Maria was somewhat surprised that I had given Julia my cellphone number and invited her to call me yesterday. She said she had never seen me do that, and that is probably right.

Maria knows me better than anyone, and if she is surprised by something I’ve done, it is something that is surprising and unusual.

Julia got to me, the fear in her gentle eyes cut right to my soul, and yes, she could have been my mother. She could have been my aunt, she could have been a friend, she could have been my grandmother.

But she is just Julia, and those eyes haunted me.

Someone asked me if I would have been so touched and offered my phone so easily if she had been a man. In all honesty, I don’t think it would have affected me nearly so much, and I can’t really say why.

Someone asked me this: What if she was not all that beautiful anymore . . and maybe not so stylish, and maybe not even all that confident to approach you? I’m not so sure why you had to qualify her hanging onto her beauty and style as having enough confidence to ‘approach’ you – do older women still need those accouterments to talk to a stranger?

The message made me angry.

This, I thought, is why people hate political correctness so much. Some moments don’t need to be explained to strangers, even on social media. People are often quick to tell me what I think.

That never works out well.

I thought of Julia all night, hoping she had gotten some sleep and felt better as the election gets angrier and more tense. I see all of this fear and rage is going right through her, like an IV.

I went to Saratoga Springs for my cardiac rehab today, and I decided to call Julia on the way home.  I was tired, it was a long and strong workout.

Yesterday, she had called me, and she was embarrassed to have called me at all and kept telling me she doubted she would do it again.

But the fear was there and was quite real.

She answered the phone; she said she thought it might be me. She sounded strong but tired.

“How are you doing?” I asked, and she said she was doing all right until she watched the nose. “Something is frightening about the President,” she said, “he seems so angry and so cruel.” She had witnessed or heard his latest attack on Dr. Fauci, who was a hero of hers.

“My nephew had AIDS back in the ’90s,” she said, “Dr. Fauci was one of the doctors who fought to save him and did save him. How awful, she said, that so good and honest a man would be called all those names in front of the whole country. He is worth 100 Trumps. He is just trying to save more lives; that is what  he does.”

She said she was better than yesterday, but the quiver in her voice said otherwise.

What am I doing here? I wondered briefly. What can I possibly do for this kind and endearing person?

I saw the Fauci assault. It was cruel and disturbing. Anthony Fauci did not deserve it, he is a patriot and a hero, close to being a saint. President Trump was at his ugliest and most menacing today; I get the shivers sometimes watching him myself.

But Maria is correct.

This isn’t something I would normally be doing with a stranger. Perhaps there is more fear inside of me than I have acknowledged, to myself or others.

It sure gets to me in others.  I seem to have charged myself with calming people down. Perhaps I think I need to be calm and strong.

I told her I had interviewed Dr. Fauci more than once when I was a reporter and that he was the most honest and caring person I had ever spoken with.

Julia, I learned, had a sense of humor.  It was easy to talk to her.

And we both had lived in the same cities. Her husband was a professor at Boston University and the two traveled all over the world, much more than I had.

I said I had an idea. Julia, what if we agree to the same plan tonight, a plan for staying calm and for finding some peace? We would have a program and both of us would follow it.

Oh, she said, what a good idea. She sounded puzzled but intrigued.

Here was the plan I proposed:

At 6:30, we would prepare and cook dinner. I was cooking lobster fails for me and for Maria. She said she was having a beet salad.

By 7 p.m., we would both be done by dinner.

Between 7:30 and 8, we would each talk to a close and trusted friend. No politics, just friendship. (I planned on calling Sue Silverstein).  She didn’t say who she would call.

By 8 p.m., we would each take one drink. I would drink a glass of apple cider, (she said she would have a glass of white wine.)

Then, we would each pick a book of our choosing, fiction, or non-fiction (many of the people who know me recognize me because of my books, many are readers, I sensed Julia was one.) I would read a Tara French mystery and massage Maria’s feet at the same time.

Julia said she had a book of poems written by Mary Oliver, it was A Thousand Mornings.

What a good choice, I said.

We would make sure all electronic devices were turned off and we would read in silence for half an hour or until we got drowsy and were yawning.

I knew Julia was online because she reads my blog, and when I asked, she said her husband’s stepson bought her a subscription to Apple Music some years after he died.

I suggested she download and listen to The Very Best Of Enya, the soulful performance artist, this was an album  I listened to often when I was very frightened myself.

I said I was going to listen to Gillian Welch tonight, she sings sad and beautiful songs.

I did all of these things and hoped that Julia had as well.

It was good to talk to Sue Silverstein, she told me all about the new kids coming into Bishop Maginn High School and about how because of the Army of Good, the school’s safety signs and equipment had helped prevent a single case of Covid 19 since BM opened.

I was going to focus on that before bedtime.

I said we would talk sometime in the morning and compare notes. There are many more important things in life, I said than our strange and intense election.

At 7:30, she e-mailed me. “Jon, good night,” she said, “and thank you for Enya. I had a very lovely evening, and since I’m older than you, I reserve the right to be tired sooner and go to bed.  The drink was lovely, but it did me in. Thanks for being such a good friend. I am not frightened tonight. It’s good to know someone is out there.”

I realized my PC messenger was wrong.

The issue to deal with wasn’t age but friendship.

Julia kept saying she was older than me, but she wasn’t, I didn’t think, not by much. Perhaps she thought that made it safer for her to approach me and talk to me.

She had led me into a warm and peaceful night. I knew I would sleep well.

Why couldn’t Julia just become a new friend rather than someone I was saving?

I wondered if that hadn’t frightened me more than Trump.