Self-Isolation Day 12

It is the first day of April. Outside, spring continues to manifest herself. The grass is visibly greener. Fat robins hop on the lawn. The trees are still bare, but buds are visible if you look closely.

I was out for a walk one sunny day, saying hello to the people I passed, all of us safely on our own sides of the sidewalk but still sharing some camaraderie. The understanding that the world is currently fucked acknowledged with a nod and a smile. (Funny how the things you learn when you are young stay with you. I have never crossed a street without first looking both ways, even if the street is one-way, and I always move to the right side of hallways and sidewalks if someone else is approaching.) A woman was walking on the wrong side of the sidewalk, talking on her cell phone, so she didn't notice me at first. Rather than play a game of pedestrian chicken, I moved to the left side of the sidewalk. When she finally did glance up, she averted her eyes and pulled her scarf up around her face. She was not the first person to avoid direct eye contact, as if the virus is spread by a glance. I bet a scientific study would prove that people who avoid eye contact also currently possess an overabundance of Lysol wipes and rolls of toilet paper.

I went to the grocery store for the first time in over two weeks. An employee stood at the front with a row of freshly sanitized carts. The deli, butcher, and fresh fish sections were closed. There was toilet paper, but they were out of 1% milk and canned tomatoes. Small round signs with the words "Good Neighbour: Limit 1" decreed purchase restrictions and reminders to not be an asshole. I watched a man open plastic containers of strawberries and pick through them, transferring berries to his container with his bare hands. I did not say anything. I just walked past, astonished. Footstep stickers on the floor indicated how far apart we should stand while waiting in line, and a plexiglass partition separated me from the cashier. We exchanged pleasantries like the world hadn't gone mad, and I thanked her and wished her a good day, as I usually do. I realized how much we take for granted living here. I trust that I can zip to the store and pick up a loaf of bread or a quart of milk or a stick of butter when I need one. This is not true for much of the world. It's a good practical lesson to learn.   

Yesterday I was watching the news, listening to the prime minister and reading the global updates and recent death tolls on the ticker at the bottom of the screen, when tears began streaming down my face. There was no thickness in my chest, no sobs wracked my body, just a sudden steady flow of tears. It seems my body had sprung an emotional leak.

Journalists criticize leaders for not giving people a stronger timeline. I understand the desire for a resolution, but we do not know when this will end. (The not knowing is perhaps the hardest thing of all.) We have to accept that and change society and our own behaviours and attitudes accordingly. This is easy for me to say. I live in a house that is paid for with a partner who still has a job. We have a pantry full of food and the means of getting more should we run out. I do not have elderly family members in retirement homes, or a pre-existing medical condition, or children. Still, I do have a well-developed sense of empathy. Hence, perhaps, the tears.     

Some people continue to be ignorant, selfish jerks. Many more people are proving that humanity is better than those jerks. Should I encounter a man picking through strawberries in the future, I will say something.

Self-Isolation Day 5

Here we are in the early afternoon of the fifth day of my quarantine. As I type this, I am looking out the window to the woods behind my house. Spring has officially arrived, but the trees are still bare, the grass is still yellow, dead leaves still blanket the earth. The occasional robin pecks at the lawn.

People walk singly or in pairs through the woods from time to time, with dogs or strollers.

I removed the chipped polish from my toenails when my quarantine began, leaving only the big toes intact. Perhaps today I will paint the rest to match and make something complete.

There are two enemies beyond these walls. The first is the virus, invisible, insidious. Like the pod people or the shape-shifting thing that attacked the men at their research base in Antarctica, it invades. We are hosts without knowing, until the first dry cough, the fever, the gasping, laboured breath. At this point, we will live or die, depending on our body's resilience and the availability of a ventilator. Sometimes we are hosts with no signs at all.

The second enemy, and arguably the worst, is humanity itself. In any zombie movie, there is an inevitable shift from the common enemy, the zombie, to the human enemy, the selfish, greedy individual who prioritizes something other than the survival of the species. Resources, maybe, or power, or scientific knowledge, or money. His own life at the cost of so many others. This individual will get his comeuppance, make no mistake. In a movie, this character is stabbed, shot, bitten, beheaded. In real life, he will lose his job, be unfriended, become the object of derision and shame. Hoarders and politicians, take note.

There is a great weight in doing the mundane things I used to do unthinkingly. Maybe time is the third enemy. I feel like I am actively trying to kill time, but for what purpose? Until I can go out for dinner again? See that band at that club? Die? 

I like being alone. Even before the quarantine, I spent a lot of time in the house by myself, but maybe I am a more social human being than I realized. It is certainly true that I throw more parties, plan more dinners and lunches and game nights, than I am invited to. This might explain my feeling of emptiness: I have lost my role as the instigator of social gatherings since social gatherings are now forbidden.

And thus, having identified the source of my despair, I can move forward and finally finish painting my toenails.   

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.