My Fling With ‘Rona
It finally happened folks. After over two years of miraculous evasion, I got The Vid. I woke up one morning with a hoarse voice, but otherwise felt fine. By the following morning, I had full-on body aches, fever, and a terribly sore throat. So what? It’s COVID. Everyone’s doing it. But here’s the kicker: in the time between those two mornings, I had flown to Florida to visit grandma.
My family’s timing with COVID has been unbeatable; my mom got it on Christmas Eve and my case timed itself so as to not be discovered until I touched down over a thousand miles from home.
My time in The Sunshine State was ultimately contained to my grandma’s condo, while my sisters went to the beach and got terrible sunburns. I could have been sorry for myself (and I was a bit), but mostly I was terrified that I had brought this virus to my grandma’s doorstep, to her and her husband, neither of whom had contracted it yet. Luckily, I took immediate precautions, and they are both feeling fine, but I did have to tell my grandma to ignore her intense maternal nature a couple times and restrain from coming over to lovingly pat my hot head.
My sisters and grandma went out to see the Downton Abbey movie, and I watched the RDJ Sherlock Holmes sequel. They walked down the boardwalk to an oceanside restaurant, and I ordered vegetable fried rice to mark the first time her condo has probably ever received a DoorDash driver. My sisters held their customary Instagram photoshoot on the beach, while I held court with a plastic grocery bag full of discarded tissues and Halls wrappers and struggled with phlegm getting stuck in my new Invisalign trays. Gentlemen, she’s single.
But bizarrely, I finally felt included. I met ‘Rona, she beat me up and tossed me aside as she did everyone else, and now I can induct myself into the zeitgeist. Hoorah! And before I go any further with this sarcasm, I want to make it clear that I definitely would NOT be writing in such high spirits had I not been graced with the three gifts of the Magi: Pfizer, Pfizer, and Pfizer. I realize how much pain and suffering COVID has brought to our country and the world, especially before we all had the chance to get the jab. I also realize how much pain and suffering we have avoided by trusting in science. Magi, can I get an amen?
I certainly have an increased understanding now of the crisis. That I felt so shitty, even with three shots, is a scary thing. I was texting friends and coworkers who had it at the same time I did, comparing symptoms, complaining about how it could feel like one virus one day and a completely different one the next, musing about how we’d survived so long only for it to find us when the light at the end of the tunnel finally seemed to be more than a mirage.
I like to tell myself we are coming out of it, but the truth is that we will not fully emerge before countless others wake up to a sore throat or find themselves quarantined from loved ones and life that was supposed to be back to normal, goddamnit. And as much as I love my grandma, I am hoping most of these people don’t find themselves unwittingly trapped in a Florida condominium, where the fresh air beyond the terrace is just as stifling as it is from the couch.
Years from now, when my grandkids are learning about this virus in their textbooks, they will be able to look at me in awe and say, “Wow, grandma! You survived COVID?” And I will nod at them, tell them it happened while I was with my own grandma, and spin a tale of the dark depths of sickness. The truth is not that great of a story. Though apparently it’s worth a blog post.