“Hi, Dad. It’s Me. Please Buy Lots of Soup,” by Robin Romm

Faculty member Robin Romm‘s essay “Hi, Dad. It’s Me. Please Buy Lots of Soup” was recently featured on Wired. Read an excerpt below:

“Hi, Dad. It’s Me. Please Buy Lots of Soup.”

“MY FATHER IS 74. He lives alone in Eugene, Oregon, about 90 miles from the first novel outbreak in the Portland area. In 2016, he was in a catastrophic bicycling accident that left him with steel-plated ribs and reduced lung function. I still think of him as a stubborn and athletic ox of a guy. He was a cardiologist and mountaineer, a skier, hiker, and general adrenaline junky. His father was a histrionic type, eternally crouched against imagined (and experienced) tragedy. My father defined himself in the face of this. He is never histrionic. If he panics, he does it silently, then makes a joke. He wouldn’t be the one looking over his shoulder to see what pursued him. He’d be the one looking forward, toward what beckoned. Once, when I asked him why he’d chosen the heart as his specialty, he told me he liked the feeling of being on the edge. The edge is a vivid and exciting place to be, so long as you always stay on it, and don’t fall off.

I called him and asked how he was. He told me he’d been keeping busy. He’d gone to his class on the poetry of the Vietnam war, two fundraising parties, and a basketball game.

“I guess you’re not worried about the coronavirus,” I said.

“Well,” he said, taken off guard. His dog has cancer, and he’d thought I was calling for another update on his status. “We don’t have it here,” he said. “Why should I be worried?”

Read the rest of this essay here: https://www.wired.com/story/hi-dad-its-me-please-buy-lots-of-soup/