Outraged bird is a sign that we’re still not in control of this pandemic

The robin ceaselessly attacks its reflection in my wife’s black Honda, the sight of its own beak and feathers outraging the bird as it strikes again and again at the now pitting metal.

With each peck, the robin fouls the car, streaked now with the repellent proof of its unending fury.

We have hung Acme bags and other scary, flappy things on the vehicle to scare the creature away. The car looks like a grotesque, pooped-on parade float decorated by 6-year-olds with a limited budget.

But the bird is undeterred, spurred on by nature’s robust imperative to battle all potential rivals during mating season.

I cannot halt the onslaught. I have no control.

That’s pretty much how pandemic life has felt as we’ve moved into the second spring of the coronavirus.

I’m lucky enough to be able to work from home. And, yes, I count my blessings like an old-school bookkeeper with an abacus.

But we are Americans, ordained from birth to be masters of our destinies, and thus accustomed to controlling things. Or, at least believing we can.

I suffer from this delusion as much as anyone, and I’m lost without the appearance of authority over where I can go, who I can see, and why I still have to mask up like a neurosurgeon to buy milk.

It’s not that I don’t understand the tragic aspects of what has befallen us; so many people have endured catastrophic suffering. In my own family, we lost my cousin’s husband to the coronavirus, a sweet and funny soul who was a great father. And it hurts that we couldn’t have an in-person funeral to rally around those Reuben loved most.

But there’s a spectrum to this pandemic. Opposite grief, we’re witness to abject absurdity in how we have to live — a complete rewiring of life’s normal circuitry.

From our porch in South Jersey, we have called out to strolling unmasked neighbors who’ve responded by expelling clouds of moist poison microbes. That Bob from down the street could kill me by describing the low-fat lasagna he made last night is farcical.

My family is in the process of getting vaccinated, and we dutifully queue up in drug stores. It creates an odd juxtaposition — awaiting vital medicine jabs while standing amid shelves of Neutrogena makeup remover and Cap’n Crunch cereal.

Vaccination now becomes the quintessential American experience: to be able to both shop and forestall death in the same convenient trip to Rite Aid.

Looking to restore order to our out-of-control lives, my wife requested I ditch the T-shirts and sweatpants I prefer to work in at our dining room table, and go business-casual. I respect her thinking, but I got annoyed anyway.

So now, our house is filled with well-dressed angry people. Just to tweak my wife, I asked if it’s OK that I wear jeans on Fridays.

We don’t just miss being able to exert dominion over events in our lives. Some of us lament the loss of institutions that controlled us to begin with.

My 17-year-old daughter believed reporting to her high school every day was autocratic, didactic, lame. But since she began studying virtually last spring, she’s adrift, and mourns the loss of regimented regularity. Hearing her long for the trappings of the 11th grade is one of the more surprising by-products of COVID-19 living.

I should say that life hasn’t been a complete capitulation to the virus.

Right before we were quarantined, my cardiologist practically ordered me to remain indoors forever because I’ve got more underlying conditions than a condemned suspension bridge. Then, as most doctors do, he suggested I lose weight.

It can be monumentally difficult to slim down during a pandemic, when everyone is eating out of self-pity. But dieting is a form of control, and I’ve lost around 15 pounds since last year.

Who’s in charge now?

When he first came to this country as a child, my maternal grandfather was thrown into a holding cell at Ellis Island, quarantined for a suspected case of smallpox that he actually never had. He shook his fist at his oppressors when they let him out three days later.

Turns out that, along with the heart disease and cancers my family has bequeathed me like heirlooms, I’ve also inherited my elders’ propensity to rage against a lockdown.

Still, what good does it do me to pace the cage? Ralph Ellison once wrote, “Life is to be lived, not controlled. …”

So, if I can’t really master-manipulate my existence, I might as well unclench and, wearing a crisp shirt and my good jeans, join my wife in admonishing that damn robin that, in the end, it’s only fighting itself.