Dylan got his COVID test yesterday. He only had to wait four days – which, according to some, is the perfect amount of time to wait to see if he was exposed on the airplane.
In the time he waited just for the test (still waiting for the results), he stayed six feet away from us, but took off his mask as soon as he got home. He went to Starbucks twice. And he worked as a delivery driver for three days – double shifts – at Outback Steakhouse, which means that he came into contact with all of his coworkers for all of those days, plus any of the (25% capacity) patrons who were near him indoors, and everyone who came to the door to sign for the delivery.
Dylan wore a mask, so at least he was not as contagious as those people at the Burger King who may or may not still be contaminating customers and coworkers.
Meanwhile, it is Thanksgiving week. We are averaging 173,000 new COVID cases a day in the U.S. And it’s just going up. According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who we all know and I adore, we should be ultra-careful in making plans for the holiday.
“Even if it’s a very small group, to the extent possible, keep the mask on,” Fauci said. “Nothing is going to be perfect in this. Obviously, it’s kind of difficult to be eating and drinking at a dinner with a mask on.”
But Fauci added that if all attendees at a gathering quarantined and tested negative for COVID-19 before the gathering, the risk of someone getting infected would be lower, although nothing is “risk-free.”
“Of course, it’s not 100 percent that they couldn’t have gotten infected from the time they got tested to the time they got there.”
For Thanksgiving this year, we are having a brief breakfast with my stepson and sister-in-law, who will have their own tables on the back porch of our house, six feet away. No one new will be indoors, even though they have both been ultra-careful in seeing virtually no one beforehand. Neither works outside the house, and my stepson has even distanced himself from his girlfriend for more than a week.
We plan to run a large, loud heater so that we don’t freeze while we eat outside. Later, indoors, Bill is making a turkey (his choice) and Thanksgiving dinner will be just the four of us, hopefully safely.
My parents, who have been the backbone of my Thanksgivings for 56 years, will have Thanksgiving alone, together, three miles away. We’ve made it this far – nine months – meeting outdoors with them and not contaminating them. And they’ve stayed safe and healthy, which is what we all want more than anything in the world.
So – especially after my sudden onset of a cold a week ago, and the terror that ensued believing I’d spent time too close to my mother – we will be having a very non-traditional Thanksgiving this year.
Meanwhile, I am watching many of my Facebook friends hop on planes and disappear into the wild blue yonder for the holiday. And I cringe, and I pray, and I wait.
Lately, it seems, I just spend my entire life waiting.
Dylan flew to Texas to see his girlfriend. While it will be his last trip for awhile, it isn’t his first since the pandemic started. For me, of course, it is agonizing. Lately, I’ve even been considering asking him to stop working at his delivery job.
He is almost 20. It’s time for him to make his own decisions. We are always very careful on our end, and his girlfriend and her family are equally cautious.
But there’s the plane ride. No matter how much you tell me about the “safer” filtered air, I am a mess with him getting on the plane. So we got him a face shield, in addition to his N95 mask, which he wore in the airports and on the plane. After that, he was in his girlfriend’s car and house – so I could breathe again.
Still, given the surging numbers, I thought it would be a good idea to schedule a COVID test for his return; so I did. After two days of trying to get him into the CVS drive-thru where I got my test – and finding that they only scheduled two days in advance – I gave up and found a clinic that schedules further out. I chose a clinic we’ve used before, and I made the Friday morning appointment for him.
When Dylan showed up for his test, however, he discovered that I’d made it for the wrong Friday. The first available appointment was two weeks from when I made it! There was nothing at all available for the current week, and Dylan was sent away. For whatever reason, they couldn’t just swab him while he was there. They told him to come back in a week.
Which begs the question: what about people who actually have COVID?
What is happening to those people? Where are they going? How are they being tested? How long are they waiting to be tested? By the time their test time rolls around, it’s been two weeks! How is THAT helpful?
