Viralry: Diary in the time of Virus

Today, a friend I haven’t seen since February invited to me socially-distance walk with her and her dog in Weston. I went. It was beautiful. Weston is the country compared to Westport. I’d never been there, aside from the post office. My friend lives on top of a hill and on our walk, I saw craggy cliffs, a waterfall, a herd of deer, a black frog, a fox, and too many chipmunks to count. The chipmunks riled up my friend’s beagle/basset hound, and the dog kept making a pathetic whine like, “I wants! I wants!” It was so lovely to see my friend. She is the first person to invite me to do anything since mid-March. I wonder if people are afraid to meet, or if they were sick of me anyway and social distancing was a welcome break. I teased my friend and called her “my gateway drug back into society”. I had so much to say to her, my throat hurt. I already long for another playdate. I’m like the whiny beagle: Who can I see next?! Who can I see next?! I wants! My husband got into poison ...

I’m still having a problem with time, as if I’m perpetually going through a Daylight Savings adjustment, except I’m springing forward whole days instead of one hour. I feel like Rip Van Winkle: I worry that by the time the all-clear is sounded, I will be sporting a long white beard of un-tweezed chin hair and I won’t know what the hell happened. It’s sunny and windy and the breeze smells like lilacs, and I can almost be happy--if I can stop thinking about the future, and the people dying, and 45’s unhinged-ness. For many days, I’ve been able to keep a lot of it at bay. I stay upbeat, I think small. If I get to have a latte, I count the day as a success. But lately I fear I’m faltering. I find myself thinking, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” I worry that more people are going to get very sick. I worry that unemployment is going to be a difficult problem to fix, along with hunger, homelessness and poverty. Those problems were not solvable before, under better circumstances. How’...

On Tuesday I went to Whole Foods. It was uneventful and I don’t know why it made me so tense, but it did.   I got home and thought I’d try gardening to relax. When I went to turn on the hose, I discovered the hard way that the splitter had cracked in two—water right to the face. I resolved that, then got my shoes soaked when I realized too late that the same thing happened to the nozzle. Then the spigot to the house started leaking all over the place so badly, we had to turn the valve off from inside the basement. A plumber will need to be called. The Get Goldman Office is obviously still staffed with essential employees. On Wednesday I spent the entire day at my desk, doing nothing, picking my ear and grumbling about the weather. On Thursday I woke up with water-on-the-knee, which happens when I sit too long—ever since I dislocated my knee when I was 16, playing baseball. (BASEBALL?! What’s that?!) I decided that maybe I could avoid the plumber if I got a new splitter, so ...

Today my husband suggested we “work on the garage”—meaning: we shuffle around his collection of crap and empty cardboard boxes he refuses to throw away. Not my idea of a good time. We have rarely managed to “work on the garage” without yelling at each other. The amount of hostility we are capable of unleashing is sometimes worrisome. We did okay today though, mostly because I kept my yap shut. I’ve learned you can’t get into too much trouble if you only shrug or nod approvingly. I posted a bunch of garage-junk to the Westport facebook free-cycle site and have already dispatched a lamp, some toys and a janky hamster cage to other homes. Since many of my friends have been texting me pictures of their loaves of homemade bread, I decided to indulge my masochistic side and try it. I’ve attempted bread a few times before, never with any success. If anything makes me believe in the Get Goldman Office it’s bread-making. My son still has memories of me rage-baking: literally throwing a ...

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 ...