We turned our lives upside down trying to evade the coronavirus. It finally arrived in a weakened form, leaving us in maddening, beautiful isolation together.
A sick day
Osama left to take the children to school and preschool but returned an hour later with seven-year old Forat.
“She threw up when we got out of the car,” he explained. “Maybe because she was reading one of her fairy books during the ride.”
Forat seemed pretty healthy, but coronavirus infection rates had skyrocketed in Raleigh, North Carolina, our home for Osama’s sabbatical, so I took her to get a COVID test.
COVID arrives
Two days later, I awoke to an email notifying me that Forat’s COVID test was positive. She had already recovered, if she had ever been sick. At that point, I had developed an itch in the back of my throat. I donned a mask and gave the news to Osama, who was still in bed.
“Maybe Forat and I should go into isolation in the children’s room? I think I’m also infected,” I told him.
“My head hurts,” Osama said. We looked at four-year old Adam, who slept next to Osama, after sneaking into our bed in the middle of the night.
“Bring me a mask too,” Osama said.
We were among the first in the drive-through line for a COVID test, in a huge parking lot outside a hockey arena. A smiling 50- or 60-something man approached our car and asked how many test kits we wanted.
“Three,” I said. “My daughter already has COVID, and for that reason you shouldn’t get too close to our car window.”
His smile widened, and he spoke in a soft Southern accent. “In November, I spent two weeks in intensive care with COVID,” he announced. “They brought a priest to give me last rites. You don’t scare me.”
“You look wonderful,” I told him. He seemed strong and energetic, with a round face red from the cold.
“I’m the events coordinator for the Saving Grace Church,” he said. “Two hundred people gathered under my hospital window to shout encouragement. The nurses said they never saw anything like it. You’ll also get through this just fine.”
A weakened enemy
In the days that followed, as we waited for our test results, I thought of that smiling man, who recovered from a near-death bout with COVID and now spent his time reassuring worried, coughing and sneezing would-be patients that we would weather the pandemic together. When we first got home from the testing site, we tried to protect Adam, but in the afternoon he said he wanted to sleep, a sure sign that he was already sick. I removed my mask, lay down next to him and held him close, worried that his unvaccinated body was now encountering a completely novel virus, one that had killed millions of people.
The days passed slowly. Our test results came back positive. Tense, we waited for a sudden turn for the worse, a powerful bout of illness, but none arrived. The children ate and played. I continued running in the mornings. Osama took acetaminophen for his headache.
After two years in which we turned our lives upside down trying to evade the coronavirus, it caught up to us, but in a weakened form, after most of us were vaccinated, and scientists had developed effective treatments that we knew we could access if necessary. A virus that had ravaged the bodies of so many – made mine feel as if I had developed an ordinary, mild cold.
We resumed the kind of isolation we had undergone in the first few months of the pandemic, when the Palestinian authorities imposed a strict lockdown of West Bank cities, and for three months I was the only one who left our apartment, to buy groceries, fearful of touching surfaces or getting close to other human beings. Then, as now, Osama and I divided the days, such that at any given moment, one of us worked while the other took care of the children. Those had been difficult but also beautiful days, when time stood still, and the days blurred together into a routine of cooking, playing, fighting between the children and always – together.
Now, we found water paints in the closet and made an art exhibit. We separated the children, who seemed to hit each other about every hour. I screamed at Forat when she broke into the bedroom a minute before I gave a Zoom lecture to 150 people. We baked granola. We strung beads.
Maybe this is how the acute phase of the pandemic ended for us, with the threat of the virus dissipating for our family, leaving just slow, maddening, beautiful time together in isolation.
This post was also published on haaretz.com on January 27, 2022:
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-we-eluded-covid-in-ramallah-but-it-finally-caught-up-with-us-in-america-1.10570764
הלוואי שכל המחלות הקשות (שלא תגענה) יעברו בצורה כזו. ידידה שלי חטפה את זה בצורה יותר קשה , וזה לא חגיגה. כאבים בלתי אפשריים. רק מורפין כנראה נותן זמן לנוח מהכאב. והיו כאלה שחטפו קשה .
כן, בהחלט. אני מקווה שהידידה שלך תחלים מהר ובאופן מלא. רק בריאות.
Trying to avoid the virus, I self isolated myself in a moshav outside Jerusalem, house sitting frnds dogs and cats while they were self isolating in EU. Three days before Yom Kippur, I was playing with their house cat which bit me playfully. Three days later I was the sickest in my life, ambulances, high fever and ended up in a health clinic for the next three weeks, every 8 hrs IV anti-biotics. It was staffed mainly by Arab drs and without a doubt, the gold stnd, in how medical staff should treat patients. In a city where most of the people are religious, the staff there are a minority, their relationship to the patients there , mostly rel. Jews was remarkable. When I entered the clinic, by ambulance, totally confused due to a high fever, with a mask, the Arab Dr on duty, also masked up, immediately recognized me from yrs earlier in the Hadassah ER when I had been misdiagnosed with a heart problem, (I was a long distance runner and he too was a runner) . In the intervening yrs I only saw him once , while on a run he was siting on a park bench in the Jerusalem Peace Forest separating East from West Jerusalem, with his family. He shouted at me to stop, and introd. me to his family, wife two daughters who now are both physicians.
That’s a great and terrible story. Great about the doctors, terrible about the cat bite. Hope that’s all behind you now!
שרי יקרה, תענוג כתמיד.
הכתיבה שלך נותנת הרגשה שאני/אנחנו שם אתכם. יש לך את זה!
חוץ מזה אתם משפחה שגם לחלות איתה נראה כיף גדול…
תודה! לא ממש כיף גדול, אבל באופן אירוני, המחלה חסכה לנו מבחינת הגן של אדם. היום כולם נכנסו לבידוד עקב חשיפה בגן, חוץ ממנו שיכול להישאר בגן כי בינתיים הוא נחשב חסין 🙂
Having just heard from our daughter in New York that she and her family have come down with COVID, your message hit home and was somewhat encouraging. She, too, has a husband (a rabbi, no less) and two young children. The youngest too young to be vaccinated. Their early symptoms don’t seem too bad.
I invite you to check on her work. She is the editor for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. It covers news of interest, in particular, to Jews. It does not take a partisan stance between left- and right-wing Jews. While personally pro-Israel, she is sympathetic to the Palestinian plight.
Oh my goodness. I hope they all get better soon!
Glad it didn’t hit you all very seriously! Be well!
Thank you!
Hi,
Glad you and your family weathered this storm. Take care, be well, and may the winds of good fortune be always at your back.
Igor.
Thank you!!
נהדר שעברתם את זה בצןרה כזו. גם אצלי במשפחה זה עובר כך, אבל בשרשרת בלתי פוסקת מהאחד\ת לשני. העיקר הבריאות ושמרו על עצמכם!
תודה! אני מקווה שיעבור לכם בקרוב ובקלות .. רק בריאות.