In Which I (Finally) Contract Covid, and Question Everything

Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Chaos

Boudica brought Covid home with her from school the other day. We didn't know it was Covid at first (that's how it works, now I think about it) but she had a headache for a day or so, then malingered around the house for the remainder of the week, having what looked like a delightful time. I seem to remember a lot of singing and dancing. When I suggested she go to school, she clutched her head and spoke of aches and pains, so in the spirit of an easier life, I let it go.

Then on Friday, Hattie awoke feeling miserable, so we finally thought to administer a Covid test. And here we all are, locked up in this apartment and trying not to give Covid to other people.

This is poor form, obviously. The normal procedure, after contracting Covid, is to immediately attend a large social gathering, perhaps even a wedding or an Applebee's. But some part of me — that aspect of my personality that makes me so distrustful of societal conventions — urges me to stay inside. I just go against the grain, I've sometimes been told, for no reason whatsoever.

I didn't grow up attending church, so I lack what some might call a ‘personal relationship with God’. This, sadly, obliges me to treat other people in a more kindly manner. People who are closer to God resemble, to my way of thinking, that particular sort of work colleague who plays golf with their boss. At a distance, they seem like workplace suck-ups; they cultivate relationships with their deeply-influential boss and take full advantage of his forgiving nature. But whenever they're around us lesser folk, they act like complete weasels.

Such people will reliably catch the flu, head straight into work, and get everybody sick, safe in the knowledge that their boss will still want to play golf with them on Sunday. Sadly, I'm not that sort of person. I'd rather stay home and not get anybody sick. Even while the workplace suck-up bad-mouths me to everyone for an apparent ‘lack of work ethic’. In fact, I always try to do the right thing — but only in secret, mind you, when nobody might notice. It's my pride, I think. It gets the better of me.

On a somewhat branching topic, I've never understood these people who suck up to their boss. First, life is too short to be, you know, that person, and second, it just doesn't look like fun. I'd rather enjoy being me, because that enjoyment can be contagious and spread to others. I've been a rapscallion for most of my life, but never for effect or for validation. In fact, I somewhat distrust validation. My closest friends have been encouraging me to start a podcast for the longest time, and I might do it one day though it's really not my nature to put myself out there.

One final tangent.

I had never listened to podcasts, but at a certain point everyone started talking about them, so I downloaded an app and listened to one at random. It turned out to be a fairly interesting interview with a medical doctor at Johns Hopkins talking about the human metabolism. The interviewer sounded a bit daft, as people in the media can often be, but I went ahead and recommended it to a friend who had studied medicine at Georgetown. And do you see?! Do you see the way life will place pitfalls beneath our unsuspecting feet? I didn't know who Joe Rogan was back then — it was 2015! But now and forever, I'm on somebody's mental list for ‘recommending Joe Rogan’ and even to this very day, I'll be out on a walk, minding my own business, and remember this sullen fact and wince like I've been slapped. So anyway, this is why when people ask me if I listen to any podcasts, I just shake my head and say, ‘no, I never have!’

So ... my wife has been terribly ill for three days but my daughters experienced a few minor symptoms and were up and kicking, almost immediately. I have been keeping them away, on one side of the apartment, so they can play hospital and let their mother rest.

But half an hour ago, I asked Boudica how she was feeling and she summoned a theatrical cough and wanly replied: “Still feeling rather poorly, I'm afraid, but thank you for asking”. In translation, she is perfectly recovered, thank-you-very-much, and would not like to attend school for at least another few days. When I brought her ginger ale a few minutes later, she thanked me for all my hard work. The little minx.

Meanwhile, I'm on the far side of the apartment, having the time of my life. I don't usually experience this much time to myself; it’s an unfamiliar experience. They do attend school for six hours a day, of course, but generally I find I need those six hours to rest and recover from the three hours it takes, each day, to get them ready for school!

So, I am lounging with my feet up, writing on my laptop, and nobody has come in crying for at least an hour. Nobody has declared themselves at war with a sister, or spoken of harsh injustices, or accused a sister of treason, or of wasteful mishandling of art supplies, or villainy.

I don't know if you've seen a television show called Bluey but that's a bit what my life has resembled these past several years. Oddly, like Bluey, we also live in Brisbane. I am a full-time father. My wife works and I manage the children, whom my wife finds somewhat overwhelming. I mean, I also find them somewhat overwhelming, but being overwhelmed by them would be my job description. Sometimes, when people ask me what I do for work, I tell them I'm a wild animal trainer.

And some days, if I'm in a particularly black mood, I tell my wife I would like to get a job — a real job, and perhaps one with a lot of travel to Antarctica. If I'm really in a black mood, I might suggest that she stay home with the children. My wife panics (between you and me, a reasonable reaction) and starts saying a lot of encouraging things about me working on my Substack.

I'm reminded, suddenly, that somewhere in the world I have a sister who raised two sons who are, by all accounts, remarkably sensible and straightforward people. One of them, my mother tells me, is on the way to becoming a cardiologist, and the other wants to build robots.

I would like Hattie and Boudica to be like that. I would endure table discussion about cardiology or robots, or anything at all, if it made for a more peaceful life. However, when she was four, Boudica liked to wrap a silk scarf around her head and pretend she was divining the future. Nobody taught her how. In fact, there had been no television in her life at that stage. Some children have a natural aptitude for math; my children's aptitude runs purely to whimsy.