All of this happened after we tried to get him a COVID test the last time he went to Texas – and he went to a place that was swarmed with maskless people clamoring for their tests. In a way, it was worse going to his first appointment because there were sick people everywhere, and he couldn’t get away from them.
There’s been a lot of talk about testing in the news, and I guess I never realized just how horrid this situation has become. If you have a symptom, you need a test. If you are contagious and you want a test quickly, you have to go to a no-appointment-necessary clinic, which is swamped with sick people, where you may or may not contract the virus while you’re waiting to be tested.
And that’s where Dylan has to go tomorrow – back to a place where he’s more likely to contract the virus at the facility than he was on the plane.
The only other option? Wait two weeks to be tested – by which time he could have contaminated an entire community by himself.
Writing about this makes me think it’s a better idea to get him an appointment next week, on one of his days off of work, so he can go to the contactless drive-thru like I did. I think I will try to make that happen instead.
Thanks for listening as I talked my way through this.
Last week, I caught a cold. I think. I woke up with a scratchy throat that lasted all day. Shortly after dinner, I thought, I don’t feel well. I think I’ll go lie down.
My head had barely hit the pillow on the living room couch when I panicked: I AM SICK!
Suddenly I remembered: About a week before, I’d been inside a Burger King where the employees refused to wear masks. I’d even confronted them about it. One employee pretended not to hear me while her mask lingered on her chin; the other said he had a “medical condition” and therefore felt justified in wearing his mask on his bottom lip.
I got up off the couch and put myself into quarantine.
Bill made an appointment for me to be tested – two days later, since that was the first available appointment. I went to sleep for ten hours. I was sick. By the time I went to get my test – a drive-through, no-contact place where I literally swabbed myself and deposited my nasal sample into a bin – I felt pretty awful.
I went straight back into quarantine after the test, and stayed there waiting the two-to-three days for the results. It’s amazing how being actually sick reminded me how quickly it can happen, and how many people I could have contaminated.
During quarantine, I stayed in my closed bedroom. I had a smart phone, a TV and access to my own bathroom. Life was pretty good, although it did feel like I was imprisoned. I missed my kids. Even my dog didn’t want to hang out with me for very long, especially once he realized that I wasn’t going to feed him or walk him.
I was fortunate enough to have people to feed me, too. Dylan went out and got soup for me; Bill got me more of the same soup two days later. I did feel awful – but then, I started to feel better.
Once I felt better, I got bored really fast.
I read some of my book. I stared out the window at the leaves falling from the trees, at the birds flying to and fro, and – when I was lucky – at the deer wandering past. When it got dark, I binge-watched Young Sheldon and NFL football. After it got late enough to claim “bedtime,” I slept for 10-12 hours.
I felt mostly better after four days, but I was a slug. It didn’t occur to me to clean the room until near the end of my 72-hour wait for COVID test results.
I didn’t clean, though. Instead I checked Facebook and email and – again – my health portal, which still showed no results. Three days had passed, and all I had was a note saying: “Test results are usually available in 2 to 5 days; during peak times, this may take 6 to 10 days.”
I watched more news, describing the worldwide virus surge, and assumed I could be stuck in that room for another full week.
Then, sometime after dark, I got a text: “Your results are available.”
Fully recovered, I bounced upright on my bed to see those results. At first, all I saw was the five-paragraph explanation – and had to scroll back up to see what I had missed at the top of the announcement.
The word NEGATIVE was at the top, in green letters.
I’ve never been so happy to see that word in my life. I took a screenshot and texted it to my family with the caption: “I am free!”
And indeed, five long days after my self-imposed isolation, I am free.
While we all await the election results, a disturbing trend is cutting through social media – at least in the youth sector.
My kids are seeing posts that say (and I paraphrase): “If you’re friends with a Trump supporter, you can’t be friends with me.” Most of these kids aren’t even old enough to vote – so what does this say about what we adults have taught them?
I will admit that it’s hard – extremely, agonizingly hard – to realize that people I love don’t believe the same things I do. And it’s not just opinions, it’s issues of morality and ethics and the core of humanity. People in my own family – many of them – have called me horrible names, and/or stopped speaking to me altogether, because I am a liberal.
