Self-Isolation Day One

Friday, March 20, 2020: First official day of self-isolation

I feel a vague sense of shame at not having completely isolated myself until now. Last weekend we celebrated a friend's birthday one night and hosted a dinner party the following night. Interactions: 8, plus the guy at the fish counter whom I forced to murder three lobsters, breaking his lobster-killing cherry, and the cashier, whom I told to be nice to the fish guy because I had just made him commit murder. Amendment: interactions: 10. 

On Wednesday night I finally decided to cancel all students until school restarted. Half of them had already cancelled anyway.

On Thursday I went to my chiropractor appointment. They sprayed my hands with mint disinfectant and kept us a few feet away from each other. Interactions: 3. Then I went to my mom's for a visit. We sat at opposite ends of the couch and elbow-bumped goodbye. Interactions: 1. Next I stopped at Walmart to pick up photographs, avoiding other shoppers, of whom there were few. Total interactions: 1 (the guy who handed me my photographs). A brief stop at the grocery store to buy chicken (there was nary a breast nor a thigh nor a wing to be found), tin foil and cling wrap, and fresh fruit. I used the self-check-out station. Total interactions on Thursday: 5.

As an aside, Dude is an obvious exception to the interaction total. Since we regularly share air space, a bed, door handles, food, and bodily fluids, he is exempt as a given. 

Which brings us to today, my first official day of self-isolation.

I have had a mild cough with a slightly sore throat for a couple of weeks but have tried not to show it. I felt like I was keeping a horrible secret, like a well-read copy of Mein Kampf or a penchant for cannibalism. Perhaps I was/am. There is no way to tell, as we are not given tests unless we are in the medical field or have severe symptoms and have been out of the country or been in contact with someone who has recently been out of the country. Even then, we are told to just stay home and self-monitor. For what purpose is anyone's guess. A significant worsening of symptoms? An unofficial probable COVID-19 case count when this is all over? At this point, given my symptoms, I'd diagnose myself as a solid maybe-but-unlikely. Hence the vague sense of guilt.

My motivation for continuing to go about my day without informing people of my cough is unclear to me. I certainly don't want to pass the virus on to anyone else. A not-entirely-subconscious denial? A stubborn unwillingness to follow orders? Whatever the reason, it's moot now, as I am determined to see nobody but Dude for the next two weeks. (I may break that vow to visit my mother again. I feel an odd combination of protectiveness and the desire to be comforted by my mommy.)

Today I had breakfast (scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and jam, juice), ran in place on the elliptical for 20 minutes and did my 98-pound-weakling weight routine, and then showered and swapped my night pajamas for day pajamas (a bra and panties are the only real difference).

I did not wash my hair. I did not apply antiperspirant or makeup. I did apply eye cream and moisturizer. I took my B12 and zinc. I made a list of all frozen and perishable foods currently in the house and came up with a dinner menu plan for the next two weeks. I counted out 7 toilet paper squares when I sat down to pee.

I checked facebook and my email, did some reading, made dinner, watched netflix, stroked the cat, ran the dishwasher, started a new jigsaw puzzle, listened to music. I scanned the Halloween photos from 2003.

None of these activities was unusual (except for the toilet paper square counting), but they had a distinct air of unreality nonetheless. There is a sense of waiting, of emptiness. Of pause. An undercurrent of fear.

And this is only Day One.

Pandemic

I work on vocabulary with most of my students. On one particular list, we learn the words "endemic," "epidemic," and "pandemic." All three of those words are usually unfamiliar. I can probably leave "endemic" on there, but I will definitely take those last two off the list and replace them with something else. No one is going to need to learn those words. 

It's weird to experience history in this active, conscious way. It's sort of how I imagine it must have felt to live in Berlin during the early days of World War II, where every day new shit kept happening and things escalated from no bicycles and a curfew to all your Jewish neighbours have been shipped off to god knows where in no time at all and you're left standing there wondering what the fuck just happened.

The range of human reactions to this crisis is interesting: denial, humour, panic, despair. The sharers of memes and the sharers of information. The optimists and the doomsday prophets. (It's easy to judge others based on how divergent their reactions are from your own, but remember that some people are more equipped to deal with trauma than others. Some people can't do hospitals, some people don't cry at funerals. Now is the time to be understanding.) 

It sickens me to hear stories of opportunistic people profiting from the suffering of others, and it saddens me to see how selfish some people have become. 

I worry for all the people who will lose their incomes and am glad to see governments around the world stepping up and breaking the rules so that people can survive. 

I think about how the crematoriums in Italy must be working overtime.

I think about the student who missed lessons for a couple weeks in a row because he had a bad cough, and the one who went to China for Christmas vacation to visit her family. I wonder if I should cancel classes or just continue to make them wash their hands when they arrive. 

I wonder about my own cough. 

I think about the doctors and nurses and technicians and scientists doing everything they can to combat this virus and take care of the sick and the dying. 

