Memoires Of A Pandemic

             

               Fun to write.

                     Fun to Read.

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MY BEAUTY

IN THE EYES OF THE WEATHERMAN

I was having breakfast and watching TODAY on NBC. Al Roker, the weatherman, started to talk about the weather with his usual gusto--as if he himself had created it, and would warrant his predictions.

Then, he switched from the weather to something unusual and mesmerizing! He showed pictures of women and men, one at a time. Each pasted on a jar of Smucker’s Strawberry Jam. Below it was the person’s name and age, ranging from 99 to 100+ years old.

Still healthy! Still active! Still loved! Still appreciated!

It seemed that the pictures and the information were provided by family members or close friends.

Born and raised in Egypt, a country of ancient history and entrenched traditions, I was accustomed to looking back until my neck ached and my vision blurred, revering and seeking wisdom from our ancestors—the  Pharaohs, the Greeks, the Romans, the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims—kings and queens. So I waited for this part of Mr. Rocker’s presentation to materialize on a daily basis!

Would it take over some of the time assigned to the weather forecast, I wondered! After all, the U.S. is currently boasting the highest number of centenarians in the world--97,000 strong and rising.

Did not happen!

It remained a delight--once in a while.

Did not escape my mind though! In time, it even sneaked into my “Think-About” list, then into my “What-To-Do-If” list. Not that I belong to the centenarians now, or any time soon. But to be prepared to give it my best in case my life extends and goes on to reach the eligibility for a Smucker’s jam posting.

For example, I wondered if all my current family and friends would be alive when I'm a hundred years old. Would they remain healthy, aware of my whereabouts! Willing and able to take the effort to remain in contact with me! Life would be awfully lonely and barren losing a single person in addition to those whom I lost and still mourn. With my damn sharp memory, their loss would shove me into permanent depression. And if depressed, forget about both my “Think-About” list, and my “What-To-Do-If.”

Having a Smucker’s posting experience would be worth being watched or even zoomed with family and friends. Hopefully, all or most of them would sincerely believe that my face--with all its wrinkles-- was worth showing on a jar of jam. In fact, I would be delighted if they made remarks to the effect that I looked a lot younger than the age written on the Smucker’s jar.

And for a career woman like me, it would be worth living the one hundred or so years if all or some of my family members and friends sincerely recognized my lifetime achievements and hard work. They can do that regardless of whether or not they have their own; and not necessarily because they had benefited directly or indirectly from it.

Hopefully though, as one approaches the mature age of a hundred or so, one starts to wizen up--thinks of the essence of life and not worries as much about recognition and achievements. May be at this age, a solace is to be “achieved” from remembering how much love, respect, and help was taken and given. How much life was a joy and a pleasure.

But apart from my age, despite of my career, and aside of my good deeds, dear family and friends, please keep in mind how vain I have always been. Don’t ask me to smile wide in a picture of me to be posted on the Smucker’s jar. I would never smile freely in it if any of my teeth is missing, crooked, yellowing, or failing. Besides, I will never smile in a picture without an effort to control the wrinkles around my eyes, mouth, and on my forehead.

Now that I think about it, a good enough picture of me, chosen by a family or a friend of mine, and I see on a public TV, should probably looks like my pictures in my forties, fifties, and sixties. Good pictures did not materialize before that age, and stopped materializing since. So why don’t you save yourself from my constant nagging and ask me to choose one of these pictures to send for the jar of jam posting?

And while we are at it, why don’t you also, before sending my worthy of mention, ask me what I think is my lifetime great achievements!

A final word of wisdom; remember how opinionated and determined I have always been? People tell me that it will not be possible for me to carry that throughout my old age.  I don’t believe it. But in the remote possibility that someone or something caused my mind to be changed either about how good I look in the picture I saw on the jar of jam or the worthy of mention accompanying the picture--please, please dear family and friends, bear my sulkiness with me.

 

MY LIKELY DEATH?

I sat in front of the computer screen, going through six hours of a defensive driving course, followed by a final exam!