I’m not a different person; I just believe that I am right on some platforms of enormous importance. I’m not going to apologize for my beliefs. They are strong beliefs and they are mine.
But I only get one vote. Everyone gets one vote. We all (I hope) voted.
In the past four years, I have watched the country separate into parts. Unlike some of my family and friends, though, I think “disowning” and “unfriending” people seems both harsh and ridiculous. I don’t like Donald Trump, but I don’t have to hang out with Donald Trump. And by staying connected to people who support him, I’m able to get a glimpse into their lives, their values, their concerns and their thoughts.
I may not understand their choices – and I may never truly understand – but I like and dearly love some of these people. They are still the same people; I’m just getting to know them a little better through all of this mayhem.
So if they want to disown me, that’s their choice. It’s their right. I’ve never been one to depend on a slew of friends, propping me upright so I don’t keel over. I’ve always had a few ultra-close friends, and they generally share my values. I married a Republican, but our core values – the reason we raise our kids together so well – are very much in sync.
But saying something like “if you’re friends with a Trump supporter…” or “if you support Trump…” – well, that’s the same, sideways, somewhat sick generalization that made “stereotype” and “prejudice” household words.
We all believe what we believe. Obviously, the line is drawn in the sand – but literally half the population of this country doesn’t believe the same thing I do. Why does that mean – automatically – we have to hate?
I admit that I don’t understand supporting Trump. I wholly understand the other sides of the issues – but I don’t understand supporting the man. Maybe I will go to my grave not understanding. But I refuse to go to my grave hating people who – like me – are doing the absolute best they can with their own knowledge and beliefs.
There are huge, hot issues at hand. There are subjects of debate that are worth serious discussion. And there is obviously an enormous disconnect in communication that has caused us all to start lumping groups of people – well, into groups.
But if we’re going to get through this thing together – this United States thing – we’re going to have to find a way to talk to each other, to understand one another, and to be there for the people who believe – just as strongly as I do – in things that truly matter to all of us.
We can’t go forward if we stay divided. We need to understand one another. We need to communicate and be there for each other.
So to the youth of America: stay friends with your friends, no matter what. It’s the only way we, as a country, can stay together.
Tomorrow is the election, but I won’t write about it today.
Instead, I am going back to Halloween. My sons have loved Halloween for their entire lives. They love the scare factor of creepy creatures, haunted houses, and horror films. They love the feel of the air at the fall festivals, and the sheer joy in family hayrides. They even admire the leaves as they turn.
For the Hawkins family, it has been a time of great – and traditional – fun every year. And then came the pandemic.
So when September started to wane and all the days still looked the same, I made a list of things we could do. We’d never been apple picking before, but we could do that. The drive-in was two hours away, but if we got our tickets early, we could do that. I made the list and the family voted on what they most wanted to do, and we did those things.
The only thing they chose to skip was a kitschy online “festival” of monster movie shorts. The boys wanted to do everything. So we did.
Halloween movie night at home came complete with trick-or-treat sized candy bars. We found a drive-through haunted house, which was truly creepy and wonderful. We went to our favorite festival (which was closed) just for the drive-through hayride. We apple-picked; we had Halloween Jackbox Night. And thanks to a generous neighbor, we decorated our yard like never before.
Then, on Halloween night, we went to the nearest drive-in and watched Hocus Pocus and Goosebumps, even though Halloween was playing on the other screen. It’s what the kids picked.
All the movies were sold out, because it was a most brilliant idea for Halloween night. Trick-or-treating was canceled, so Shane’s usual clown antics were also canceled. No one even mentioned it; we had fun with our untraditional new Halloween activity. We even took the dog.
Bill drove home, so I browsed through Instagram. New photos popped up from many of my sons’ friends: Halloween parties – big and small. So many teenagers and young adults, hanging out in large and small groups, smiling from ear to ear, hugging and posing for the camera.
