Viralry: Diary in the time of Virus

My stepmother, Renee, died a few days ago. She had late-stage Alzheimer’s and had been suffering in a nursing home for several years. Whether she died of COVID-19 or something else, I do not know. I met Renee when I was four years old, when she and my father were dating. They moved in together a year after that and got married when I was ten. Renee didn’t like the Cinderella connotation of being called stepmother, so instead she and my father came up with MamaHaha—the word for stepmother in Japanese. Renee taught me about birds, art, opera, ballet. She was always reading, painting, bird-watching or doing a crossword puzzle. I have no memories of her ever raising her voice or being irritated. She nicknamed me Daffodil when I was little, for my yellow blond hair. She used to pat my cheeks and kiss my forehead, and she always wanted to hold hands with me, even when I was an adult. She frequently mailed me postcards, cheering me on through tough times and offering me sage advice. She

The other day one of my favorite pen-pals sent me a homemade mask: hot pink with polka dots. She said she made it neon bright on purpose, so my neighbor would be sure to spot me leaving the house. The mask came in handy though, because the no-sew ones go shooting off my face like a sling shot. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about, now I spend an inordinate amount of time wondering if my ears are deformed. My husband and I went out yesterday because he ran out of cough drops and I ran out of dishwasher detergent. As he drove, we noticed there were more cars on the road than usual. We pulled into the Walmart parking lot and drove right out again; the line was down the length of the store. We drove to the other Walmart; same thing. I said, “Today is day 30. Maybe everybody is celebrating.” We drove to ShopRite. It was fairly quiet. I picked up a few things, but no dish detergent. The entire aisle was empty. I was beginning to panic. Hand-wash dishes? How much does God t

I couldn’t get warm today, no matter how I tried. I increased my usual three layers to five, added a fuzzy blanket and a beanie hat, even resorted to alcohol, which usually gets me flushed. None of it worked. My bones felt colder today than they did through most of January. The vernal chill, rain, wind and damp: sad rewards for surviving winter—and 30 days of lock-down. Though this spring is the worst in memory, I’ve decided I don’t like spring in general. I always expect more from it than I ought to. The magnolia tree in my front yard was gorgeous and the pride of the neighborhood—people kept stopping to take pictures of it on their walks—a firework of pink blossoms--for five days. After yesterday’s rain, it has turned slimy and brown and slicks my driveway with treacherous muck. Over the past weeks, I’ve gone on a baking/sugar bender like everybody else, but I make unsophisticated things that take no time and no skill: Rice Krispie Treats, 7-layer bars, 3-ingredient peanut

I’ve been missing my dad lately, and this time of year always makes me miss my stepmom too. I used to love celebrating Passover at their house.            Passover was my stepmother’s favorite holiday. She used a 1940s Haggadah that she inherited from her grandmother. Over the years, the book acquired dog-ears, stapled-in addendums, pencil-under-linings and stars, wine stains, and charoset sticky spots. My stepmother kept finding quotes, poems and songs to add; she was especially fond of putting an orange on the Seder plate in honor of women’s rights. She’d also frequently say Goddess instead of God when she read the prayers, which made my father roll his eyes and cringe. My dad was not a fan of Passover, or large get-togethers in general, and always said, “Let’s get this damn thing over with. I’m hungry!”            Over the years, my father condensed my stepmother’s beloved holiday into ‘The Speed Seder’: he’d skip whole paragraphs on one page and give you the Cliff-notes versi

I want to write; I don’t want to write. That tug-of-war has extended all through my days: I’m tired, I’m hyper; I’m starving, yet nothing sounds appealing; I’m bored, but don’t want to do anything. I want to get out of here, but I’m scared to leave the house. Even the chores are in conflict. Laundry sits in the basket until a new load needs doing, an endless yin-yang cycle of darks and lights. I start and stop and finish nothing. It reminds me of the few times I’ve driven a stick-shift car: the grinding gears, the stalling, the panic and praying, all that herky-jerky just to get to the next red light. Mostly, I feel like I am wandering around in a stupor—some sort of delirium. And the rain doesn’t help at all. I go to the fridge too often, hoping some magical food-fairy has filled it. Digging around is depressing: a wrinkly tomato and suspicious-looking cheese. Despite buying two-weeks’ worth of food last time, in ten days we’re already down to the dregs. I’m not using this dow