The company administering the course asked if the reason for taking the course was to dismiss a ticket or to reduce my insurance rates. No? I have been in fender-benders two or three times in my forty four years of driving, colliding with hard but bendable objects, to avoid spelling the red matter in the veins of breathable obstructions. I don’t recall standing in front of a judge. I don’t recall paying a traffic ticket.

I recall much worse!

Each time I head to get my car out of the garage, questions keep popping in my mind:

1. Do you want to kill or maim someone today?

2. What will your life be like if you get involved in an accident?

3. How do you feel if you hit a human being?

4.  Honestly, do you want to total this beautiful car?

5. Can you find a convenient transportation other than your own car? Spare it.

6. Are you aware that you need this car to keep your doctors’ appointments?

7. If a deer suddenly ran in front of your car, will you actually hit it?

8. Do you remember how narrow the bike lanes are, and how suddenly they end?

9. Do you remember all these young, cute kids walking or waiting for their school buses?

10. Can you continue living in your neighborhood if you hit someone or his dog?

11. Is it better to sharpen your driving skills before or after being involved in an accident?

 When enough became enough, I looked up the defensive driving company I had used three years earlier, and enrolled.

That is when I came face-to-face with the consequences of having:

1. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight or more lane streets, losing or gaining their lanes as we tag along.

2. Streets that either smoothly or abruptly twist or turn right or left, up or down hill.

3. Highways over or across narrow or wide bridges, up or down hill.

4.Red, green, yellow, black, and orange signals, solid or stripped, with all shapes in different places.

5. Train tracks and all the episodes that end with us, our cars, or us inside our cars flattened to mush under the train wheels.

6. Drivers who are eating, drinking, asleep, drugged, hyper, angry, racing, phoning, fighting, or mad at whoever is driving around them.

7. How to maneuver around bicycles, motorcycles, mini and small cars, SUV’s, buses transporting children and adults, as well as trucks either hauling or pulling cars or machinery.

I thought that the real coast of the defensive driving course was the boredom to death experience.  And this is not a reference to a yawn or two. My head actually fell backward, hitting the back of the chair several times. I caught it before falling forward toward the computer keyboard once.

Was I trying to block-out experiences and fatal accidents witnessed throughout the years?

Did I doubt my ability to drive under some of the above mentioned environments and circumstances?

Hum!

 

DISCLAIMER: THAT CORPSE

IS NOT MINE

Yes, I assure you in advance. If you see the corpse of an additional victim of the Coronavirus, the likelihood is next to nil it is mine. I have fought to get the Coronavirus vaccine injection with the same zeal that drove me to get all the vaccines recommended for my age group to fight the deadly pandemic illnesses.

Yet when the health officials declared a vaccine safe and ready to immunize my age group from the deadly Coronavirus, a vaccine shortage developed and mounted. The shortage was right before the infamous Texas Ice Storm. But let me tell you about these two disasters, one at a time.

 I lodged in front of my computer screen, searching the internet for a vaccine location in Austin. The sites of some pharmacies mentioned plans to provide the vaccines—in the unforeseeable future. Other sites mentioned that they had got it, but ran out of it. No worry, right? I swivel my desk chair left to my phone, and start calling clinics and doctor offices. If someone answered after the standard hour-long hold, he or she did not know the plans. Some were kind enough to leave a taped message of no-vaccine available.

Night after night, I start with a book to read in bed. I dose reading it. So I realize that reading is not in the cards. I put the book aside and switch off the light. I keep twisting and turning for what feels to me like all night long. Eventually, I get tired from sleeping. I free myself from the bed sheets that somehow got entangled around me, turn the light on, pick up the bedspread from the floor, and start my day.

Fortunately, social service centers stepped up to tackle a vaccine for seniors drive. And one lucky afternoon, I, with thousands of other seniors, gathered around a huge building, circling it at a maddening slow pace, under the hot afternoon sun. Depending on where you were allowed to join the circle, everyone circled between one and four times.

It was four hours later when an angel in a white coat delivered the first dose of the vaccine into my arm.

Then, as the weeks between the first and second vaccine dose were going by, record low temperatures hit. It was February, in Austin, in Texas!!!