Hugging. In groups. Indoors. And smiling – which I could see easily, because no one was wearing a mask.
It didn’t matter which state they were in, or what time of life. They had all seemingly decided that Halloween was a good time to forget all the rules and risk getting COVID-19.
Having gone to a ton of trouble to make sure we had other fun things to do, it was mind-blowing to see that other people didn’t bother. Sure, everywhere we went was frequented by other people – but we didn’t interact with those people, let alone go mask-less or hug them. We sure didn’t invite along a handful of friends – because unlike my sons’ friends, we knew we had to be meticulous because of the virus.
So again, I wait. In addition to waiting for election results, I will wait for two weeks, to see if the friends are okay. And then it will be Thanksgiving, and then Christmas, and I will wait to see who is able to get through those holidays without illness.
Waiting for a vaccine is hard enough. I wish there were more people who could wait to see their friends or who, like my boys, will see one friend at a time, wearing a mask, staying outdoors. They don’t do it often, but they do it safely.
I just don’t see a lot of “safe” behavior out there. I know it’s hard; in fact, it’s agonizing. But it is worthwhile. It’s so worthwhile.
Just. Wait.
I lived with a liar for a year. Deep-down, Gregg was a good guy. He wanted to do what was right, but he was so insecure that he believed the truth was simply insufficient.
So Gregg lied. He lied about money, his relationships, his family and his job. For several weeks, he went out to “work.” He came home filthy dirty after eight hours – but he didn’t actually have a job! Gregg lied because he was afraid of what I would think about him if he told me the truth.
But all I wanted was the truth. I can deal with human error. But I can’t live with someone who is so dishonest that he spews lies at me when he’s only trying to protect himself.
I begged him for the truth, but I always had to figure out the truth on my own. And I’m doing the same thing now.
In the past month, I’ve watched two debates and two interviews with Donald Trump. And what I repeatedly heard were the same kinds of generalizations that I heard from Gregg more than 30 years ago.
What bothered me most is that I made the connection – that Trump is lying, just like Gregg, so that people will think more highly of him. I don’t want to feel sorry for Trump – and it’s hard not to, given that he’s simply afraid of the truth. He’s like a toddler covered in chocolate.
But what is completely beyond my comprehension is that other people don’t hear “lies” and “fabrications.” They hear “strength.”
But how does anyone surmise “strength” out of such weakness? Do you have to literally live with a pathological liar to be able to identify one?
Why can’t other people see that Trump fabricates “greatness” by using specific phrases meant to pacify? Why don’t they notice these kinds of generalized, vague statements?
- “People are saying…”
- “The fact is…”
- “Nobody really knows…”
- “It’s very important…”
- “We’ve done great things…”
- “I’m looking into that…”
- “We’ll see what happens…”
- “It’s just not true…”
- “Everybody knows it…”
- “It’s so ridiculous…”
- “And I’ll tell you what else…”
To me, it’s like asking a murderer: “Did you kill this person?”
And the murderer says, “People say I killed this person. And it’s very important, but nobody knows everything. You don’t know everything, and I can prove it. People are saying these things but it’s so ridiculous. They say things are happening all the time, and we’ve done great things. The fact is, this is what matters. And everybody knows it.”
I may have witnessed the murder with my own eyes, but after a liar starts pontificating, I am supposed to believe that what I saw was the product of my imagination.
After listening to Trump – or Gregg – I started to doubt my own sanity. I started to believe that I was the one with the problem – and only he could save me.
Because that’s what he wanted me to think.
After I realized that every word out of Gregg’s mouth was either entirely imagined or only partially true, I left him. I needed to be able to trust my partner.
I just don’t understand why so many millions of Americans – especially in the middle of a worldwide pandemic – can still trust a man who has just spent four years trying to make himself look better.
I don’t think it’s a matter of politics. I think it’s a matter of humanity.
Lately in the mornings, I wake up and think: nope. No reason to get out of bed again today. Thank God for Loki, or I could literally stay in bed all day.
