Self-Quarantine Woes

It has complicated ordinary things — remembering my mask, the dance at the grocery store to maintain 6′ distance from other shoppers, not being able to hug my daughter or visit my NYC based son.  It’s made for healthier eating, with lots more cooking and diving into recipes. It’s a constant low-grade worry about our economic future, my parents and children’s and husband’s health. It’s cleaning my own home instead of using the maid, and watching my hair turn grey. Gardening again.

The main issue for me was the call I got March 15 that my 83-year-old Mother with diabetes and high blood pressure who lives in Dallas, TX had fallen and broken her hip.  I felt I needed to decide immediately whether to fly to Dallas or not — that if I waited a few days to see if I was needed the gov’t may have shut down domestic flights, as they were just shutting down flights from Europe. I flew the next day, and then once I was there and helped accustom my father to not going to Costco and the grocery store daily, and disinfecting his deliveries, and wearing a mask, the question of when I was going to go home arose.  Was it safe to fly home?  Was it better to do the 21-hour drive by myself, knowing that meant I’d have to find hotels and gas stations and restaurants along the way?  In the end I flew on an almost empty plane, but my husband felt I needed to isolate myself from he and my step-daughter, staying in the master bedroom and wearing a mask when I was in the remainder of the home.  It was horrible for me.  I felt shut out, like I had done something wrong.  I could hear them eating and watching TV and enjoying one another’s company while I was shut in the room, as if I were being punished.  I felt that being on a plane for 3 hours taking all precautions (mask, gloves, wiping down everything, not using the restroom or eating or drinking) was no more dangerous than his weekly trip to the local grocery, or my step-daughter’s visits to her mother’s home, yet I was being treated differently. 

It’s intriguing how a tiny virus invisible to our naked eye can create such global change.  Now 100,000 Americans have lost their lives (certainly many more, our testing is so screwed up), and the numbers grow so large it’s hard to even understand them. I fear this Fall will be worse, and it will be several years before we have a somewhat-back-to-normal daily life, albeit with a big hole to dig ourselves out of.  Hopefully we can wring some good out of this!

Hollering for the first responders at 8 p.m. nightly, stopping the monthly social event we had begun just before this started, chatting a little more as we’re all at home and in our yards a little more.

I’m so fortunate to be somewhere that takes the threat seriously and responsibly, that has beautiful weather and places to go fairly safely, that has a good health care system for being in the US. Many people from other spots are looking to buy in SD as they see how well we’ve weathered the crisis, though 2 of the 3 pillars of our economy are in desperate straits so budgets will be tight.