for you. I don’t mean to imply that you can protect yourself, of course.”

I gave him a cute sticker of a teddy bear that either it was kissing with a heart in front of his face or blowing a bubble that was red and heart shaped, but it justified my feelings for that statement.

He also gave me a sticker and said: “You have been through so much – and I still think of you as a warrior – but I don’t want you to go through any more of it.” [it, meaning- the suffering]

Then I told him this story of why I don’t believe in princes or dashing knights- “After the death of Princess Diana, I’ve stopped believing in Prince Charming. Because my first childhood ambition was to be a princess when I grow up, and then I read the horrible true story of Prince Charles and Princess Diana—they got divorced, she got kicked out of Buckingham Palace to never be a royal ever again, and then she got killed by the press in Paris, France in a car accident while the TMZ was chasing her… I stopped believing in knights in armor and Prince Charmings a long time ago. For you to say all those beautiful things, you have NO CLUE how much that WARMED MY HEART!”

He answered: “It’s not too late to start believing again.”

The next words flew out of me that would change my life.

Me: “I think I’m DEFINITELY falling in love with you!”

Then him, almost immediately: “About a week or so before we started talking, I had a long, drawn-out conversation about how “I don’t believe in love, it’s not worth it in the end, etc.” It just takes the right person to come along… And I think I’ve been head over heels in love with you since day one.”

That was it. Right. There. I called him immediately, and I almost burst into tears with joy. We both changed our Facebook status for relationships immediately that night.

It took him seven years since his last and only breakup since college to find someone on his online dating profile.

It took me almost three days since I created mine.

It was love at first sight for him. For me, it wasn’t that easy, for just like Monica Potter in that Freddie Prinze Jr. movie with the supermodels, I like to take a deeper look.

To be honest with you kids, I was scared of never being held and never being touched my whole life ever again after the death of my parents. I thought I was going to die like Charlotte Lucas, being forced to marry a man she didn’t love because she was afraid she’d never be offered love by anyone and she’d be turned out of her own family house if she never married anybody for money, not love: “I’ve been offered a comfortable home and protection. It’s a lot to be thankful for. I’m 27 years old! I have no money and no prospects, I’m already a burden to my parents! And I’m frightened. So don’t judge me, Lizzie, don’t you dare judge me.”

Or worse, I’d die like Jane Austen, who wrote the character of Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth Bennet’s best friend. At least Jane had a sister who also never married, Cassandra Austen. She held Jane in her loving arms until she passed. I had no sisters. I never had a brother my whole life. If I were to die and my parents were already gone, no next of kin and an only child, I’d never have a family to look after me. I’d end up dead with no funeral, my body thrown in a mass ditch and nobody would say a prayer for me; I’d never be remembered. God and Jesus would forsake me and let me scream murder and yell and torture myself into that goodnight.

But I’ve just finished watching the Fred Rodgers movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which Fred Rodgers himself said to his wife that Tom Hanks was his all time favorite actor, and he didn’t even know Hanks was Rodgers’s sixth cousin too. Tom Hanks was beyond perfect for the job to play Mister Rodgers on the set of WQED in Pittsburgh for PBS national television, my childhood hero who taught me how to be a person. But the scene that made me cry was that beautiful scene in the New York City park, journalist Lloyd Vogel walking with his wife and his baby in the stroller, after he collapsed in front of Rodgers at WQED and had that horrible surreal nightmare like the one I had, and after screaming at his drunk dad, when his dad suddenly fell and had to be taken to the hospital immediately for heart problems. It was the line that Lloyd said to his wife, sitting on a park bench, “I’m sorry. There’s no excuse. I was scared. My dad was cruel. My dad is dying…” And it was the first time Lloyd wept depressing tears into his wife’s arms. I had tears in my eyes right then.

And the morning of the 22nd, that Friday, even though my rule about Fridays is no work all play on Friday, have a relaxing day today, meditate if possible… I opened my Word document and wrote more of my novel Instant Infinity, my favorite and proudest creation, the one that started it all…

Because I promised your father a long time ago that I’d finish it.

I’ll let you read that one when you’re old enough to understand it. It’s about mental illness. Bipolar. Suicide. Love and romance. Music. Rock and roll. Jazz. Healing. God. Self help. Miracles. Psychology. Philosophy. And most of all, second chances.

That story, children, is based on a dream. A dream I had when my daddy was sick and living in a hospital.

The main character, the woman in the story, is me. But I never committed suicide like she did.

I was the one who woke up and said, “No more. No more death, no more suicide. I will let someone hear me one more time. They will hear my story. One day, they will come. Readers will always come.”

And that’s how I truly met your father, Alexander Meranski. Not the most romantic story in the world, first met on an online dating website, first met physically outside a Dollar Store and a hardware store, I know. But during an epidemic where it was illegal to touch each other to help the doctors and nurses do their jobs, that was the only choice we had.

We still don’t know when and if we ever decide to get married yet, kids… We still never had sex and we’ve never had a first date, because the government in Annapolis will never open the restaurants yet for people to dine-in, and even at Phase 2, it will be impossible to get us a table without waiting five hours in line to be seated, to encourage social distancing- I still don’t know how to eat a plate of food in a restaurant without removing my mask or bandanna…

But your father said to me late that night, “I look in your eyes, and I see a future… I don’t know what that future is, either getting married or having children, but I feel like I was meant to have a future with you…”

I really can’t wait to meet you. I just hope I’m healthy enough, inside and outside, so I can give birth to you as your momma, and bless you with such joy.

May the road rise up to meet you. Take care of you.

Slainte, endeavors.

Love,

-Your Mommy.

Playlist selection-

The band that defined my generation of children born between 1987-1990, and the lyrics of each song defines my journey to find love:

Presenting John Rzenik and the Goo Goo Dolls-