Earlier this week, I had my blood drawn and I was nearly giddy. Something to do! Of course, this was not a fun experience, and I have one scraped arm and one bruised arm to show for it – even three days later. But it did give me a reason to set an alarm!
On my way home from the blood draw, I saw a homeless man on the corner. He’s probably not thrilled with his days, either, but I refuse to give money to homeless people. I don’t want to support their drug habits. However, I always carry snacks in the car, and I see no reason not to share snacks.
I reached into my snack bag and found a bag of Fritos. The kids don’t really like Fritos, so I rolled down my window and held them out to the man. He hurried over to the window as the light was changing and traffic was starting to move.
“Thank you so much!” he said, his grin showing me his many missing teeth. “God bless you!”
“You’re welcome!” I hollered back. “Have a nice day!” And then I pressed down on the gas pedal and made my left turn.
As I pulled away, it hit me: I wasn’t wearing my mask.
Since I was alone in my car, and wasn’t planning on being near any people, I had taken off my mask. And the homeless guy sure wasn’t wearing a mask.
My first thought, quite honestly, was: What if I infected him? He’s not likely to have any resources for health care, and he’s very likely to have underlying conditions.
I tried to be rational about it.
Going out as little and as infrequently as I do, even with Dylan and Bill holding jobs outside the house, it’s highly unlikely that I’ve contracted coronavirus. And it’s equally unlikely that I’ve given it to the homeless man by providing him with Fritos.
But this is what my life has come to: I can’t even share a bag of Fritos with a man who has no food – at least, not without worrying. That six-second exchange worried me for the whole ride home.
And then I thought: REALLY?!? If THIS is how you’re going to give/get coronavirus, then so be it!
If being kind is my downfall – especially such a brief, minor kindness – then that’s just fine with me.
Honestly. This is not something I am going to change.
But maybe next time, at least, I’ll remember to put on a mask before opening my window.
If I had it to do over again, there are a few things I’d do differently with my first dog.
First of all, I would not spend the first five years of my new dog’s life whining that she wasn’t the right breed. I compromised with my family – something I rarely do – and got a small dog (who actually turned out to be medium-sized). I wanted a big dog my whole life, and I didn’t get one.
I also got a cava-chon, not a doodle. My first dog wasn’t a poodle mix (doodle) and I really wanted a doodle. I complained endlessly. I have a doodle now, and I can say in all honesty: I was an idiot. It didn’t matter that her hair wasn’t curly; she was the best dog in the world.
Second, I would feed my dog anything she wanted. It wouldn’t matter if she vomited up everything, which she did, and refused to eat her dry food, which she also did. I would pay the $2.25 per can for the chicken she liked, and I would give it to her every day for her whole life. And if she stopped liking that chicken, I would buy her whatever else she liked, no matter the cost.
Third, I would take her for walks all the time. I would take her early in the morning and late at night, and I would take her in the rain and snow. She loved walks, but I only took her for a few short walks a week. Instead, I sat at the computer with her under my feet, and complained that she was in my way when I moved my chair.
What I wouldn’t give to have her under my feet now.
Finally, I would take more videos of her – just her – so that when she left me, I would be able to look back and watch. She’s in 10 years worth of videos – waddling toward the camera, or a dot in the distance – but she was rarely the focal point.
My videos of her running through the fields, for example, are rare. I have no videos of her bringing me a toy during family game time. I have no videos of her running to get her stick when we came home from the store. I have no videos of her sitting quietly on a chair, tail thumping as I approached.
I don’t have videos of her just being her. And now that she’s gone, still photos just aren’t enough. I miss her. I want to be with her, and she’s just not here. When no one’s around, I still cry. A lot.
Sometimes I think it’s unfair that I treat my new dog so much better than I treated my first dog. He has a completely different personality; he doesn’t try so hard to please me. He gets everything he wants and needs – everything she wanted and needed – by sheer luck of being our second dog. He didn’t really earn it.
