Quarantine – Chapter 2

My traveling companion tested positive for COVID on Monday. It is now Thursday night.

I am traveling with this companion – she is my companion – because my family relationships are evolving, and everyone tells me it’s for the better. I am leaving a dysfunctional relationship with a bipolar narcissist whose only child blocks her phone calls. I am taking up with someone who is accepting and demonstrative, who has friends and who budgets and who doesn’t tell me everything I’m doing is wrong.

In my previous life, especially since the COVID lockdown and work at home, I had been physically alone most of my time in my dream house on the hill. My most frequent human contact came with shoppers 6 feet in front of me and 6 feet behind me on the sidewalk outside Trader Joe’s. For a while there it got very scary about how empty the shelves were, but then that went away. I think “Lysol brand spray disinfectant” (TV commercial tag line) was the last essential to return to a predictable supply schedule. Makes you think: Which would you rather have a shortage of, baby formula or toilet paper?

Now with a positive COVID-19 test on Monday, plane tickets for the Wednesday after next (or “isn’t it ‘next Wednesday?’” “No, dear, it’s Wednesday after next.”) we are counting the days between onset of symptoms, last positive test, and wheels up. We’re not adept at calendar counting anymore. We’re better at counting strokes from the tee to the green.

So we re-count them every 2 hours and tell each other, in turn, “No, I think we’re OK because Friday was zero, and …”

“No, Sunday was zero.”

“No, Friday was zero ‘cause remember I sneezed right after we stopped for Dippin’ Dots with the kids.”

“A sneeze doesn’t signal the start of symptoms.”

“Well, I went to bed as soon as we got home.”

“That’s ‘cause you were tired from all that walking at the zoo.”

“That was fatigue, which is also a symptom, and besides, if someone hadn’t forgot where we parked, I woulda done a lot less walking.”

Our normal evening pattern of making dinner together, eating dinner together, washing the dishes together, and sitting on the couch together to watch Jeopardy on DVR had been disrupted; we are technically not allowed to be in the same room. It’s called isolation (for the positive tester) or quarantine (for the negative tester). We pass each other in the hallway, but the hugs and butterfly kisses that have become so ritual a part of our existence together this past year are sadly absent.

For the first few days I tried watching TV on the Eastern Time schedule. I got some college softball Saturday afternoon early evening, and then I got hockey. I don’t know how I feel about hockey. For a period of time in the 90’s, I think it was, during Paul Kariya’s heyday with the Ducks, I really got into hockey. I took the family to a playoff hockey game. The spouse was disastrously delayed. We had to pay $15 to park ¾ of a mile away, and we didn’t arrive until midway through the second period. On another occasion, I took the daughter to a second hockey game. She had two cotton candy treats and was amazed that I allowed this diet protocol breach. I may have said, “Your mom is not here.” The third game I stood across the street in the parking lot until someone with a ticket agreed to a $50 price. That night I was amazed at the discipline of the Red Wings as they approached the neutral zone, and I knew the Ducks were going to lose. Then I mostly stopped watching hockey. But this week I started watching some hockey again. But I think I’ll stop again.

The past few days, I have not watched TV.

Read part of a book that would have made me apoplectic 10 years ago and couldn’t convince myself to see it through to the finish because the author made the same complaint over and over with no supporting facts. (“Woke liberals are unduly influencing scholastic content and standards.”)  Will try again tomorrow.

Looked up stuff to do in town and in the nearby environs; tried to imagine myself having grown up in high school here and hating Californians and New Yorkers without realizing that the coasters’ economies made my ride-on mower possible. Shut off that line of thinking real quick.

Oddly, Facebook’s “Hey look at these short videos” featured a comedy skit of a hockey Mom in the stands at a youth practice, and I loved it. So I watched some more comedy videos until all I was getting was Seinfeld clips.

But having been physically alone the past four days, I’m wondering if I like this isolation in the digital world style more than sitting on the couch or lying in bed watching TV together and having a conversation.

In fact, this week I have gone back to where I was two years ago, avoiding contact in the home, staying in my own designated space, and keeping the whiskey near me so I don’t have to go into anyone else’s space to get another drink and possibly a scolding.

It was kind of like a quarantine, right?