The time we got covid
The morning of October 31st we woke to messages from Jeff’s employees. Several weren’t coming to work. Covid had hit the office. Jeff and I had been fighting some allergy symptoms and soreness from a new workout but felt pretty good. We thought it would be best to test. We were both positive.
In March 2020, Jeff and I were in Washington DC at one of his work conferences. When we landed, we started hearing inklings that some things were being canceled due to Covid spreading in the US. We had been hearing about the slow spread overseas from China for months. The first cases in the US were recent and contained. We knew traveling to DC may be a bit dicey by the time we got closer to the trip but we had no idea what this virus was at the time and we were still sort of shrugging off whether it was even going to be a thing. After turning on our phones at the airport, the look on Jeff’s face told me it was going to be something bigger than we imagined.
The governor’s chief legal counsel, political counsel, and the director of public health are our friends. They were all calling, texting, and debating whether we should just turn around and come back. We decided to stay and see what happened. We spent our time between work and school, visiting museums and diners as the clouds of the pandemic slowly formed. The news started reporting small cancellations. Basketball games may not be played. It wasn’t a sure thing, but a consideration. Crowds began to thin. The restaurants were a little emptier each day. Until the last day when I went to the National Museum of Women in the Arts. There were security guards on each floor. One offered me a private tour, telling me about each piece and why he came to work there. I saw no other guests. It was just me.
Strangely, at the same time, we were staying at the Renaissance Hotel downtown which was under construction in the basement. We were warned by some of our fellow attendees they found mice in the conference room due to the construction. We sat at the hotel bar for dinner one night listening nervously as the bartender told us a story about an event he worked that was a superspreader for the elite in Washington. Getting ready for bed that night exhausted and trying to pack, I found a family of mice under the dresser in our hotel room. It felt like the world was somehow turning upside down. We were rattled, changing rooms, constantly trying to make sure our flight home wasn’t being canceled. If it was, would there be buses? If there were would they be full? Would the rental cars be gone? How would we get back to our children? Those clouds were a storm and it was here. I could feel the electricity in the air. The tension was palpable.
Our flight home was a race to airport gates and airplanes full of nervous passengers guessing at how to take care of this unknown virus. There was kindness then, passing wet wipes to one another to clean seats. “Bless you”s when people sneezed instead of vitriol and divisiveness. That came later. Leadership didn’t help the practice of loving-kindness.
That was when we stopped. We got home, hugged the grandparents, and they left. We went out to eat one last breakfast. We stopped at a shop. Ben had a babysitting class and then the world shut down. We tried to solve it. For two years we tried to make it better. We walked every day and were on school boards making decisions and were skyping scientists and were studying history and were reading and were zoom calling classes and teachers and were fighting for laws to make better court systems and fosters systems and rowed and ran and lifted and trained dogs and lived. We survived just like everyone else. We tried to stop the world from burning with our garden hoses.
After nearly three years and all the vaccines, we stopped. We rested. We let down our guards a little. We never got covid. We never got anything. We wore masks and washed our hands religiously for nearly three years. The new booster came out for Omicron and we didn’t get it right away. We got covid. The thing we had hidden from, avoided, and tried to save others from for nearly three years. We didn’t know if the boys already had it. They never tested positive after us. They likely had it before us and we had no idea. Guilt washed over me when I realized that.
I got the antiviral. Jeff didn’t. His symptoms came and went like a light breeze within a couple of days. My covid symptoms lasted two and half weeks and took my breath away every time I tried to do anything as if to say “you will rest, you have no choice in the matter.” I am a shit patient. I do not rest. I hate it. I still got up to get the kids ready for school every morning. I still made dinner, with help, each night and attempted to do things around the house. When I tried doing yard work one afternoon and everything went black, bending double trying to breathe, I got the hint to sit down for a while. I couldn’t focus so I read a lot. It was good for me. But I also hated it. It felt like the nearly three years of using a garden hose on a burning world all over again.
I got a sinus infection after covid. I haven’t actually felt the same since I had it. I’m still tired and congested. In a way though, it wasn’t what I was fearing. I don’t believe I passed it to anyone – as soon as we found out we started quarantine. We didn’t lose our sense of smell or taste. We didn’t have any long-lasting conditions of the heart or lungs so far as I can tell – there is asthma in my family and the boys had it when they were small. I chalk a lot of this up to the fact that we had our first few vaccines and that we are in generally good health – we eat well, exercise regularly, try to get consistent sleep, and take care of our mental health.
For nearly three years, we stayed tethered to our houses. We all watched as the world burned. We tried our best to put it out in our own ways, keep our houses from burning, keep the world from burning, keep others from burning – when all we were equipped with was a garden hose. After nearly three years, it may be time to use our hoses to water our plants again.