But I’m not going to make the same mistakes with him. I’m not going to blame him for not being her. And I’m going to treat him the way I should have always treated her, whether he deserves it or not.
And I’m going to take videos of his whole life, even if it seems boring. Because someday, I will treasure those videos. And I will watch them and cry – and laugh – and love them, the same way I do now with the tiny handful of videos I have of Xena.
I just wish I had more of her.
So I did it. I put myself out there. I took what I was thinking, threw it onto paper (er, the computer), and even threw in an old poem that was banging around in my head.
“Write what you want to write,” they all said. So I did.
I tossed aside the whole parenting thing for a minute, and I was just ME. Then I put it up on my blog for the whole world to see.
One person liked my blog link on Facebook. (Thanks, Glenn.)
Three days went by, and someone said they liked my poem. Which was incredibly generous, I think. (Thanks, Chris.)
My blog readership is very low, and especially low since I’ve been inconsistent in the timing of my posts for the past several months. Truly, I wasn’t expecting people to emerge from the woodwork saying, “Wow, Kirsten, I like this!”
But the lack of comments is disheartening. I am the type of person who believes that no one likes me – until proven otherwise. I probably get that from my ridiculously supportive parents, who have encouraged me to write from the age of 8, and who have positively commented on every single blog post I’ve written for more than three years.
Until the last one.
After the last one, there were only crickets. (Thanks, Mom and Dad.)
But instead of being upset with my parents – who probably never gave it a second thought and may not have even read the blog post – I am going to GROW UP. I am going to hold my head high and say, “Well, I wrote for me, which is all I ever wanted to do.”
And then I am going to keep writing anyway because I’m not writing for positive reinforcement. I am not writing for my parents. I am not writing for anyone who actually read this post the whole way through. I’m writing because it helps me to figure out me.
Truthfully, this is rather dull subject matter for anyone except me. But I’m running with it anyway. And for those of you who really only wanted to hear about my poor, now-ignored children and my revelations about parenting, I would like to apologize.
I have other things to say, and my kids are practically grown. My past is going to leak in, because it’s stuck in my head permanently. And it helps me to remember that there are more important things in this world than chasing what I want, or getting what I want right now.
So I will keep writing. And I will stop looking for validation. I hope people will read this anyway, but I’m okay if no one does.
Thanks for listening.
When I was younger, I went in search of myself in a big way. I’d been a quiet, fearful child with a sensitive heart – and I determined that being such a child was not going to help me in life. I rebelled in a big way, and left my happy home to live a life that was – emotionally and spiritually – as far from my parents’ way of life as I could be.
The only thing I’d ever been sure about, even then, is that I wanted to have kids and dogs. Nothing else much mattered to me (and honestly, I haven’t changed that much). Dogs are my happy place. And I’ve always deeply loved children. In fact, it’s why I now teach.
But one day, while living my rebel life, I walked on a small, sandy beach in my leather boots and torn blue jeans. There, I saw a little girl, maybe five or six years old. Forgetting my own appearance, my inner self reappeared, and I smiled at her.
The child’s eyes grew wide with horror and she started to cry, running back to her family on the sandy bank. And then I remembered: I’m no longer the person I was raised to be.
I had not only changed my lifestyle; I’d changed who I was.
I never forgot that little girl, looking up at the creature I’d become. And today, 30+ years later, I remembered, word for word, a poem I wrote that has been lurking in the back of my brain about that very incident.
It’s not my best writing, but it lives in my head, reminding me that once, long ago, I fought my inner self with such ferocity that even small children couldn’t see through the facade. It’s a painful memory – and one I hope I never lose.
“A child ran from me today,”
I whispered to him as we lay
making love in rows of vegetables somewhere.
“Why?” he whispered, kissing me,
but I just shrugged because he
ran his fingers down through my long hair.
And as we rode out in the sun,
I thought I felt that child run
back in the corner of my mind.
A sign said, “Grapeville, just one mile!”
(I scared that child with my smile.)
And then I turned away from all the signs.
KLMH circa 1987
