Last Week

Another in my series of the Corona Files

Last month.

I was upset that my conference got canceled, my email inbox was stuffed with notices of cancelations or postponements, I couldn’t plan from one day to the next if I’d have an appointment or a meeting. I learned to pivot, getting used to the new normal. Purell was still available. I rode my bike to my workout class where we laughed about the people we knew who were over-reacting.

Then. The workouts got cancelled.

Three weeks ago I downloaded Zoom and learned about Google chat. It wasn’t the same as meet-ups and the audio was glitchy, but hey, it worked. First it was groups of 50, then 20, then 10, we couldn’t congregate. We were told to social distance. I bought the last roll of toilet paper. I found myself switching back and forth from my work to the latest news. A friend gave me a link to a pattern to make masks.

Then. The governor called for a shelter-in-place.

Two weeks ago I picked up the phone and called people I hadn’t talked to for a while. I messaged friends in Italy, checking in on them. I added runs to the lake because I was basically sitting on my butt all day and eating “quarantine” snacks. It was hard to concentrate—I found I could write for about twenty-minutes a day. I made it a priority to catch the daily press briefing—while sewing face masks.

Then. The mayor sealed off the parks.

Last week my movements were prescribed. I quit even trying to write. I lost hours on Netflix. I figured out when the latest numbers were added to the Johns Hopkins coronavirus interactive map and checked daily. I cried every afternoon at 2 pm. The death rate in Italy sky rocketed. Friends shared Covid-19 playlists. All the books I’d waited to read when I had time stared me in the face—I was no longer able to focus on words on a page. The idea of prayer appealed to me more and more. If even for a minute to distract me from the TV and radio, the waves and waves of numbers rolling over me.

Then.

This week I wake up in the middle of the night to check the news. I await what is about to come. The numerous changes both great and small. The expected announcement of celebrity deaths. New restrictions that narrow my world even further. I will sew masks. There is no routine, there is no normal; the old world is passing away.

“Drop, drop -- in our sleep, upon the heart sorrow falls, memory’s pain, and to us, though against our very will, even in our own despite, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God.”

Aeschylus, Agamemnon