I think about how many people I came in contact with last weekend (a lifetime ago) when we went shopping and out for dinner and to a bar to see a friend do his first DJ set, before the shit really hit the fan. 

I take echinacea and oil of oregano and B12 and a couple of gummie multivitamins. I fill the car up with gas. I buy a new tube of polysporin.

I call my mother to check in. I think about my friends and my family. I hope they are safe. (Some of you are so very far away.) 

I am grateful for the moments of solidarity and generosity that renew my faith in our inherent goodness. The toilet paper sharers, the balcony singers, the free babysitters, the employers that allow people to work from home. I am impressed by people's ingenuity, their creativity, their compassion.

There are moments when I forget that the world's gone mad. Slicing beets for soup, doing the dishes, sitting at the table doing a jigsaw puzzle, letting the cat out (and letting her in again). And then I check the news and the health ministers are looking even more exhausted and more events are cancelled or postponed and fewer stores are open. 

 

I think about how this will change how we live when it's all over. We might buy a couple extra cans of soup when it's on sale from now on, just to be safe. We might get that gun license. We might say I love you more often.  

I think about how many more people will die before this thing has run its course. 

I think about our global responsibility to each other. 

I can't sleep, so I sit on the couch in the dark and feel like crying.   

March

When you walk, you walk to the edge of the field and look out, the sky a crisp winter blue above you, the harvested bean plants decomposing in the mud and melting snow at your feet.

The wind makes her presence known, now combative, now caressing, a metaphor for the world. She roars her anger then whispers her secrets through the leaves. 

The chirp of birds in the bare brown branches, a dog barking in the distance, the styrofoam crunch of snow beneath your boots.

You take a deep breath and hold the winter wind in your lungs, a salve against the incessant chatter of the feed, the demands for righteousness and recognition. 

A lone plastic purple bag with white hearts, tightly knotted at the top, full of shit, a metaphor for life.

I Rinse Out My Jars

I rinse out my jars and sort my recycling into the appropriate bins and take my dead batteries and old electronics to the recycling depot, and I've recently started composting by digging holes in the backyard and covering the carrot peels and potato eyes and watermelon rinds and eggshells with dead grass and dry leaves. I've stopped using plastic straws and cleansers with microbeads, and I cut elastic bands and six-pack rings before I throw them out so they don't end up strangling seagulls and ancient tortoises. I reuse gift wrap ribbon. I turn the lights off when I leave a room, run the dishwasher and washing machine during off-peak hours, and don't leave the TV on if I'm not watching it. I try to be a responsible consumer and use up what I have before buying something new (except with nail polish, but I am trying).

I like the way a shotgun feels in my hand. I like the kickback, the holes in things that appear as a result of the flexing of a finger.

I save frogs and mice and birds and turtles and other living creatures that find themselves in danger due to my infringement on their territory in the newly-developed suburbs. I plant flowering bushes to help the bees. I'm trying to tame a feral cat so he won't starve or freeze to death this winter. I am morally opposed to hunting for sport.

I think you're a whining goddamn idiot and I wish you'd shut the fuck up already.

I frequently give my change and my leftovers to the homeless, I give monthly donations to children and refugees and the Red Cross, and I gave the tampons I no longer needed after my uterine ablation to the women's shelter. I buy chocolate from the school kids who knock at the door, and I'll give money to your charity if you ask, especially if the cause has some personal significance for you. I sign petitions and vote at election time.

I eat baby animals. I tear the flesh from their bones with my teeth and suck their juices from my fingers. I toss living sea creatures into pots of steaming white wine and serve them with crusty bread, smacking my lips.

I hold the door for strangers. I'm not rude to waitstaff. I'll let you go in front of me if you need to turn onto a busy street or merge due to lane closures. If it's under $5, I give the remaining balance of a gift card to the person behind me in line.

I imagine sharply turning the wheel and driving my car into a concrete barrier on the highway. Broken bones and pierced organs, raised red scars dissecting my face, staples driven into the side of my skull to keep it intact.

I take care of my cat, drive my mother to her doctor's appointments, and visit people in the hospital. I return emails and messages promptly. I try to leave comments instead of emojis. I make a concerted effort to invite people to parties and lunches and coffee dates. I would rather buoy you up than put you down.

I sometimes imagine what my life would be like if you were dead.

Unexpected Acts of Kindness

Something I like to do when I have paid for parking but am leaving a parking lot is give my dashboard ticket to someone just arriving. I like to imagine the person I gave the ticket to talking with someone afterwards, marvelling at this unexpected kindness. And I like the feeling this small act of generosity engenders in me. (This is not an entirely selfless act.)

If there is no one around, I usually put my ticket back into the ticket-dispensing machine in the hope that the next person might find it and realize its value before inserting their credit card or a handful of change. It's a small way of rebelling against greedy parking lot owners who ticket and/or tow cars whose time has expired.

This is how I riot on. (Subtle but effective, that's my kind of riot.) There are a thousand small things we can do as citizens in our daily interactions to remind ourselves and each other that goodness and kindness and generosity still exist in the world.