 Ice made roads impassable and kept me home-bound. Worst of all, the State’s electric grid operator lost control of the power supply, and the blackouts extended from hours to days. I stayed shivering under a pile of blankets and bedspreads, using flashlights to move at night.

And let me tell you, if you have a choice between losing electricity and losing water, chose electricity. I kept the few bottles of water I had for drinking. It was a heck of a job to go out of the house in the cold, to harvest dirty snow in containers and wait for it to melt. Wasn’t used for bathing either!

By the time the snow stopped accumulating, it was time to notice that the two huge ash trees in front of the house have been stripped out of their branches. Several huge limbs landed right at the garage door.

But this problem had to wait. My son-in-law volunteered to drive me four hours to and from a pharmacy somewhere in Texas. Yes. I got the second dose of the Coronavirus vaccine!

That corpse is not mine. 

STATUS - CORONAVIRUS VACCINE PROSPECTOR

Once Doctor Anthony Fauci rolled up his sleeve to receive a Coronavirus vaccine injection, my mission became to follow suit. I hurried to call Walgreens--my prescriptions and vaccinations hub. Instead of asking me, as usual, what day and what time, the pharmacist referred me to an appointment sign-up site with undetermined date of availability. As if the site is on cloud 9 and the cloud is not destined to evaporate and drop down the blessed cargo.

Desperately I started to sift through heaps of emails and reflect on calls and pieces of advice on when and how to sign-up for vaccination. Public service announcements specified dates and procedures, classifying the US population into groups numbered: 1, 2, and 3; sub-grouped in phases a, b, and c. As soon as I ascertain my placement in the classification, subtle and seemingly justifiable changes occur.

What boggles the mind is figuring out how many vaccines are available for how many millions of people, and how many doses are to be injected into how many arms. Being unable to meet the mathematical challenge raises my hopes of eminent vaccination up, or tumbles them down. It does not succeed in smothering my hopes to the point of shutting-up. Quit phone-calling and questioning. Relax!

Waiting for things out of control to happen is a torture! Here is a list of things I find my systematic, well-organized self, doing these days:

•   Continuously thinking of what else to do.
•   Detecting and picking up specks from my floors.
•   After masked walks, debate for 10 or 15 minutes whether to swallow a Claritin pill or wait for my nose to stop dripping.
•  Adjusting the temperature in the house for the second or third time.
•  Measuring my reading progress. Let me see, the book is 420 pages, the bookmark is inside page 118, 302 pages remain.
•  After reviewing my to-dos on the calendar for the fourth time and aligning it on the wall, going around the rest of the house to check the alignments of the tens of artifacts hanging on my walls.
• Making sure that I have replaced the bookmark back inside a book.
• Stepping out of my front door to pick up some potted herbs for my tea, then heading out immediately after to check on whether the herbs need watering.

Occasionally though, I catch myself with a smile on my face. A thought floats to my mind. Once millions, including me, are vaccinated; we will be  fear–free. We’ll find peace and comfort in each other’s presence when our paths cross.

 

  

 

THE ELECTION NIGHTMARE

Wednesday, November 4, 2020 kept me alternating between my cell phone and TV—to follow the election results. I stayed up till midnight watching the votes tallied to Biden and Trump, and the states change their colors on the US map. When assured by all sources that the tally and predictions were over for the day, I turned the TV off, placed my cell phone on top of the bed backboard panel,  pulled the flat bed sheet and bedspread to cover my aching body, and pushed the button on the board--turning off the lights extending above the backboard.

At dawn, I lay in bed frozen to near death!

It is daytime, cloudy skies, and gloomy atmosphere. People are going back and forth around me.  Gigantic grey stone buildings with chipped facades stand on both sides of a wide street. The street is unpaved, dusty, inclined upward as if built on a hill. I had to climb several high steps to remain on it.

I am dressed in a beige pantsuit, wearing brown high-heeled shoes, a large COACH handbag hanging on my right shoulder. My driver’s license and credit card are in a wallet inside the handbag. Worried of losing the handbag, I keep pulling its straps with my left hand closer to my neck. Each time my left hand journeys to secure the handbag, the glare of a big gold ring with a ruby stone on my left ring finger catch my eyes.

