Today is our Caroline’s 17th birthday.

So, yesterday, her big sister, Campbell, drove home from Fayetteville.

Campbell is just 22 months older than Caroline, so they’re pretty tight. Campbell had spent the last few days planning a surprise birthday party for Caroline tonight. Campbell’s plan was to spend the weekend here, go back to Fayetteville Sunday, get through another week of classes and then go on spring break with her friends. They’d planned the trip back in the fall, when they were just getting to know one another as freshmen at the University of Arkansas.

Then, of course, Campbell planned to go back to school — to finish the semester and enjoy springtime. She had endured a wet, cold Fayetteville winter and looked forward to those wonderful spring days we all enjoy. She looked forward to waking up on a crisp morning and opening the window of her dorm in the evening.

She planned to enjoy outdoor concerts, fraternity parties, sorority functions and Razorback baseball games. Then, a little more than a week into May, she’d say goodbye for the summer and head home, looking forward to the other side of sorority rush and living in the Chi Omega house.

Campbell’s just like the rest of us. We all had plans. Maybe they didn’t involve economics courses, Arkansas baseball or parties at the SAE house, but we all had plans.

Campbell’s plans changed Thursday afternoon. She was in Southaven when she called me. Word was spreading on campus that the UA was putting out a statement soon, that things were changing rapidly. Sure enough, she got the notification seconds later. Classes were going online only, effective immediately, for the rest of the semester. She sobbed. She was still sobbing when she got home. All I could do was hug her.

Hell, I don’t know what to say. Do you? Do any of us? As a good friend texted me yesterday, “Can you believe this shit? Craziest 24 hours of my 52 years on this earth.”

I thought about that statement yesterday while drinking a very strong concoction of mezcal, tequila, Cointreau and lime (basically a margarita served cocktail style with no simple syrup). Other than Sept. 11, 2001, nothing I remember, certainly not on a national/global scale, reminded me of Thursday. Maybe I’m missing something, but four mezcal-tequilas later, I was drawing a fuzzy blank.

Campbell’s freshman year was essentially canceled Thursday. So was everything else. I’m told the stock market plummeted. Even tequila couldn’t make me look. I told my friends, Jay G. Tate and Gabe DeArmond, that I felt like crying. I expected Jay would make fun of me. He didn’t.

“Naw, man,” he texted. “Moratorium on me calling you a bitch.”

Caroline will still have her surprise party tonight, though it’s not a surprise any longer. Campbell won’t be there. She left early this morning to drive back to Fayetteville. I’ll leave for the same place later today. She’s got to get her stuff together, and I’ll be hauling it back to Oxford Saturday.

Then what? That’s one hell of a question.

I had plans, too. I was legitimately looking forward to covering Ole Miss spring football on Tuesday, and if I’m honest, I typically loathe spring football. We had a coverage plan and everything. I was going to make Chase cover it too, even if that meant sacrificing some midweek Ole Miss baseball coverage. People are excited about Lane Kiffin’s start at Ole Miss, and we were going to chronicle it to the best of our collective abilities.

Ole Miss won’t practice football Tuesday. Or the next Tuesday. Or the Tuesday after that. Maybe, hopefully, the Rebels will squeeze some spring practices in before the end of the spring semester, but no one knows what’s next. Ole Miss, like Arkansas and damn near every other college in America, announced new plans Thursday. Ole Miss extended spring break another week and will go online only starting the following week for an indefinite amount of time. Some of Campbell’s friends at Ole Miss have spoken with and/or corresponded with their professors this week. To a person, everyone expects the remainder of the semester to play out online.

What does that mean for football? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone really knows. We’re all in uncharted waters here.

Baseball season, and all spring sports seasons, was suspended until March 30 earlier Thursday. That felt, at least to me, like a prayer. I know people in NBA and Major League Baseball circles and I knew what they were hearing — no sports, realistically, until mid-May. Hours later, in a move that shocked many and angered quite a few, the NCAA announced that all spring championships had been canceled. No March Madness, no Oklahoma City, no Omaha, no nothing. I wasn’t surprised. By noon Thursday, even before getting Campbell’s call, I was numb.

Ole Miss baseball practiced Thursday. The Rebels were scheduled to entertain LSU starting tonight. Swayze was going to be crazy. The Tigers, of course, didn’t make the trip to Oxford. They stayed in Baton Rouge for one final day of classes before LSU, like everyone else, goes online only.

Unless the Southeastern Conference goes renegade later this spring — and no one expects that — there won’t be anymore baseball at Swayze or Alex Box or Dudy Noble or Baum or anywhere else this season. In a moment, with a simple tweet, it was simply canceled.

So, like I said, I’m driving to Fayetteville today. I’ll hang in a hotel room tonight while Campbell spends one more night with her friends. I’ll load her stuff in my truck and head back Saturday. I won’t have basketball games or spring training games to listen to. On Sunday, I won’t have a selection show to watch. On March 26, there won’t be any Major League Baseball games to view. The Cubs and Brewers won’t play as scheduled to open the 2020 season. In mid-April, the NBA Playoffs won’t begin.

I suspect schools are going to get canceled or, at a minimum, postponed. I fear for businesses. I fear for people’s livelihoods, for retirement accounts and for our general sanity.

I suspect I’ll spend a good amount of the drive back wondering what I’ll do now. There’s nothing to cover. I’ve never been a stick-to-sports guy, thank God, but I rely on sports as the canvas to do what I love. For the foreseeable future, there are no sports to write about or talk about. There are no games to analyze or predict. Everything is canceled.

I suppose I’ll tell stories — my stories, your stories, anyone’s stories. I’ll do the one thing I always do when I don’t know what to do — write.

Years ago, I started a book. I turned Campbell and Caroline’s stuffed animals into characters and brought them to “life.” Maybe now is the time to finish and refine that book. Years from now, when they have children, I suspect they’d read it fondly to my grandchildren, regaling them with tales of Larry the Leopard, Moses the Bear, Catherine the Elephant and the rest.

At some point Saturday or Sunday, Campbell will pull away from Fayetteville and head home to Oxford. She’s loved her freshman year. She and her remarkable roommate, Parker, have the neatest friendship. They complement each other so well. Campbell has made other wonderful friends as well — in Fayetteville and New Orleans and Searcy and Nashville and Dallas and, yes, even in Iowa. She has thrived in the classroom and begun to get involved on campus. Arkansas has been a perfect fit. She chose it on her own. It was a great choice for her. It’s become home.

I suspect Campbell will spend a lot of her drive hoping and praying that things get back to normal. She has plans. She wants to run for an office in her sorority, finalize a major, get an internship and enjoy her sophomore year. She is looking forward to another football season, another trip to Dallas for the Texas A&M game and the Ole Miss game so she can entertain some of her friends from home.

Again, we’re all Campbell. Just like her, we’re all hoping and praying things eventually get back to our “normal” so we can resume doing the things we love and enjoy the places that make us feel home.

Let’s hope we all get our wish. Let’s hope that on Nov. 14, we can all watch Ole Miss and Arkansas play a football game. Campbell can cheer for the Hogs. You guys can cheer for the Rebels and I can cheer for the clock. We can all have a few beers and some chicken tenders and bitch about the SEC officials. Let’s hope that by that day in northwest Arkansas, it just feels normal again.

Even if it does, something tells me we’re all going to appreciate it more than we have in a long time.

Until then, I’m going to try to remember that everyone out there is a lot like Campbell right now — sad, worried, scared and hopeful.

My mother always says this, too, shall pass. I don’t have any other words of wisdom. I’ll just hope she’s right.