“I was driving down the street yesterday, and—I kid you not—there was a woman walking down the sidewalk carrying four Costco-sized flats of toilet paper.”
“Oh, I know. The rumours are true. It’s getting ridiculous.”
“These people are idiots for thinking that they are really gonna need any of it. More people have died from the flu for God’s sake. This cold is nothing to be threatened by—hey sweetheart! Would ya hit the bubble button for us old guys?”
You turn your attention to the men in the hot tub, although you’ve been listening to their conversation since they got it. You take your floatation aid off of your back and give the red button labelled jets a smack. You don’t want to touch it. Frankly, you don’t want to be anywhere near a germ-infested public pool at the moment, and you are in disbelief at the choices of the two senior citizens that sit in the hot tub shoulder-to-shoulder with nine others. Instead of resting your eyes, you have spent every off-deck rotation taking Lysol wipes to railings and anything else frequently touched. Your hands smell of disinfectant.
As you scan the pools, your eyes catch the cheerful grin of the kindest of the Maintenance men.
“Good morning!”
“Hey, Ray. How’s it been?” you ask.
“It’s a scary, scary world that we live in, isn’t it?”
“Sure is. I have been overhearing that there is a toilet paper shortage. Have you heard anything about that?” you question.
“Oh, it’s getting bad in those grocery stores. I am worried that patrons are going to start stealing from our washrooms. Luckily, I stocked up the other day. I live with my 86-year-old mother, you know, to care for her, but I’m immunocompromised. If either of us were to catch it, neither of us would survive. I felt bad stripping the shelves, but you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.”
You stand together in silence, listening to the water lap over the grates.
“Well, I think I’ve got to go hunt for some tonight. We are genuinely just on our last roll, and my roommate won’t let me forget that it’s my turn to buy,” you explain.
“Oh gosh, I have so many! I will bring some to work for you, no problem!” Ray exclaims.
“Wow, that is so incredible of you. Thank you so much for offering! How about I pull apart every store in town tonight, and I’ll let you know how I do tomorrow morning.”
“Sounds good. And don’t be shy! I’d be happy to help you out. Good luck tonight!”
“Thanks, Ray. Good luck yourself,” you call out as he disappears into the men’s changeroom.
You know you wouldn’t ask for any toilet paper from him. His mother needed it more than you did. You also know that you probably wouldn’t find any on your own, so you’ll have to figure something else out.
What you didn’t know was that that was the last time you would see Ray, for a long while at least. That evening you would receive two emails: one from the pool announcing its immediate closure, and one from the university telling you that it was time to go home.
• • •
You spend most of your days attempting to navigate online school. It isn’t until the evenings that you make your way downstairs to join your family in the living room. The TV is basically always on these days, usually broadcasting the news. As a family, you huddle around it to watch Dr. Bonnie Henry’s 3 o’clock updates. You move away from it to set off your car alarms at 7 o’clock. You eat dinner around it, play cards around it, brush the dog in front of it.
It’s about a month into quarantine, and you are feeling just as stressed out and nervous as everyone else. When you leave your studies to join your family every evening, it’s difficult for you to relax any more than you can while prepping for exams. The tension is in your hands. You can feel it.
So, you begin to pick up some new hobbies. For a couple of weeks, you march downstairs with a pencil case in hand. Adult colouring books—so underrated. Your dad even buys you a pack of felt pens off of Amazon. The following month
or so consists of needles and yarn. Yes, you learn to knit. YouTube tutorials can be brilliant coaches. You begin by making patterned squares and rectangles to practice. Soon after, you are able to make a little bunny that you will give to your mom for Mother’s Day and a neck warmer that you will give to your dad for Father’s Day.
The tension is in your hands, so it is your hands that you will distract.
• • •
Your body lifts off the driver’s seat as your tires skip across the lumpy backroad. You turn onto the road that points towards the golf course, and its dark. At the end of this road is a gate that you have driven through many times in order to get to the building that your brother emerges from every night after he has finished closing—mask-less.
The staff at the golf course aren’t required to wear masks because they spend most of their time outside. You have already had a fit about this. Sure, they are supposed to be social distancing, but who can say it actually happens? Can you trust 17-year-old boys to follow the rules? No; that is what you will learn tonight.
You arrive at the gate but, this time, it is closed, and there is a running car before it. The silhouette of your brother emerges from the bright headlights and fills the seat next to you. You both sit in silence as you clench your jaw so tight that your gums begin to ache. Finally, you make space in your mouth for words to slip out:
“Tell me you didn’t get in that car to drive up to the gate.”
There is a long exhale through his nose before his answer: “I did. So what?”
Another pause. If you would have replied right then, it would have been a scream followed by a sob.
Calmly, your shaky voice explains: “You can’t do that. Not only did you just break government restrictions, you just put our entire family at risk because you were too lazy to walk up a path. I am so disgusted and hurt. Promise me you won’t do anything like that again, and that you will shower the minute you step in the front door.”
“Fine.”
Later, you will find out that the first thing that he will try to do the next morning is get into someone else’s car. A few days after that, your mom will yell at you because you are being selfish and quarantine is hard on your brother too—a statement that you will never quite understand and, consequently, administer seven long, quarantined days of not talking to your family.
The reality is that you have asthma and very low iron levels; you have shitty lungs and a weak immune system. You aren’t trying to pick fights or cause drama. You are just scared.
• • •
You drive down the familiar road. It’s been over two and a half months since you had last made the trip. The government forbade it. But today is May 19th, and he has been waiting for your arrival all day.