I don't know why society seems more divided and insular than ever right now. I don't know why people feel the need to insult and degrade each other online. We live in such a combative time that it is easy to forget that we really are all in this together.   

So I encourage you to adopt my parking lot practice, or find some other small ways to say to a stranger, "Hey, stranger, we are of different races and ages and genders and sexual orientations and religions and economic backgrounds, but we both still need to pay to park here [or whatever the case may be], so let's make the conscious decision to help each other out." Nobody loses, except maybe that parking lot mogul, but I am confident that he'll be okay. Riot on, and happy holidays.   

This is what you do.

You get a phone call too early in the morning. You let the answering machine pick up because it is probably a telemarketer. It isn't. It is your loved one's sister, asking you to please call her back as soon as you can. You know this is not good.

You both get out of bed, and you dial the phone for him, hand it over. While it rings, you wonder who is dead. One of her children? Her ex-husband? (You hope it is this one. This is the best option of all the terrible options.) When she answers in another city, you watch your loved one's face crumple because the dead person is his dad.

And the world is different. As you look out the window at the yellow leaves and bare branches, you know there is a hole, a gap, an emptiness in it now.

You think about the last time you saw him, spoke to him, and wish it was more recently. You know your loved one is feeling this guilt.

You are glad you went to the cottage this year. You think about drinking cocktails on the deck in the sun, you and your loved one and his siblings and their dad, reminiscing about the times spent at the cottage in the past. You think it's weird that you will never go there again. You will probably never again pass the exact centre of Canada marker and wish you could stop and take a picture. There will be no more roads to Mexico and no more games of donimoes [sic].

You sit with your loved one while he cries. You cry yourself.

You are sad for you, but you are more sad for your loved one, because he believes that when you die, you die. There is no afterlife. There is no comfort in this belief.

You blow your nose and catch your face in the mirror and realize that the physical manifestation of grief is exactly right. Grief is ugly.

You think about practical things. Who needs to know? Who should you call? You'll have to cancel work, make plane and hotel reservations. You realize you probably won't be here to give candy to the trick or treaters, so you think about giving your candy to the neighbour to hand out for you.

You go back to bed and curl up under the blanket, but you don't fall asleep. You think about the party you went to last night. You think about cancelling your plans for this evening. Totally unrelated song lyrics run through your head and you wonder where they came from and why. You wonder if you should send a card to the dad's new wife. She was such a bitch the last time you saw her. You realize you are being uncharitable and think about how she loved him and now he is gone, and you feel guilty. You probably won't send a card, though, because it is your loss, too.

You realize that, as much as we reach out to each other in these moments, the grief we feel is solitary.   

Words and phrases fill your head and you understand that this is how you deal, so you turn on the computer and type them.

This is what you do in the hour after learning that someone you love has died suddenly.

From my vantage point on a loungechair

Today, from my vantage point on a loungechair in the backyard after a swim, I watched a young woman push a stroller up the path beside my house. The stroller was covered with a blanket, and the young woman, wearing exercise shorts and sneakers, was looking at her phone while she pushed the stroller. She passed me four times.

I watched a grasshopper work up the courage to leap from the loungechair next to me. I worried that he was going to leap onto my chair, in which case I would have to yelp in fright, but he leaped over it instead and landed on the deck on the other side of me, a miraculous feat.

I watched delicate white butterflies flit from flower to flower in the garden.

I heard shells falling through the leaves as a squirrel, sitting in the big elm tree at the back of the yard, ate nuts and dropped the inedible bits onto the ground beneath her.

I watched a young man walk his bright green bicycle next to the fence separating the path from the golf course. I wondered why he wasn't in school, or if maybe he was an adult. I was too far away to tell. But he was wearing a helmet, so his age was indeterminate. (Helmets save lives, they say, but I am too old to wear a bicycle helmet.) He was looking for something, lost keys, perhaps, or lost golf balls. He picked up a large stick, dropped it, picked up something small, put it in his pocket, took it out of his pocket, threw it sidehand down the path in front of him. Moved on.

I watched another young woman push a stroller up the path, slowing down as she approached the young man with the bicycle. The stroller was streamlined for speed and the young woman was breathing heavily. Her strides became walking lunges. She disappeared up the path, working her glutes and quads.

I watched my cat appear out of the woods, mrrow a hello, whisk her tail and lie under the loungechair next to me in the shade. I watched her lick her paw, run it over her whiskers.

I heard the steady electric hum of hidden cicadas and the chirrup of crickets and the gentle rush of the wind through the branches of the trees.

I felt the heat of the sun on my chest and legs, the cool of the breeze on my bare skin.

I watched an older couple walk their dog, who found the stick the young man had picked up and dropped. The dog was pretty stoked at this discovery, leaping and bounding and wagging his tail. I wondered absently what it was about sticks that so excited dogs. Nature or nurture?

I watched golfers drive by in their carts, enjoying the warm nearly-autumn sun. I hoped for the young man's sake that they lost some golf balls.