Every year, well actually a lot more than that, I think of Pat, the champion mother and unsung iconoclast, not that one usually sings about iconoclasts. March 15, her birthday, she would have been 91, it’s a day I will always mark, a day I will hold in high regard.

This year, this crazy fucking year, I cannot not think of Pat. She would still be getting newspapers delivered, probably. But, she’d also subscribe to Apple News or something else. Not just surfing news websites, she’d be swimming in news sites. There would be too much news to risk missing it.

Her hatred of Donald Trump would be full of righteous rage. She wouldn’t stop pointing out all of the pasty smug faces of evangelists selling their souls within Trump’s orbit. The whitest of white, holier than holiest roller Pence, I think she’d just mock his weasel face and feel bad for his wife.

Pat would remind us all of the decades of Trump horribleness. She’d remember the ugly divorces in detail, and remind us all of the things that Marla and Ivana said back in the day.

Morons were never safe in her laser sights. But this, the president, I’m not sure there would be enough words in the language for her. In short, in one of her favorite words, she’d be livid.

All of the news and politics and questioning the sanity of the voting population and railing at the GOP aside, and the grumpy old men vying for the Democratic Party nomination also aside, there would be the pandemic. I really wish I could talk to Pat about COVID 19.

As a teacher, at various times with middle schoolers and little, little kids in elementary school, Pat was a hand washer extraordinaire. She packed hand sanitizer before it was ubiquitous and certainly before it became a target for price gouging.

Many of Pat’s extracurricular contributions to the classroom were straight up common sense with a soupçon of ancient crone wisdom. Some kids came to class without basic lessons like hand washing or shirt tucking, and Pat marched them to the sink and the mirror for lessons. She had tissues and wipes as her personal arsenal against kids who came to school sick.

Over the years, she had a lot of colds and at least one case of pinkeye. I’m certain she fought off mountains of contagions, though, more often than she succumbed. Sick days were for wimps.

But, what I truly miss from Pat’s not being here for all of the news headlines of today, the voice I would love to hear, the missing wry observations would be her total embrace (and she was not one for embracing), her enthusiasm for social distance.

I can hear inside my head that phone call. The glee in which she pointedly would tell me (and anyone else who called) to stay away. With books, crosswords, the TV and news, Pat would be just fine all alone, at least until the coffee ran out.

So, for Pat and to spite the president for whom she absolutely would not have voted, wash your GD hands. And stay home.