Once exams were finished, you had finally committed to seeing him. On the first afternoon, the two of you sat six feet apart in your backyard. He had brought his own lawn chair and walked around the side of the house. After that first meeting, he decided to clean off his family’s personal junk yard, otherwise known as his back porch. The next meeting you had was on that porch underneath the Christmas lights that he had hung and on top of the sparkling floor that he had scrubbed. The two of you would sit and talk for hours and hours; however, long it would last until someone had to pee. You would take cheesy relationship quizzes that you’d find on the internet and test each other.
“Mushrooms!” you exclaimed.
“Noooo…” he sang. “I knew that! I obviously knew that. I always order your pizza with no mushrooms. You should just give me the point anyway.”
“Nope! Not happening, sorry,” you told him.
You would bring him a square that you had knitted in his favourite colour, place it on the table, and then move away so he could grab it whilst keeping the distance. Keeping the distance was unimaginable.
But now, it is May 19th, and he is the first person who made the cut to be in your Safe Six.
You parallel park in front of his house and exhale deeply. You don’t know why you are so nervous, but you are practically shaking. You get out of your car and almost forget to lock the door. You see him standing in the open frame of his front door. Without lifting your glance, the two of you slowly move towards each other until you realize that all of your things are on the ground, and you are embraced in his arms.
The first time you have hugged anyone in two and a half months. The first time you have touched anyone in two and half months. The feeling is alien, and you will never forget it.
• • •
“So, we are about two hours in. I’ll give you guys your five-minute break now. Meet back at 11:05,” your professor calls out through Zoom.
You had decided to take a summer course. Might as well. You are stuck inside anyway. It is your first full course through Zoom; a preview of what is to come in the fall.
You turn off your video and grab your phone. You attempt to scroll through Instagram, but it leaves an uneasy feeling in your stomach. Every post addresses George Floyd or Breonna Taylor or Ahmaud Arbery. All of the recognition, it’s fantastic. It is also overwhelming. You scroll past a post that reads If you are being silent, I see you. You know that you are being far from silent. You have donated to different organizations, taken part in multiple conversations with your friends and family about the topic, and taken the time to educate yourself. The only problem is that you never posted about any of it publicly. Are you being you silent? No. Does everyone on social media know that? No. Should that matter? No, but deep down you feel like it does.
You shut off your phone and toss it across your bed, deciding to just wait out the last 2 minutes of your break.
• • •
You feel his muscles relax into your leg and gentle snores release from his nose.
Yes! He is finally asleep, you think.
The last week had been tough. Your puppy wasn’t feeling well. It took four visits to the vet and multiple prescriptions before he was rushed into emergency surgery. You had overheard your dad saying to your mom:
“This is exactly how Jake was acting during his last few days, right before they found all of the cancer.”
He was right. Loki was exhausted, throwing up, refusing to eat just like your last dog before he passed. When a Lab won’t eat, you know there is something wrong. There were a lot of tears that week. One of the hardest things to witness is your sick dog peering up at you with scared eyes as if they are saying help me.
It has now been four hours since he first fell asleep on you. It is the first time he has seemed comfortable since the surgery. You, however, share no such comfort. The laminate floor shoots pains into your ankle bones. The edge of his cone turns your thigh white. There is no back support as he chose the middle of the living room floor to lie down on you. The channel is stuck on a show that you have no interest in watching. It’s okay through. You find yourself mostly watching your puppy anyway. It makes you the happiest you have been in weeks.
• • •
When the weather turns hot and the days lengthen out, you are able to find some normalcy in all of the craziness. Since the pools mostly remain close, you find a job as a full-time barista where the summer tips are nice. You turn nineteen and host an outdoor party of six. You take your dog to the beach once his stitches are out. You even plan a weekend hiking trip with your boyfriend. It is here where you take him ziplining for the first time. The tops of the trees were never introduced to the pandemic.
• • •
“Here is the Chai Tea Latte, and here is the Iced Mocha with no whip.”
“Thank you,” the couple says in unison.
You don’t wait for their reply. By the time they say the word you, you are already around the corner of the patio, hacking into your mask. The smoke is the
thickest it has ever been. You swiftly sneak into the staffroom to take a puff of your medication. You had phoned your doctor just yesterday, requesting an emergency inhaler. You haven’t been able to step outside without your chest tightening up like laces on a hockey skate.
Asthma and forest fires to not mix.
• • •
You begin to peel back the tape on the first box that you are unpacking into your first ever apartment. Or, that’s what you would be doing, you know, if 2020 wasn’t 2020.
It is officially fall, and you don’t like it. You spend your days studying and your nights making coffees or vise versa. The sun sets at 4:30 pm, and it’s been raining for at least a month. You are bored and exhausted. You want to read and colour and knit and do yoga and mediate and sleep, but, frankly, there is no time. So, instead, you count down the days until the semester is over and daydream about your almost-apartment while sitting in your noisy house.
• • •
It is November 8th, and new restrictions have just been posted. The second wave is making an appearance. You spend the afternoon texting your friends:
Your mom walks into the kitchen where you are frowning at your phone.
“This sucks. It’s reading break, and I was finally going to get to see my friends, but of course attention-seeking Miss ‘Rona’s been feeling neglected lately,” you say.
“You need to calm down. It’s only two weeks. Just reschedule,” she says.
“I don’t mean to sound pessimistic, Mom, but it won’t only be two weeks.”
You are me. This is an imitate view of the kinds of things that have been going on in my personal life during the historic year of 2020. Although, I have not felt much inspiration to write throughout this year, I am quite certain that the year as a whole will be a massive influence on any of my future writing, as it will for any and all future writing in general. For recent assignments, I have already created a corrupt society on a fictional planet, as well as written about the absurdity of how the education system is dealing with COVID 19. Both of these include a toxic, controlling environment. Hm, I wonder what could have placed those thoughts into my head? I know that neither of these pieces would exist if it weren’t for the events of 2020. What an awful, dehumanizing, makes-you-think, inspirational year.