The End of Dread

When I lost my mother’s wedding ring, I could finally stop worrying about losing it. And because I have COVID, I can stop worrying about getting it.

I know it’s peculiar thinking. One could decide that to avoid all anxiety about losing important things, I should just scoop all them up, drive out in the country and heave them into a cornfield about to be turned over for spring planting. I’ve considered it. Well, not that strategy exactly but how I would feel if the house burned down with everything in it.

When I was a kid, I obsessed about getting leprosy. I would get leprosy and then have to go to a leper colony where everyone was missing fingers or other body parts. The fear was real and visceral so when I got a bit older, I read up on leper colonies, where they were and how they operated. It’s probably not a great reflection on my childhood but leprosy put a name to my little humming dread. COVID was leprosy exploded.

During the height of the pandemic, pre-vaccine and pre-treatment, it was rum that saw me through, so much so that I’d wake most mornings with a headache, sure I had COVID until realizing I had a hangover. It sometimes took until noon to sort things out. Between the rum and Dots pretzels, I was a mess. I’ve eased off. Kept a bit of rum but turned my back on Dots.

The last few months have been like spring break ought to have been in college. Carefree, lots of going to things, chatting with folks, looking forward to events. I even bought new pants for a big aging conference later this week. New pants! And they’re plaid, well a subdued plaid, but still. Not black and not jeans. And, with the new patent leather penny loafers, I planned on being a vision, an old woman on the cutting edge of fashion, policy, big gatherings, all the things. Oh well.

Instead, I ordered more groceries to be delivered. I ordered donuts and cinnamon swirl bread. Chocolate and tapioca Kozy Shack pudding. Frozen things like chicken pot pies and mac and cheese. And a five pound bag of red potatoes because, you know, potatoes are mom. Yesterday, our daughter had matzo ball soup delivered which was amazing. Two quarts, each with four matzo balls! Big ones. It was astonishing and healing at the same time.

As COVID goes, we have it pretty okay. We have good health care, our personal boxes of Paxlovid, obviously plenty to eat, and no work to do that can’t be done by someone else or put off until later. We are among the lucky – for those reasons and because we didn’t get sick when nothing could be done. We know people who were not so lucky and families that suffered terrible losses, so while I may sound flippant about this, I’m not. It’s a big deal – what has happened and what is still happening.

I never found my mother’s wedding ring although months after I lost it, the thin silver chain it had been on fell out of my hoodie on to the floor of a bodega where I was at a campaign meeting. While people were talking, I was searching the floor for the ring, thinking that somehow it had gotten stuck in my hoodie the past many months, but part of me didn’t want to find it because it meant I’d have to start worrying about losing it again.

I don’t know how exactly that applies to COVID, but there’s a theme there somewhere.