Thanks

Only the calendar and Facebook remind me that Thanksgiving has passed in the US. Late November is just another lovely week deep in spring here in Melbourne. The trees are fully green again. The native Australian tree outside my bedroom window is in full flower -- feathery golden orange blossoms layered over green leaves all the way to the sky. (I can check the tree map of Melbourne to find that the colonists named it "silky oak" (grevillea robusta). Why?)

It rains in spring. It has been a rainy spring in Melbourne. I've been awakened by the sound of heavy rain pounding on the roof and sidewalks and roads. It is a soothing sound, late at night, to be warm and dry and to hear the rain. It is not yet too warm to snuggle deeper under the blankets, and dream of Novembers past in the far north, when the sound of the snowplow would awaken me early in the morning. 

We ask every year we're outside the US. Should we cook a Thanksgiving meal? Probably. What to cook? The son is still vegan. There are vegan versions of nearly everything on a traditional Thanksgiving plate, except we refuse to touch tofurkey. But when to cook it? Thursday, Friday are work days. This year, Saturday was a state election. Jonathan got a job staffing a neighbourhood voting centre from 7am until 11pm. 

Sunday? 

Thinking about cooking a last minute meal makes me a little melancholy. Thanksgiving is about planning and preparations and family. Special place mats and turkeys made of coloured paper and glue. Taking that horse and sleigh over the river to Grandmother's house. Isn't it? I propose that almost zero Americans alive today have ever really taken a sleigh ride in the US through the woods to Grandmother's Thanksgiving table. It isn't cold enough for that. There are very few places high in the mountains where there might be sufficient snow in November, but surely there aren't enough horses or sleighs or Grandmothers living in the woods. But we all have an idea of what an ideal Thanksgiving should be. And I guess I miss that. 

I guess it's time to go cook. 

Love in the time of covid

October wasn't a great month. We had no reason to believe it wouldn't be awesome heading in. It just turned out less awesome than it could have. 

Jonathan started October on a camp for his earth science class. That wasn't so bad.

Tim went to the US. In March 2020 he had scheduled a visit to a good friend, and that was cancelled at the last minute. In October 2022, they were finally able to reschedule. So that looked promising. And I think it was. It sounds like the trip was great in the end, involving several cities and many people. 

For me and for Jonathan, it was our last month of classes before exams and then summer holidays. So Tim was away, but things were looking ok for me and for Jonathan. In the penultimate tutorial of his finance class, a kid at Jonathan's table was coughing without a mask. Jonathan started feeling sick over the weekend, and grumbled about people coughing. He went to class on Monday, the last week of the semester, feeling grumpy and unhappy, with his own tickle of a cough developing in the back of his throat. He and I commiserated all Monday evening around the dining room table. Tuesday morning he had a break from classes, so I woke him up to tell him goodbye as I left for my day. His bedroom was really stuffy, so I went in and opened the window for him. He said he didn't feel great. Off I went to work.

A few hours later, while in the middle of a meeting planning a university event I was hosting the next day, I got a text from Jonathan. He had just tested positive for covid.

Oh man oh man oh man oh man.

I taught my last class anyway. Came home and made dinner later that evening, something warm and soupy, I think, and invited Jonathan to come eat with me. He appeared at his bedroom door wearing a mask. "Do you really want to eat with me? There is still a chance you won't get it."

So we ate dinner in separate rooms. Tim in the US. Me and Jonathan talking in a google meet. But there had been Monday night dinner, Tuesday morning in the stuffy covid bedroom. I had been Exposed. I felt like a ticking time bomb. Tick. Tick. Tick.

I tested negative in the morning Wednesday. Went to work. Held my university event. Wore a mask. Moved all my one-on-ones to zoom. Same for Thursday. In my last zoom meeting of the day Thursday, my PhD student on the other end of the screen noted that I seemed to be coughing a lot. Tick-tick-tick-tick.

That night I woke up coughing. Friday my covid test was not convincingly negative -- there was no second colored line, but if you looked really closely you could see a bit of a second indentation. I cancelled everything and went to bed. Spent the day with headache, developing fever, tired and miserable.

Saturday my covid test was convincingly positive. Tim was scheduled to come home on Tuesday. I wrote and told him to book a hotel in Melbourne from Tuesday to Friday. He didn't want this. He should stay away. So he used some frequent flyer points, and booked a hotel in the city in Melbourne. I kept getting worse. Fever, fever pains, coughing, sinus pain, tight chest. Exhausted. I could still smell and taste things, so that was something.

Sunday morning Jonathan tested negative. His covid was over! "Bye Mom, I'm off to a friend's house."

Grumble grumble kids who infect their parents grumble and then don't stay home taking care of them. Poor little bunny.

Tim texted early Tuesday morning that he had landed in Melbourne. Made his way to the hotel to isolate from us. .... .... Immediately tested positive for covid. (What an idiot!)

So Tim slept at the hotel long enough for me to change all the covid sheets at home. He just came home to be sick for the next few days. And we were pretty sick. Sick sick sick sick. I did not test negative five days out like Jonathan. I did not test negative until two weeks out. And then I went back to work and had to come home early after my massive coughing fit threatened to interrupt a university leadership meeting.

Grumble grumble stupid short straw immune system that didn't get the asymptomatic case grumble.

And even Tim was feeling better before me. There is no justice in the world.

Anyway, October. You can take it.

Postscript: Jonathan just read through my draft and has words to say.

What do you mean I didn't take care of you while you were sick?!! It was a week after you tested positive that I went to my friend's house! And the first few days that I was the sickest, you just went to work! You were away the whole day ignoring me. No sympathy!