For Christmas I received Covid. It even came a little early — in the twilight of Christmas Eve, while watching a holiday movie. I spent the week in between Christmas and New Year’s getting through what appeared to be a mild case of the omicron variant. We all got it in my household, passed around like eggnog. We are all vaxxed and boosted as much as currently allowed, and we all seem to have come through to the other side okay. Thank you for asking.
It was an odd experience, like a mean cold, not as bad as the flu, but a handful of days that ended in chills, that ended in me banishing myself to the guest room bed where I soothed myself with multiple comforters and Netflix. Though I am not the most diligent or focused of creatures, I hardly ever give myself over to binging shows. In my mind it’s an activity that you only do when you’re sick. Or it’s an activity I only do when I’m sick. (What I do when I’m well, apparently, is scroll through Twitter before snoozing on the couch.) I experienced a scratchy throat, an occasional cough, copious snot and sinus pressure, and the aforementioned chills, which were the most conspicuous element, seeming to indicate a low-grade fever flare up in the nighttime. I would awake in the morning from my comforter cave in sweat-dampened T-shirts. Now, two weeks later, I have been released from captivity. I still have some snot and a lower voice, and I’m tired a lot. This could be from Covid. It could be from the feral hours we kept as a family, trapped at home yet freed from any regular schedule. It could be a window onto Long Covid, that obscure fear beyond fear, just another vista to be anxious about. Is it Long Covid or is it just getting older? Are you depressed or merely sad? The only answer is another question.
If New Year’s Eve is Drunk Night for amateurs, then New Year’s resolutions are like astrology for non-millennials. The threshold of a new year seems significant. Everyone acts as if it were significant. But it’s not. It’s just another day, another week, another slow roll through the seasons. It’s the beginning of winter. It’s the season when you can see the squirrel nests in the trees. It happens every year. There are some jobs where year-end is important — in accounting, for instance. Cut-offs are important for contracts and insurance policies, where an artificial demarcation of a span of time is necessary and useful. But in your life, it’s just another year. The only true closing of the books is death.
And yet still, during that week of listless scrolling and watching, I kept thinking: maybe this year I’ll be different. Not resolutions, per se. Nothing that concrete. Only that I would be a better person, stronger, more disciplined, less apt to fall asleep on the couch while reading Twitter, someone who took his vitamins, went to the gym, resisted carbohydrates, lifted with his legs, all that stuff. The truth is I don’t save my life-changing exhortations for year-end. They are perennial, persistent shouts to self. And while I would like to be a completely different person (if just for a little while), I would be happy for one or two almost microscopic changes, if not to improve my life then to prove to myself that change is indeed possible, and that I am not the equivalent of a human locomotive, only moving in one direction when moving at all.
One thing getting Covid has done is improve my mood. After 21 months, it finally happened. I look at the colored map of the United States on the New York Times website each morning. It’s growing more and more purple as the omicron variant burns through the population. Perhaps this will be the final fire that can move us toward endemicity or normality or something at least different than succeeding waves of anxiety. Emptied of despair, perhaps we can withstand winter. Winter has recently been a season simply to get through. It’s the trudging part of the year. I think part of this attitude was triggered by living in a slightly colder climate with small children. They’re sick all of the time and it’s too cold to take them outside anyway. But it’s hardly ever cold in Mississippi, not really. And the kids are older, heartier. It’s mostly a season of dampness. So instead of projecting — next season will be better! — instead of always anticipating improvement just around the corner, I wonder if I can just enjoy January. It sounds ridiculous. But the panic attack of the holidays is over, we have lived through the plague, or at least the current iteration of the plague, life has continued on, thankfully; perhaps I could burrow into something like appreciation. I know this sounds like a desperate bid for optimism or joy, but I am running out of topics to be worried about. Or perhaps I’m just bored by them. They seem exhausted. I am exhausted. It’s like the websites that you continually visit even though you long ago stopped receiving any thrill by reading them. Why do I keep going there? Is it simply because the browser autofills the URL? Close those tabs of despair! Find something to do with your time besides make yourself feel bad. And don’t wait for astrology — the one true date where your resolutions will be aligned. If you need cosmic order, just go back to church. It’s less embarrassing.