I’m here just hoping that existing in my chatty mode will help. It’s hard for me when I wake up in the morning. I lie there then remember that the world is locked down and waiting to know who will die and what hospital will become overwhelmed today. The other bad thing is that I cough, sneeze, and essentially wonder, every morning, whether today is the day when the symptoms will finally appear.
I sneezed twice this morning. And my nose ran for a minute.
Here’s what I thought:
I bought groceries yesterday. Did I forget and touch my face? Did someone sick touch a box and did I forget to sanitize it when I got home? Did I forget to sanitize the counter well enough after putting down the box? Did I step on that spot on the floor, accidentally touch the bottom of my foot, then touch my eye? Did I…
Ew.
Okay, I didn’t fucking touch my eye after touching my foot. I don’t want to get some kind of foot disease in my eye.
But what did I touch yesterday? I can’t quite remember.
Do I need to start the quarantine clock again between Mike and me? Oh no, not another two weeks in quarantine without hugs because I got home with bags of groceries and couldn’t remember what I touched.
See, when all this started, I’d been sick for three weeks and so I hadn’t hugged or kissed Mike for three weeks. That was back at President’s Day. It was a nasty cough. I didn’t want to give that to Mike.
Do you remember then? Everything felt normal then. Some people say this is the new normal. I can’t think about that right now.
So, we’d gone to see Nick. I was mostly better by then, but not totally. I have a good immune system so I was probably throwing germs all over the place. I made the mistake of hugging Nick because I was so damned glad to see him and hadn’t been properly hugged for two weeks. I remember the moment, because I lingered a bit too long and Nick, being the teenage boy that he is, said, “Really, Mom?”
After that lovely weekend, Mike and I had just begun having contact, but I still felt behind on human contact. You know, when you need to catch up? I needed to catch up.
Four days later, Nick got sick and I had to go collect him at school. Damn. I had hugged the boy. It was my fault. And I still had that nasty cough. Shoot, I still, to this day, have the remnants of that cough.
As the main caregiver, I hugged sick Nick as much as he needed, but stopped hugging Mike in case I became the carrier of yet another bug.
See, we really did have this social distancing for colds and flu down before the world blew up with it.
Just as Nick began to feel better, COVID-19 happened right here in the Pacific Northwest. People died. It blew up in China. It was coming.
Then, I went on this shopping trip that took so much effort that I couldn’t quite keep track of what I touched and who I spoke to. It freaked me out because I ran into a friend who was terribly sick and I wondered if she’d come too close and I would catch it. She coughed and I actually wondered if I was downwind of her. But back then, it hadn’t yet occurred to me that I could catch it by touching the boxes and bags and cans I bought.
I didn’t come down with anything new, but I did mentally count the days until a week had passed before I kissed and hugged Mike freely. He’s in a high-risk category. It’s funny, odd not humorous, that I express my love for him right now by not hugging and kissing him when I could have been exposed.
Home life settled in. I took a very careful trip to the grocery store and wiped down everything and the counters when I got back home. Five or six days passed and I didn’t get sick.
Then, we had to move Nick out of his dorm. That was an exhausting mess of a day and by the end, I had no idea what I had touched. So, a week of internal quarantine passed without contact with my husband. We each had separate hand towels. I wiped down counters after I used them, and I thought about the parts of my jacket that might be infected because I had coughed into them. Finally, that ten days passed and I didn’t get sick.
Two days ago, I had just relaxed my internal quarantine began to hug Mike again.
But yesterday, I went to the grocery store.
I don’t know if it’s getting freakier to go to the grocery store or if I’m creating a phobia about it. What is this fucking virus doing to our psyches?
I picked up each item at the store with a gloved hand. I pushed the cart with a gloved hand. imagined that everything in my wallet was filthy, so I used gloves to pay too. The cashier wasn’t allowed to put anything into my reusable grocery bags because they could be dirty. I had just washed them, but he didn’t know that. I bagged my own stuff, with gloved hands. When I got to my car, I peeled off the gloves, slathered my hands with hand sanitizer, and drove home.
When I got home, I put my bags on the floor, pulled out a Chlorox wipe, and wiped down each thing I’d bought. I didn’t buy fresh fruit or vegetables or I would have soaked them in a vinegar and water solution. I wondered when I was simply smearing COVID-19 germs all over the other packages as the wipe began to dry out a little. I used three wipes before I’d finished with all four bags. Then I put the groceries away and wiped down the counters and the floor where the bags had been. Did I miss anything?
Nick came into the kitchen just then. “Food?” he said. I’d forgotten to pick up some Arizona tea for him when I was out. Fuck. So, when Mike and I took Teddy for a walk, I ran back into the store to get some.
Where was my little baggie of nitrile gloves? No gloves. Was I careful enough when I opened the door to the refrigerated section? Did I get a germ on my hands when I touched the cans? Was my grocery bag infected? When I got back to the car, Mike opened the car window and poured handsanitizer for me so I didn’t have to touch the car first. He gave me another squirt of it after I got into the car. When I got home, I went through the whole process again of sanitizing the cans, wiping down the counter, then washing my hands, twice.
Today, I’m wondering if I should go back into internal quarantine mode. I’m wondering if I need to wait a week or two before I hug Mike.
I don’t do very well when I can’t hug my husband. It was hard enough before COVID-19 because I didn’t want to give him some cold I had caught. But now, I have to worry for fourteen days after every single time I go to the grocery store?
Yes. Yes, I do. It’s worth it to see him shuffle into the room in the morning and say, “Why are you up so early?” It’s worth it. If I have to get OCD and germophobe characteristics to keep Mike alive, I’ll do it.
This morning, I saw that I’d accidentally bleached a couple of places on the jacket I wore to the store yesterday.
Thank you for listening, jules