Most of Boudica's mornings start with her coming to her sister with a completely new plan.

“Hattie,” she'll say to her sister, “I've had an idea. It'll be terrific fun and will almost certainly cause an abundance of trouble in our lives. But if you follow my lead, we should probably be able to talk our way out of it.”

“Your words interest me greatly,” Hattie will invariably reply. “I am already fully on board. Let us sit and drink peppermint tea and review your plan. But already it sounds delightful.”

“Very well. But before we continue, we must both solemnly agree not to antagonize the god, Poseidon. Or else, utter calamity!”

“I would never,” Hattie replies, somberly. Then, off they go to make themselves peppermint tea.

You see? Complete nonsense, but already, at that tender hour and before I've taken even a sip of coffee, I must experience a stab of alarm. Because they are clearly planning to do something involving lots and lots of water (hence Poseidon). Potentially they are thinking of covertly making a swimming pool on the floor of their bedroom. Or perhaps a cauldron for making potions. Or — who knows? — they wish to summon an ancient god, an activity I have explicitly forbidden in this house.

I have warned them of the dangers of speaking with djinn in particular, because apparently this falls within my duties and obligations. When you have (how do I put this?) imaginative children, you cannot merely exit your house with a cheerful warning not to light fires while you're gone. Though I do that, too, obviously. No, I have to mention the spirit world, because their mad behavior extends beyond the bounds of the material plane to the outer edges of the astral.

The other day, I was trying to write something or other, and they were being noisy, so I went in to tell them to knock it off. Both children bowed, pressed their palms together, and sang in unison: “We apologize, oh gracious father!” Then they began to actually kowtow, like peasants paying obeisance to an emperor.

Why can't they take an interest in cardiology? You ought to see the price of granola in my local supermarket — it's increased more than fifty percent in four years. Evidently, granola is being reclassified as some fashion of luxury item, which suggests to me that if any of us want to enjoy granola in the future, one of my daughters will need to be on a cardiologist's salary.

But my main problem is that now, with my daughters being nine and eleven, I am feeling increasingly disposed toward not parenting them any more. And nobody really understands that about me. Mind you, there's probably an entire genre of Hallmark movie about mothers who have become utterly fed up with mothering. They don't say it explicitly, of course — the mother simply finds herself talking winsomely about the next so-called ‘phase of her life’. What's really happening is she no longer wants to stand in the cereal aisle of the local supermarket, muttering darkly about the price of granola, and wondering which oligarch needs to be choked first. She simply wants to 'do something different' — like, take up pilates, or ceramics, or what have you.

Perhaps she yearns to have a career again. Or even go back to college and rack up an enormous amount of student debt. It's all heroic and brave and I'm here for it, along with the stirring music and everything else. She gets to reinvent herself, find love, and potentially even rescue a passing spaniel.

My point is, they don't make the equivalent of this movie about fathers. I mean, if I encountered a fellow parent in the fruit section of the grocery store and said: 'I feel like I'm drowning in the needs of others and, somehow, I want to feel like a human being again', then that individual is going to walk away from me rather briskly.

There's a television show called Burn Notice, and in the final episode of the first season, Michael Weston, the former spy, gets into a helicopter in Miami with the man who ruined his life and they fly off, out over the Bay. It's a compelling and complicated moment, and a bit tricky to explain in a paragraph. All that matters is that this one man, this villain, asks Michael Weston what it is he wants and the latter replies, loudly and passionately, “I WANT MY LIFE BACK!” Then he throws himself out of the helicopter.

I'll admit this scene resonated with me rather strongly. For Michael Weston, he's dealing with a diabolical nemesis. For me, I guess, it's my children.

Anyway, for the next six seasons, Michael Weston proceeds to blow up a lot of stuff — like, lots of stuff — and throughout it all his girlfriend's main complaint against him is that he doesn't, you know, express his feelings enough. Now, I love this show, but at points I found myself screaming at my television: “Michael Weston is expressing himself — he's just doing it with explosives! Because if he uses words, everyone would walk away from him — rather briskly!”

Perhaps Burn Notice is, secretly, all about fatherhood. I don't know. At this point, everything looks to me like it's about fatherhood. If I was in a psychiatrist's office and they showed me an inkblot, I'd say: 'So, you let your kids play with ink and paper, did you? Rookie mistake, dude. Just give them crayons. No mess to clean up afterward.'

In summary, and after five years of dodging it, I finally contracted Covid. But then, somewhat oddly, I experienced no symptoms, and I'm not sure why. I think if I maintained a closer, personal relationship with God, I could ask Him. He might even tell me that the reason I dodged this bullet is because I am such a deeply conformist, credulous, and conventional person. That would explain why I follow the guidance of epidemiologists and leading public health experts and, therefore, took all the recommended Covid vaccines and boosters.

What I have found myself thinking, lately, is that if I was less easily influenced — or, if I was more of a free-thinker, like Joe Rogan — then I might have gulped down a bucket of hydroxychloroquine, and then ... then it's fair to say, I think, that all my problems would be gone. But really, which among us is perfect?

With chaste affection,

Kris St.Gabriel