Today marks a week of living under the shelter in place order for Alameda County. Last week was a flurry of cancellations, including a trip to Washington, D.C. today. I woke up at 4 am, as though I still needed to arrive at SFO early for my 7:10 flight. But no, we finally managed to cancel that flight yesterday after holding the phone for two hours to reach a person who worked for the Chase Credit card. Using points rather than cash to purchase a plane ticket turned out to be a huge disadvantage for cancellation, because we could not cancel directly with the airline. More than a week ago, I sent an online form to Chase, which they received, because they sent me an email saying they received it. However, we learned two days ago that they did not cancel our tickets, because the airline emailed that our flight was cancelled and they had booked us on another one later in the day. It turned out that that the email Chase had sent us was a meaningless place holder. Lesson learned.

So many lessons in this sad time. How vulnerable we all are. How hard it is to sit on the sidelines, retired from active medical practice, and watch colleagues cope with an unprecedented epidemic, so different from the unprecedented AIDS epidemic I faced as a young doctor. The anxiety remains the same, however. The fear about how the disease is transmitted. The constant “non-news” as the numbers of victims of the disease mount. Covid19 is easier to catch, because it’s a respiratory infection, rather than blood borne, but most people recover. With AIDS, everyone died.

I have more or less settled into a routine of practicing the piano and accordion, writing, knitting, walking, Duolingo Italian, for our long-awaited trip to Italy, now in rescheduling limbo, talking to the kids on the phone. The closure of the library hits hard. I can’t return my copy of Maggie Nelson’s Bluets (exquisite) so I lent it to my neighbor. I can’t take out any new books and our local bookstore is closed. So I shopped my own bookshelves and found Julian Barnes’ Flaubert’s Parrot, which I bought second hand last year. Completely delightful. Inspiring. How lovely to be reminded of wit, so lacking in the unfunny Covid19 jokes about hoarding toilet paper. Unfunny because people really are hoarding toilet paper.

Toni Martin Writes