Starting my COVID-19 journal. Just one week ago life was normal. Watching presidential debates, finishing work projects, volunteering, running errands for gifts and new socks and suitcases for trips since cancelled. Just in one 24-hour period life changed.
Last Monday, I think, or Sunday is when it began. I was head of the wishy-washy department, changing my mind over and over about going to Virginia. Yes, I'm going, no, I can't. Yes, it will be fine
Oh, even before Sunday. Two weeks before when Luci and I flew to Florida on February 26th. The news was full of Coronavirus reports. Deaths had already been reported in China. But it was noise then, and I tend to stay away from sensational news, especially when it involves reports from our president. I didn't react. If anything, I probably under-reacted. But Luci and I wiped down our arm rests and chairs and buckles as we always do - or at least as I'd come to do when I travel with her. There was little out of the ordinary.
But when we got to the condo, the first sign of change met us at the door. Matt wouldn't hug us. And there over his shoulder as I took what I could from his armless embrace, I saw on his computer screen that he was researching masks. Already.
Florida life was a bubble Nothing can touch me there in a beach chair, listening to the pool chatter and the mockingbirds, eating mangoes from the fruit stand, rubbing sunscreen on my freckled arms and legs. In Florida, I don't care about home or jobs or people or snowstorms or news, and certainly not coronavirus news, despite the fact that the news was getting closer.
We flew home on March 2nd.
On March 4th, Tom was starting to go a little nuts. He and Marlena were planning their trip to Boston, and he was unsure whether or not they should go. I went to the dollar stores and drug stores and grocery stores in search of hand sanitizer and wipes, and already there were shortages. I saw the same people in different stores, all stalking the aisles in search of the same items, all of us pretending we were there for other things like greeting cards and hair dryers and hummingbird food packets.
On March 6th they went.
On March 8th Marlena came home not feeling well.
Tom found out two days later that two of the players they'd seen at the Celtics game had been tested and were positive for coronavirus.
He lost his mind, sure that because his daughter and he were in the first row, their proximity to the players was too close.
He couldn't be calmed, he couldn't quiet his fear.
I left the house.
And sat in my mother's house to talk, six feet away.
Six feet. Away, not under.
Interesting though that the recommendation for distance is the same number as the depth of a grave.
No comments:
Post a Comment