I thought it was funny the other day when the town sent out an email saying the dump was overwhelmed: partly from cardboard from online ordering boxes, but also partly from people cleaning out their homes and garages. Now that we’re all staring at the walls, we’re realizing that we don’t like what’s on them. Now that we’re spending more time with our stuff, we’re realizing we don’t want it. Everyone’s got their Marie Kondo on. I see it when I walk around my neighborhood:  garage doors are up and people are dragging things out or filling their trashcans. I liked Marie Kondo, till she started hawking $96 Celebration Ladles. I go through phases where I do what she suggests and I do feel better afterwards. The only problem is I live with someone else who fills a space as soon as I make one, and dirties a surface as soon as I clean it. My husband and I both grew up poor, with drinky, divorced parents, who didn’t buy us toys or pay any attention to us. We didn’t have a lot of anyth

One of my favorite quotes is: “If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole.” After a string of terrible exchanges with my family, I am beginning to wonder if I am the asshole. My husband got on my case over something minor, which normally I would have barely arched an eyebrow over, but today I exploded in an f-bomb-laced tirade. Maybe because he also got on my case about something minor last night as well. Death by a thousand cuts. Spending time apart lets those cuts heal: talking to other people and enjoying experiences out of the house are like salves. By the time I encounter my husband again, I have forgotten the slight; but this constant togetherness is a constant reminder and every slight is an indelible tally-mark. People talk about the potential Corona-Baby-Boom, but I am wondering if there will also be a Corona-Divorce-Boom. Does seeing someone so up close for so long, warts and all, lead to o

A friend of mine is always thinking about the future: the fun things he has to look forward to. If he doesn’t have anything coming up, he puts something on the calendar. He plans a trip, or buys concert tickets, or makes reservations at a fancy restaurant weeks out, or he books a couples’ massage. He said having something to look forward to always helped him get through all the mundane workaday humdrum. But now? Like the rest of us, he’s bummed out. There’s nothing fun to look forward to, and there’s no indication of when any of us might have fun again. If there was ever a time to legalize marijuana, these are the days. All the fun I used to have involved going: going to sporting events, going out to eat, going to parties, going to the movies, going to pickleball, going to the beach, going to museums, going to NYC to see a show. That’s what I did for fun. All that going—turned to staying. Stay home. Sit. Stay. Good dog. But, eventually, if too bored or left alone too long, the

My neighbor needs to get a hobby. I imagine her first move in the morning is to open her blinds and make sure my car is in still in my driveway.  I imagine her slurping her coffee while she keeps her eyes locked on my front door; she jumps up from the table when she sees me leave the house, but oh, relief! I am merely taking out the trash. As I prove to be boring today, by mid-afternoon, she takes her gaze off my property and unfortunately latches onto a new target of intrigue.           A little girl, probably 7 or 8, lives on my street. She has one of those sit-on scooters. I live on a gentle hill, and for the past two days, all day long, that little girl rockets down the hill on her scooter. The wheels grind on the pavement, and it’s loud, but after a while it’s like a white noise machine. It’s no worse than countless other neighbors’ leaf blowers, or today’s ferocious wind. The little girl gets to the bottom of the hill and trudges back up to the top, carrying her scooter i

If I wake up in the morning and think, “I’m spending a lovely day at home with my family,” then I’m fine. If I wake up and think about the future at all, I feel despondent. If I think, “This?! Till July ?!” my counting brain starts doing the math and it makes me edgy and snappish. That brings me to my most-hated cliché: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” To which I retort, “No. What doesn’t kill you only makes you wish you were dead.”  I have adjusted to the working from home/schooling from home situation. I have kept a sunny attitude despite my great disappointment over the cancellation of the NBA season, the MLB season, and my 10-day trip to the Baltics. I survived quarantine. I have put up with my neighbor’s bullshit. I make meals. I morale-march. I stiff-upper-lip-it. But today, as inconsequential as this might seem, when my son told me they canceled Wimbledon, I had to strangle back a sob. It was enough. I had reached my limit. My son and I watch Wimbledon toget