Joining the Club
I had a nasty cold this week, and in my mind it was just that. Being a performer always brings on some sort of nasal and throat congestion, especially during the winter time. The bottles of nasal saline solution and vocal exercises do their job, moving the phlegm into a ready supply of tissue. To sing, one maneuvers around such obstacles. I have been at times in the midst of complete vocal collapse, yet still managed to get a song out to an audience.
Covid has not complicated it that much, but has served to remind me that viruses are out there and do travel around. So, when my brother in law texted that he tested positive for Covid, my mind did that “uh-oh” and I decided, since I saw him twice at events, perhaps I too, am positive.
Sure enough, for the first time in three years of dodging bullets, living a hermit existence and playing mask roulette, I was hit by the virus.
When I get sick, I usually go down for the count. Annie has to hover over me as I hang deliriously oblivious to the outside world. But those times are pretty rare, as hotwired into my subconscious is the musician's command that “I choose to be healthy.”
So now thanks to the Covid test, I am assured by science that I am not 100% healthy, but actually contagious. Out I go to the pharmacy, masked, to get more Covid tests. Around the house, I lurk as some leper in a souk, keeping distance from Annie and Aine, who look at me with a wary look. Only my eyes show as the mask I wear inside pulls on my ears and irritates my chin stubble. Those eyes are the eyes of one who is caught. A naughty dog who somehow did something bad.
That the virus floats around and gets inhaled is a bit of a intrigue for myself. It is all so random in its nature. Yet, millions of people perished at the virus unchecked. Political movements stuttered and stopped, leaders fell, wars began, inflation rose, jobs were put on hold or forever removed, all because of this mindless, thoughtless, polyglot of cells that are as earnest in their will to survive as I am.
That some wonderful heroes made vaccines and fought such a virus is a thing of amazement in my mind. My right lung, weakened from a bout with pneumonia in 1994, itches when dry air or a nasty cold descends. It is not a pleasant feeling to feel a spot in one’s lung, a war wound of the last time a small invader tried conquest. The work of the heroes allows me to actually function in this odd state of contagious but not sick. Had I not tested, my “cold” would have subsided. My zinc lozenges, echinacea tinctures, vocal exercises and gargles would have eventually triumphed and I would have that last, gratifying blast into a tissue of the vanquished enemy. But now, I do my duty as a member of society. I wear my mask, I will test and monitor. I am now part of that club of people who have been visited by uninvited guests. And like some exasperated Bethelehemian, I have to tell them that “there is no room in the inn.”