Coping With Covid

Too many of my friends are fighting a hard battle with depression.

“We’re tired of sheltering in place,” they say, “sick of the isolation. There's nothing to look forward to except another day just like the day before.”

I get it. If it were not for my seven-day pill container staring at me each morning, it would be easy to believe I’m on a hamster wheel stuck in a lifetime of Mondays. 

After it was announced that all America was in danger of getting and spreading Covid-19, I hid. I listened to Dr. Fauci when he said that seniors like me were the highest risks. Fauci became my guru, my main man. I followed his rules. If Tony said don’t do it, I didn’t do it. I wore a mask and washed my hands till the skin fell off. I cut my own hair with a pair of dull scissors. I even gave up mani-pedis.

 😩

Once a week, I left my house to go to the one grocery store in town telling customers to wear a mask or shop elsewhere. Days when I wasn’t buying food were spent looking like Willie Wonka’s grandfather who only got out of bed for free chocolate. 

My once-a-week outing made it necessary for me to wear clothes. Real clothes. Not pajamas. Not sweats with stains down the front from bacon grease spatter. Real honest-to-God clothes with buttons, zippers and waistbands. I could have gone formal, but even in the South where being over-dressed is quite the thing, that would have been too much. 

I was born and raised as a Fifties Southern Belle. What does that mean? It means that belles don’t even go to the mailbox without doing their hair and fixing their face. It means that wandering through the day with pink sponge curlers in your hair is how you get to be labeled trailer trash. We were taught to fix up. If we didn’t, we didn’t leave the house.

After months of not fixing up except when the cupboard was bare and my husband was starving, I didn’t like the person I’d become. And what about Babe, my patient life partner? He had to be sick of me looking like Maxine, the cartoon old lady.

The day I realized that another person was beginning to take over my body was the same day my friends confessed their depression. They told me that they slept ten to twelve hours at night and schlepped around during the day wearing ragged sweatpants and worn-out t-shirts. I saw myself that day and knew I had to do something. 

So, I got dressed EVERY day. I washed and blew my hair dry EVERY day. I fixed my face EVERY day. I wore outfits with matching socks even if I didn’t wear shoes. I became a homegrown, homebound fashionista. At first, I did it because I wanted Babe’s last sight of me to be a good one in case I dropped dead. Later, I did it because it made me feel better about myself.

I fought depression in other ways, too. Five o’clock every day became a time for Babe and me to sit together and drink a watered-down martini and snack on hors d'oeuvres. Setting aside a special time with no television or cell phones to yank us away from each other took a chunk out of isolation’s endless hours. 

When he smiled at me over a martini glass, I felt pretty again. When the love of my life told me things about his life before we met, I felt closer to him. When he told me about one of his aunts, a world-class beauty who was married five times, I was aghast.

I looked forward to creating fun appetizers, some even good enough for inclusion in the church cookbook, other creations I prayed wouldn’t clog up the disposal. 

Do I want my life back? You bet. But I’m not fool enough to think that when this horrible virus is behind us, things are going to return to the way they were. They won’t.

Meanwhile, I intend to fight depression by fixing myself up each morning even when it’s not a grocery day. I will create hors d'oeuvres for our five o’clock ritual and I will sing along while Alexa plays soft jazz. I will treasure the minutes each day that Babe and I are alone together and can talk. Really talk.

I refuse to let Covid-19 overshadow what is left of my life.