Meeting the moment...

Before pulling into my garage last Thursday afternoon, I turned on the radio. I was just in time to hear Gavin Newsom rasp, "This is a moment in time. We will look back at these decisions as pivotal." He kept talking about meeting the moment, as though it were a kind of self-help mantra. In the transcript of his press conference, I counted the words seven times.

It wasn't Churchill, but it got the point across.

We're all expected to stay at home, said Gavin, except ... who?

He didn't say.

I wanted to comply with his order. But Gavin hadn't given us a day to prepare for his sweeping diktat. If I was going to hunker down at home and try to help clients in the next few days, it meant going renegade, jumping in the car, and retrieving some papers from my office downtown. Even though I've never served in the military, I have always loved the term surgical strike. Now I was going to do one.

In case a police or CHP officer wanted an explanation, I had one at the ready. I'm providing essential services today. As a lawyer, I didn't believe it myself. But what good lawyer has never made an argument he knew in his heart of hearts was horseshit? As I pulled onto the freeway, I wondered if I would be able to sell it with a straight face.

The anxiety I felt melted away fast. There were plenty of cars whizzing past as they headed north and south on Interstate 5. Could all of them be members of one of the 16 "essential critical infrastructure sectors" listed on the ca.gov website?

The office was a ghost town, of course. Overnight, our law firm management had told everyone to stay home, except for our information technology people. I grabbed some paperwork, changed my voicemail greeting, and got the hell out of there. Just as I walked out, I bumped into our managing partner. She had been working around the clock for days, ensuring everyone could work remotely and generally keeping the law firm barging along smoothly. She is ever poised and graceful, and she was on this occasion.

"You're not here," she said with a slight smile.

"You're right, I'm not," I replied. "But if I were, I haven't been listening to the radio or reading my email." She laughed.

I like my home office just fine. Our law firm's technology represents the highest state of the art of digital file management. We can file briefs, organize videoconferences, and record time from anywhere in the world.

I can shut the door of my home office. But still there are some distractions.

My partner, Kelly, whose employer also ordered her home last Thursday, for example. The refrigerator. The leafy tree-lined street in front of the house -- it leads down to a boardwalk that encircles Mission Bay. A pair of felines, Teddy and Tiggy. They're good company, but they're no smarter than any other cat. And so they know nothing of COVID-19, the billable hour, Gavin Newsom, or the anxiety that comes with a nonstop barrage of breathless news broadcasts trumpeting the latest alarming and depressing news about the turmoil roiling a lot of the world. They only know when they feel like eating some more cat food, going outside, coming back inside, playing, pouncing on luckless songbirds, and moving their bowels in between naps.

A couple of clients were keen to know what they should tell their employees. They were full of questions about the governor's order. To them, the dilemma was simple, binary. Option 1 was telling everyone to stay home, complying with the governor's order, and hoping to stave off the resulting fiscal calamity somehow. Option 2 was deeming some personnel exempt, inviting them to report to work, and risking a death or mass infection after someone unwittingly brought the coronavirus into the workplace.

Both options were ugly. And the clients wanted the advice right now.

One client isn't a member of one of the 16 "essential critical infrastructure sectors." But he supplies companies and agencies that are. Did that make his company exempt from the order?

Legally, I was writing on a blank slate. The last pandemic that was this big happened in 1918. Did the lawyers back then memorialize their advice to clients who agonized over what to do, in case there was another pandemic? If they did, their words have been forgotten.

I did the best I could. Off went the email.

With Amazon Fresh's inventory and delivery times hammered by demand, Kelly hit Vons for provisions. There she found the shelves barren of yogurt, cheese, meat and paper products of every kind. I did the math on the toilet paper supply underneath the vanities and in the linen closet. There were 13 rolls in all.

I flashed back to last Tuesday, when a man delivered a pair of large cardboard boxes to a lawyer down the hall from me at the office. Her door was shut, so he left them in the hallway, piled against the wall. I spied the logos on the boxes: SEVENTH GENERATION. It was a load of toilet paper all right.

Just that day, the media had published the results of a study showing that the coronavirus could live on a cardboard surface for up to 24 hours. I thought it might be ironic if a person contracted the coronavirus from a cardboard box of provisions he had gotten delivered in to help protect him from the coronavirus.

At quitting time on Friday night, my mind drifted to movies. I wanted to sit on the big sectional sofa, click the remote, and let some escapist fare wash over me like warm salty surf. The only films that came to mind were "Contagion," "Outbreak," "The Andromeda Strain," and the pandemic granddaddy of them all, "World War Z," a zombie epic starring Brad Pitt. Maybe not tonight, I thought.

We watched "Chef" instead. Jon Favreau and John Leguizamo serving up Cubano sandwiches from a refurbished food truck with Sofia Vergara hovering in the background were way more comforting than Brad Pitt trying to save his family and the world from hordes of ravenous and highly infectious zombies who move really fast and sneak into economy class aboard the airliner before you figure out they are obsessed with eating your flesh before the captain even reaches cruising altitude.

During times of national emergency, we are drawn to the bully pulpit of the White House, hoping for reassurance and even inspiration. I thought of FDR and his fireside chats during the Great Depression and the Second World War, John F. Kennedy on television during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office after the Challenger disaster. I'm not a Trump fan, but I thought even he could be capable of some grace and elegance during this bizarre time. On Friday, I watched an excerpt of a press conference he gave at the White House.

"What do you say to Americans, who are watching you right now, who are scared?" a reporter asked.

"I say that you're a terrible reporter," the president replied, sneering. "That's what I say."

It wasn't Churchill. But it got the point across. 