Two levels up and out of breath, I walk to the ticket booth of a theatre. I buy a ticket, paying with my credit card, and go sit in a full-house, grand  theatre.

The show ends. I look around me for my handbag and ring. They vanished! Heart pounding, I struggle to stay in and continue my search, but the audience are leaving the theatre and keep shoving me out.

Outside the theatre, I see the woman who was sitting in the theatre next to me. We wait together until everyone is out and we both go in and look around. Nothing!

Exhausted and stressed out, I push my way through the pedestrians, heading back to my car. But I’m lost. Asking for directions I get blank stares instead. So I go back--past the theatre, down some stairs. I find the paved street. The street has no sidewalk and I’m almost run over by a car. I stretch my right arm and touch my left shoulder, then left arm—it is stiff and numb! I keep rubbing it. Why am I so cold? I reach back searching for the backboard light button, and press it.

I remain in my bed until my eyes adapt to the light. I become aware that I am surrounded by four walls. I hurriedly raise my head off my pillow and look left, searching for my handbag. It is there, on the top right end of my dresser. I pull the bedspread from under my feet up to my shoulders, and breathe deeply. Then I pick-up the cell phone and anxiously search for the 2020 elections--hoping that the blue line had reached 270 electoral votes. I can’t go through a more harrowing election nightmare.

 

MY CORONAVIRUS SHOPPING

If you see me, you’ll never guess the depth and breadth of my appetite. And what I consume, I burn doing endless chores. So there is a fast cycle of eating and shopping for food, sped further by having no appetite for starchy foods or sugary drinks--an appetite and a half for fruits and vegetables. These tender produce are extremely good-looking yet lose their looks fast, requiring constant shopping trips. I start shopping for THEM and my eyes get caught by other things that I think I’m running out of, or in need for. In time I end up shopping for the sake of shopping. Things spiral out of control when shopping at wholesales and malls. I could be shopping for pomegranate and end up buying the on-sale shoes!

Life was a series of shopping trips until Coronavirus facts started to tumble over my head. Pretty soon, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s announcements dominated the air, snuffing out contrary claims made by a certain loud mouth. I listened to Fauci’s sincere concerns and followed his fatherly advice. He prescribed ‘HOME” for my age group--the most attractive human beings to Coronavirus. And if you are one of those people who spent their lives in a race to achieve one goal after the other, you feel sort of special even if a virus puts you on top of its list.

I feverishly started to compile an inventory of the contents of my pantry, kitchen cabinets, and the under the stairs storage of paper goods and cleaning supplies. The inventory did not stop at the names of items. It included almost all the information on their labels such as their brand, ingredients, and size. Then I divided the inventory in accordance to two main purchasing sources, a super market chain and a whole sales chain. Now I was ready to select from the inventory the shopping lists to give to the shoppers of these two sources. I placed my orders. No substitutions.

At first, I was elated when piles upon piles of groceries were delivered to my door! No driving! No cruising through endless isles. Three or four item were missing from each delivery, but even I couldn’t always find all what I shopped for. The time I saved by delegating in-person grocery shopping, however, I spent shopping online for clothes and shoes.

Then I started to miss more and more items that were on the lists. So I allowed substitutions. That is when the process went out of control. Rarely were the substitutions to my liking.

And how were my fruits and vegetables? I ask you: how many shoppers have you seen picking up an apple or a pear, then turning it around looking for consistency in the level of ripening and no dents or bruises?

Worst of all is the persistent picture popping into my mind from years past, of that tiger I saw in a zoo pacing his cage like mad, leaving his lunch of fresh meat to a swarming cloud of flies. The aim of us animals is not to get what we need.  The aim is to have the freedom to go get it.

Still taking Dr. Fauci’s advices to heart, I put a mask on my face, wear glasses to cover my eyes, stick a hat on my head, insert my hands in plastic gloves, shove a sanitizer bottle in my pocket, hang shopping bags on my shoulders, and go shopping.