I have Covid. Again. I got it exactly one year ago this past weekend, which I remember because it was Labor Day. The delta variant then and omicron now, I assume. Before and in-between, I’ve been fully vaxxed and boosted and am beyond grateful for this, as my symptoms have been those of a nasty head cold and not much more. But I find myself curiously sidelined from life again (much like I was during our long year-and-a-half of sheltering in place and, prior to that, my treatment for cancer), which has me feeling both reflective and a little bored. How I used to live in mortal fear of this virus that I now experience as a minor annoyance! And how I know that that fear was warranted because it’s claimed so many lives but also, perhaps, excessive because I’m relatively young and healthy and have taken all of the necessary precautions that have been available to me (masking, distancing, becoming vaccinated as soon as I was eligible, quarantining when I’ve been sick, etc.). Did my fear protect me in those early days when we all knew so little about the strange virus ravaging virtually every corner of the globe? It certainly influenced my behavior and decisions, so perhaps. And I remind myself that it was also shared by my doctors, who advised me to exercise caution because of my recent cancer diagnosis and treatment. But did my fear also inhibit me in ways that it needn’t have; did it cause undue suffering and isolation and anger and, at times, despair? Yes. Increasingly, the longer I live (or am lucky enough to live), the more I find myself confronting–even inhabiting–paradox. That is, two (or even more!) opposing claims, feelings, or realities being true at once. Logic tells us that this cannot be so, but experience consistently (and maddeningly) proves otherwise. I’m sure those older and wiser than myself know this; perhaps they’ve even tried to tell me as I’ve struggled to shape the morass of life into something clean and solid and coherent. Hellbent upon this furious yet futile task, I’m guessing I didn’t listen, or was unable to. Perhaps those who loved me left me to my work and those who didn’t laughed at it; either way, the lesson may be just starting to sink in now. It takes a long time to learn some things. Some days, after the upheavals of the past five years, in which so many of my certainties were shattered (or rather exposed for being assumptions and nothing more), I feel as though I’ve just been born. Like I’m looking out on the world with eyes that are newly opened, nothing quite in focus.
Yet.
Well, then 