May 2, 2022

Bridge

I got Covid last week, and the whole experience takes me right back to pregnancy and early motherhood in way that narrative can be imposed from without when we’re most vulnerable.

And also how resistant I am to being vulnerable.

I’ve never liked being told who I am, or what is my destiny. I have no interest in numerology, or my enneagram, or Tarot. There is a part of me that’s ever resisting the idea that I’m not singular, that I’m one of the others, even though I know that I am the others. All I want is for there to be a little room for me to figure things out for myself.

Maybe I just really hate anybody telling me what to do?

I remember being that insufferable though when my kids were small, on both sides of the equation. I remember all the people who smugly smiled and said, “You’ll see!” and how I was so sure that I’d show them and do it differently (and sometimes I actually did). I remember too coming through the other side and how I’d perilously managed to piece my shattered universe back together with ragged pieces of scotch tape, it seemed like, and all these lessons I’d decided I’d learned so painfully so that other people wouldn’t have to. All the advice I imparted, literal Excel spreadsheets in regards to baby books, and sleep schedules, stroller models, and baby carriers. None of it really of any use to anyone else. Such a lesson in subjectivity, but one that it took me a long time to learn.

A month ago, when many people in my circles started getting Covid, I got my hackles up. Partly because I REALLY wasn’t in a place to accept getting Covid, because we were on the cusp of a trip to England that had already been cancelled once due to Covid. Nope, we weren’t going to get it. We couldn’t. And we didn’t, thank goodness, thanks to avoiding places like crowded airports and jet-planes. Though I was paying attention, people I know on social media sharing their stories, providing daily Covid updates. I went shopping and bought a whole of stuff like Lipton Cup-a-Soup and Vicks Vapour Rub, imagining these as a kind of insurance. If I had them, I wouldn’t need them at all.

And mercifully, I didn’t. Not until we were home again, and the stakes weren’t as high. We’re all vaccinated and boosted. and if Covid’s inevitable, now’s as good a time as any. I suspect the airport and the jet plane are what did it, Canadian customs with officials yelling at us to bunch up together in the lines, all those people whose masks were hanging down below their noses. “If I can see your nostrils, then what’s the point of your mask?” I sang, not loud enough, half-delirious after twelve hours of travel.

Three days later, Iris woke up with a fever. The test was positive, but we didn’t need it to know. And it’s been fine, Covid not so much “ripping” through our house, but creeping through on tiptoe. Iris had a mild fever for part of one day, was a bit congested for a day or two after, but mostly was back to normal and bored until she’d returned to school after five days of quarantine. I developed cold symptoms last Wednesday, symptoms identical but much less severe to another cold I’d had to January, an affliction I’d been hesitant to label as Covid because that seemed like tempting fate—it had been too easy. Though I hadn’t tested then, because we’d all been locked down anyway, and there was no place to go, and our apartment doesn’t really have a proper place for someone to isolate. In January, at least, nobody else got it.

This time we’ve all got it, but it’s been mostly just relaxing, everyone’s energy a bit depleted with cold symptoms, but nothing worse than that, thank goodness. Everyone’s eating normally, albeit more popsicles than usual. Nobody’s really suffering at all, and I’m so relieved by that—to be fine enough to sit around reading. To not be confined to my bed for days at a time with muscle aches, and fever dreams, all those things I was dreading. (I had a terrible bout of pneumonia in 2015; to have to go through that again, with everyone around me sick, and fears of mild cases getting worse—I didn’t want any of that at all.) We’re so lucky. This is definitely okay. As best scenario Covid stories go, this is the next best thing to being asymptomatic.

But am I doing it again? Not being the others? The way that in the early days of motherhood, I would sometimes fancy myself as rocking it, not having to contend with what everybody else is going through. Am I being Covid-smug with my stuffy nose? Like one of those people who lose the baby weight in a fortnight?

And oh, the inapplicability of everybody else’s advice. Even though I know they’re just trying to be helpful, but it seems strange sometimes to be inundated with tips by people who think their own experience applies to everyone, people who have no idea what you’re going through. (Of course, I do this too.)

The subjectivity of Covid is one of the few things I think we can properly take away from all of this—in addition to “Wash your hands.” The danger of thinking, “I know exactly what you mean.” That there isn’t a gap between your experience and mine. I’m not saying we can’t bridge it, but it’s important just to acknowledge that it’s there.