In those early days that felt like months, and in the months that were, in fact, years, there was a lot of asking how you were. We were all suffering, between the isolation, knowing people who were sick, who had died. We all suffered through the strain of being stuck in a single place, though maybe not as much as some others on earth, in different environments, different governments, different solutions to a single problem.
Me, I got sick of having no time to myself, and I haven’t been able to unmoor myself from that unisolated island. I know it sounds weird, but I want and need time to myself. I clean the house better when there’s no one else in it. I like sitting and listening to my podcasts, watching my television, trying out new music, all of this alone. Uninterrupted. Unquestioned.
For a little while in the late winter, early spring, there were days that I could be by myself. And when someone remote might have wanted to chat, I put them off, to the point of having put them off for so long, they stopped reaching out. I needed the time to myself, to not be needed, to just breathe, me, my own way, thinking my own thoughts about my own things. Brushing away worry, so that I could contemplate creation and creativity, to work on the things I knew I needed to work on so that I could start a new career, a new life, anew…
When my wife started treatment twenty-eight days ago Friday, I knew that I’d spent the last day of my foreseeable life alone for any length of time. The bathrooms aren’t anything like as clean as they could be, because I can’t get the time alone with them that I need. I’ve cleaned the kitchen, top to bottom, only once, because we are constantly cooking, and the kids are alway around, scrounging for food, food that is everywhere, but somehow they can’t find anything to eat without being told how to look for it (second shelf, behind the raspberries), or whether it’s okay to eat (is it moldy? Then eat the bagel, I don’t care).
I caught myself the other day playing supportive parent when the boys got word that they didn’t make the varsity team. I checked multiple times if they were okay. They lied, but I let them know I was there.
I ask my wife if she’s okay seventy, eighty times a day. Not really. I do the checks I need to do: meds, how’d you sleep, drink your water, no, not chai, but water, actual water, and then when I see it in her slouch or in her frown or whatever signal she’s sending, I ask if she’s okay.
I don’t check on myself. I know the answer.