COVID for Christmas

Ho ho ho! Bet you know where this is going! And yes, I am over a week late for Christmas tidings, but it’s a New Year’s Resolution of mine to improve my blog upkeep, and it all starts TODAY (something I will likely say for many, many days to come).

Thursday. Christmas Eve eve. My mom and grandma returned from a day on the town grabbing last-minute gifts, stocking stuffers, and food enough for an army. My mom was tired. We wanted to watch a movie, but she excused herself to bed. I woke up the next morning to find her and my dad in an Omicron stand-off, the positive at-home test lying on the six feet of carpet between them.

So, it was the morning of Christmas Eve, and my mom was radioactive. We sent her up to her room without breakfast, for we would have to prepare that for her, lest she get her COVID hands all over the kitchen drawers, Skippy Natural, or honey bottle. This practice continued for days and days, with her placing orders for breakfast, lunch, dinner, an occasional tea, water bottle refills, and the customary piece of chocolate to cap off the evening.

We knocked before entering her room and, with both parties masked, the delivery person would leave the rations on the TV table that had been unearthed from beside the water tank in the basement. My mom would wait to approach the plate until we left the room, and then she’d eat in solitude. Uncharacteristically, she watched a ton of television.

That fateful morning of the positive test, my dad migrated his toiletries into our bathroom and took up residence on an air mattress on Julia’s floor. Twin size. We called up the friends and relatives who could no longer celebrate with us. I called the local Italian place to cancel our orders for trays of eggplant rollatini and penne alla vodka. I stopped hugging my grandma who had planned on ending her NY stay with a bang but now was stuck with what would sound more like the last gasp of spitty air leaving a balloon.

Ashamedly, one of my first thoughts upon seeing the positive test was, okay great, now I don’t have to work any longer on this gingerbread house, because there will be nobody to show it off to. This year, it was to be a 50s diner, and I suddenly lacked all motivation to finish.

But our patient, upon hearing my plans for retirement, would not stand for it. And when someone requests something from their sick bed, you oblige. Later that day, we all went into the far corner of the living room to let her emerge and observe the final product from all angles. (If you are interested in seeing it, get in touch, and I will send pictures.)

The gingerbread house was one of my concerns, but there was so much more uncertainty hanging in the air. Would we be able to return any of the hundreds of dollars of groceries? (The answer was yes, for the most part.) Would my grandma and her husband be able to head back to Florida on their flight scheduled for the 26th? (Also yes.) Would I win the Powerball and provide a heaping of levity to the situation? (Nope.) But, most of all, what would Christmas feel like with six in quarantine and one in isolation?

It was weird.

Not until you’re deprived of the company do you realize how much the holiday spirit hinges on having lots of people around who you don’t normally see. When they are around, you understand it to be a special occasion, regardless of decorations or food or gifts. Never is this more apparent than when these people—be it relatives, friends, friends so close they are pretty much relatives—are absent. And when your mom, who lives with you and who you know is just upstairs, is also visibly absent, it’s just bizarre.

I am lucky that my mom has fully recovered, but there are many people who celebrated the holidays this year with someone missing. I don’t like to get political on here, but please make sure you are doing everything in your power to keep your friends and family from experiencing the same level of loss that hundreds of thousands of people have over the past couple of years.

Maybe the last many months have not quite been what we envisioned. I definitely did not imagine opening gifts while my mom sat outside the room, a double-masked pariah. What I would have given to hug her and thank her for all she’s given me. But come New Year’s Eve, she was out of isolation, and the rest of us had tested negative, so we stood out on our porch at midnight with blowers, screaming EFF YOU to 2021.

Yeah, COVID sucks. And it sucked even more during what’s supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year. But we’re on the back end of this. Be a responsible citizen of the world and get vaccinated. Oops, I got political.

Oh and, though completely unrelated (but also not really unrelated), go watch Don’t Look Up on Netflix. Fin.