I Finally Got Covid

Welp, I lasted almost three years without Covid, so it was a pretty good run, I guess.

I don't know if I finally picked up Covid at the gym or at one of the high schools I sub at or during a Girl Scout cookie transaction or somewhere else (my money's on the high school), but my reign as smug Covid virgin is now over. 

It's funny (funny weird, not funny ha-ha), because the day before I started feeling sick, and three days before I'd finally test positive, I randomly looked up how long my latest bivalent booster was supposed to last. I read an update that said it was generally wearing off 4-5 months later, and I was all, "Dang, four months?!? I got *my* booster just a little over four months ago!"

Fucking sigh.

I just keep on testing positive and feeling miserable, so I'm pretty stoked for the day that I can leave my bedroom quarantine, or, barring that, just for the day that I wake up and then don't immediately feel like lying down for a nap.

And you guys! I had to miss my trip to go visit my college kid! This was going to be the first time that I got to see her after leaving her at college. We had tickets to see the live show of our collective favorite podcast, and we were going to buy her some new clothes because it turns out that I was right and she was wrong about how many outfits one needs at school (ahem), and then we were going to kick around Columbus for a day while I looked in her face and squeezed her around the middle and listened to her voice and just generally soaked her in properly.

Instead, I lay miserably in my bed at home, following along on Life360 as Matt did all those delightful and much-anticipated activities in my stead. He got to take her to see Cecil and buy her a new coat and wander off on a pointless detour to the pet store--

--and buy her fresh produce (the kid was about to murder someone for some berries) and take her to the zoo:

I am still utterly distraught and beside myself with jealousy. I will never get over it.

My high school student did occasionally leave gourmet baked goods at my bedroom door, at least:

Yes, she made that fruit tart from scratch. No, I have no idea how delicious it is, because I lost my senses of taste and smell and all I can perceive is that it's crunchy and juicy and soft and cold.

You know who else is really helpful when you're sick?

Cats, man. Cats are phenomenal when you're sick. This particular dude has been happy as a clam to spend his days snoozing on top of the quilt on top of the electric blanket on top of me lying like a lump in bed and staring mindlessly at moving pictures on screens.

I did decide, though, that when I can muster a few extra percentage points of brainpower and I'm feeling like being a little productive, I should at least try to martial the energy to whittle down my massive collection of library books by performing the novel activity (lol) of actually READING them, gasp! 

And it turns out that when you spend literally (lol) half of your days reading, you can mow through a lot of books!

Discounting a few that I skimmed and/or abandoned without finishing, here's what I've burned through in the past ten days:

• Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
• Juliette Gordon Low, by Stacy A. Cordery
• Jo: An Adaptation of Little Women (Sort of), by Kathleen Gros
• A Heart That Works, by Rob Delaney

Delaney's book reminded me that when I was a kid, I randomly read what I feel like is an unusual number of non-fiction books written by parents about their deceased child's terminal illness. My grandparents owned Angel Unaware, probably because it was written by Dale Evans, although they, too, had lived through the deaths of two of their children by the time I found that book on our shelves, so who really knows--I never asked, and I never heard them, or to be honest anyone of their generation, ever speak voluntarily about any topic having emotional content. I am fairly positive that I bought Alex: The Life of a Child from Wal-mart, where I scored most of my mass-market paperbacks until I was old enough to prowl the mall and their Waldenbooks store--can you imagine the luxury of a full-on bookstore INSIDE A MALL?!? I bought SO MANY inappropriate books there, from the Simon Necronomicon to every every single lurid tale of dubiously consensual incest that V.C. Andrews could come up with. I don't remember where I found Death Be Not Proud, but I loved that one the most because of all the loving descriptions of chemistry equipment that the kid continually requested for his at-home real science laboratory. 

I don't really know what I was wanting from those books about child death when I, myself was a child, although I can guess that it was probably something like interest in a peer's lived experience, morbid curiosity about death, fascination at witnessing an adult verbalizing their complicated feelings about their relationship with their child... also, I was such an avid reader that I read the back of the Pop Tart box while I was eating breakfast, the golf magazines in various lobbies, and the motel's King James Bible if I ran out of books while on vacation. 

Delaney's book was partially the same--I checked it out from the library because people were talking about it on Reddit, picked it up to actually read it out of boredom, and found that the peer's lived experience that I'm now interested in belongs to the parent. A Heart That Works is both awful and beautiful, and I probably didn't need to read something that would have me crying so much considering how stuffy I am, and it was definitely a bad idea to read something that would have me desperate to hug my children during a period in which I definitely cannot hug either of my children.

But later, Syd and I sat on the floor in our different rooms, separated by a crack in the door that I peeped through, and she told me about the nice day she'd had driving around town with a friend, running their parents' errands and spending their pocket money on costume jewelry. Even later, we all Zoomed with Will, and she talked about how her classes are going and how unappetizing the cafeteria food is and what she might want to study next semester. And then Matt, who's decided to just ride or die my Covid infection even though he's still happily negative, brought me something crunchy for dinner and watched TV with me until I fell asleep at the super wild time of approximately 9:00 pm. 

It was the Covid-era version of everyone I love hugging me hard, and I'm honored and grateful to have it.