Sunday marked a month of isolation for me and my family. A month of extreme social distancing, temper tantrums (not all from the kids), and my husband's quarantine beard. I've begun posts about the pandemic many times over the past month, only to stop for fear of saying something stupid or insensitive. I don't even have anything unique to bitch about (thank goodness). My personal list of complaints is pretty universal. This sucks. I miss my mom. I miss my friends. I miss my in-laws, my children's friends and teachers, the checkout people at Publix, that guy who cuts everybody off in school carline, our favorite bartender at Flamestone, the bartender at Flamestone I don't like, and the random woman I've never spoken to but share a nod/smile with every morning at my son's preschool. Basically, I miss the outside world, with all its daily annoyances and joys.
Our world has shrunk to fit inside the boundaries of our property and neighborhood streets. My car is now a receptacle for cloth grocery bags I can't take to the store and yoga mats I can't take to the gym. My passport expired this month and I see no reason to renew it any time soon. My hands look one hundred and three years old from all the hand washing. Every day is basically the same, differentiated only by whether I change out of my pajamas before noon. I haven't worn a bra in weeks (one for the plus column). We now worship the internet, our most vital tool for connection. (I will be sacrificing a goat to the God of WiFi next full moon.* As should you.**) All that, and I still know how easy I have it in this situation. Because everyone is missing people, places, things—the building blocks of our rich, textured lives. Those are the universal complaints.
Then there are the working parents, trying to report quarterly results on a conference call while they referee fights between their kids, or try to find childcare so they can go to work. The children who count on school for food and stability. People who have been laid off or furloughed from their jobs, or who've kept their job, but are required to venture out and risk being infected. My heart breaks for those dying alone in their apartments, alone on the street, or in the hospital without family by their side. Then I imagine the hospital staff who did everything in their power and training to save that person, only to watch them die. They get to go home at the end of the day but carry with them the fear that they might infect their own family due to lack of proper equipment.
So after you sacrifice that goat (or squirrel—the God of WiFi isn't that picky) raise a drink to the people putting themselves at risk to feed their families and/or keep society from spinning into chaos. Support your local restaurants by ordering takeout, tip your grocery shoppers well, and keep making those masks. If you have other suggestions, please leave them in the comments. I know there are a lot of people with time on their hands, wondering what they can do to help (besides staying home).
I love to imagine the day we can all emerge from our homes, a bit bleary-eyed but thrilled to finally be free. The logical side of me knows this will probably never be over, in the sense that the virus will simply disappear. Covid-19 may be with us forever, like the flu, slowly becoming more manageable and less terrifying. Will we still shake hands with each other? Are handshakes a thing of the past? I appreciate a good handshake, but a bad one is even better. They can tell you so much about a person, whether it's the annoying, too-early finger squeeze, the make-you-cry-uncle hand crunch, or the limp, wet rag. Elbow bumps just wouldn't be the same.
Now, here is where the magical thinking comes in.
Somewhere out there in the wider world, right now, is a person.*** This person could be a man or a woman. History says they're a man but it would be pretty cool if they're a woman. Let's give this person a sexy, gender-neutral name. How does Alex sound? So, Alex (Alexandra/Alexander/Alejandro?!) is a scientist, specifically a virologist. But our Alex is not your typical scientist. They ride a motorcycle and won a silver medal in archery during the 2012 London Olympics. They also bake a mean chocolate soufflé, and would've competed on American Ninja Warrior if shooting hadn't conflicted with their weekly stint at Habitat for Humanity. Look at those well-defined arm muscles and the soft, dark locks flowing from Alex's motorcycle helmet. Nice, right? It gets even better.
Alex is going to save our lives and sanity by finding a vaccine for Covid-19.
If Alex followed the rules, it would take at least a year to discover the vaccine and prove its viability. Then there would be testing and more testing. And more testing. Then production and a slow distribution roll-out. But Alex doesn't follow rules, Alex makes them.
Can you imagine it? The party we would have if a foolproof vaccine was discovered and made available tomorrow? It would be a freaking rager. We would tell our grandchildren stories about it until they finally had enough and said, "Yuck, Grandma, you already told me about the time you did a body shot off the mailman and jumped off the roof into the pool!"
Alas, we live in reality and things probably won't go quite like that. But it's fun to think about. So hang in there and reach out to your people for support. And if you don't have people readily available, reach out to the artists you love. Read the books that bring you joy, watch one of the many live concerts musicians are putting on from their homes. And look forward to better days. This too shall pass.
In the meantime, hang in there everybody! Wash your hands and stay home. Give Alex time to work.
*No animals were harmed in the making of this blog post. **Please don't. ***Obviously, a Covid-19 vaccine will be created through the diligent efforts of a vast array of brilliant people—epidemiologists, immunologists, microbiologists, biochemists, virologists, and manufacturing enginists (just kidding, engineers). But they wouldn't all fit on a single motorcycle, would they?
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