Coronavirus pandemic has made April 2020 the cruellest month

I woke up the other day, turned to my kids who are now adults and asked a simple question.

“Do you know what’s in 16 hours?” Nobody answered. “Bedtime,” I said.

We laughed for a moment and why not, considering the circumstances. It’s healthy to have a laugh or two or more when you’re locked in your house with nowhere else to go.

In a way, this reminds me of rainy days at our tiny cottage when I was a kid. You weren’t allowed outside. You didn’t have much inside. You stayed in and watched the rain. There was no television or computers or phones to play with — but somehow the time passed.

Now this isn’t a rainy day or two or three. This is months. Right now, this is our lives.

We do have TV, internet, phones, video games and ways of communicating online to either amuse us, anger us or exhaust us, depending on the circumstances.

We have 15 hours or more to fill each day, depending on when you go to bed, when you wake up, and if you’re like me, when you sleep.

It became April on Wednesday. Normally this is when March Madness ends and baseball begins in earnest. There’s not much I like better than a Madness pool sheet and tomorrow’s probable pitchers.

Normally, this is the best sports month on the calendar, those frenzied wondrous first two weeks of the Stanley Cup playoffs and the opening round of the NBA playoffs.

And, oh yes, that golf tournament at Augusta we can’t take our eyes off annually. All of it on pause.

April is the sporting month of our dreams: so much to watch, so much to take in, so much to digest. It’s our kind of information overload. And for the few of us who do what I do for a living, it means a plane ride and a hotel booked and another plane ride and another hotel.

Now we’re home. For the month. For next month. For who knows how long? Some of us are working. Some of us trying to work. Some are hoping to invent some kind of work. All of us are worried — and with good reason. And too many of us are alone.

We don’t know what tomorrow is. We don’t know if we’ll have jobs in a few months, if we can see our parents, what the economy is going to look like, how long we can go without paying rent.

There isn’t anything we really know, except how to be smart and safe and indoors, which can make us anxious. And for those of us who live every day kind of anxious, the walls can close in on you. I understand that: I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

But sometimes I go back to being that kid on that rainy day at the cottage and how disappointing the day began and somehow human spirit and thought and playfulness and creativity made the days memorable over time.

The difference is, we do that today, we have to do it again tomorrow and the day after that. This is our Groundhog Day without Bill Murray. It’s not a movie. Until further notice, it’s our lives.