Hunkering down doesn’t necessarily suck

There are doubtless millions of quarantine stories making the rounds now, stories of sheltering in place and the ennui that results from it. But life is personal, and this is my life, and this is my story. Our story. The story of my little family, of my wife and my son and me, blessed by Fate to be sheltering in the most beautiful little mountaintop town you’ve never heard of, Saorge, France. Which voice-to-text always renders as “sewers,” which is both amusing and insulting. 

We are 40 days in — the 40 days from which “quarantine” derives its name. It must be French, that word, since “quarante” means forty. I wonder how old that word is? As old as the language for the plague. A plague. This very specific plague, COVID-19, vicious and unpredictable and yet so much LESS fatal than it could be. I think it is the plague’s way of throwing us a lifeline, giving us this pandemic for practice. Because the mortality rate could be so much worse, and we’re so unprepared, so unequal to this challenge, that a REAL Black Death sort of plague would wipe out half the earth. At least. 

Can you imagine a Donald Trump putatively at the reins when a truly horrific plague hit? Dear God. 

Many of us have walked through the fear engendered by COVID-19, the heart-stopping terror of losing a child, the fear of losing a loved one, the fear of one’s own mortality. Cloudy frightening dreams plague our nights, restlessness and inertia and boredom dog our days, thoughts of dinner take on undue power. Fix the coffee (I’m painstaking about my coffee making, as you should be), feed the cats, check the weather and the news, practice some French on Duolingo, prepare breakfast for my son, wake up my wife, rummage for my own breakfast while sighing for the 200th time about the fact that I cannot find a cereal in France or Italy that I like as much as my own, American, choices. I absolutely adore the tiny grocery store in this tiny town, but my grand love for my Midtown Kansas City Costco has not waned.

The silence in town is profound. I find my heart lifting when I hear voices during my morning walk: I’m not alone, someone else is up and about! I’m an introvert, as is my son Jonah, so we are more resilient than most in the face of this enforced loneliness; still, I miss talking and dining with our friends here in Saorge. They are so compellingly kind and gracious, and I marvel anew that I ever thought of small towns as somehow suspect, dusty and backward. Our little French utopia is chock full of progressives like us, artists and musicians and really, really bright people. As my comprehension improves, doubtless I will discover new depths in these friends. If I ever get to visit with them again. The streets are so EMPTY; it’s spring, and I do occasionally spot a Saorgien(ne) digging in the dirt down one of the mountain slopes, planting legumes. But for the most part, when I walk alone, it seems I am in one of the many dystopian novels I have read, walking a depopulated Earth after a cataclysm. Most often in those bittersweet books, it is a virus of some sort, smallpox-like, that has ravaged the planet and reduced its inhabitants to a wandering handful. Which is why I think again that COVID-19 is a gift, a truly awful gift, the chance for not-so-bright earthlings to learn how best to prepare for a horrifyingly fatal pandemic.

If the United States can learn from what is surely the most benighted pandemic response on the globe, sabotaged by incompetence and malice and a terrifying level of stupidity, then the rest of the planet can survive. And I want it to: Earth is so beautiful, so rare, even with billions of other planets out there. Our land, our seas, raped and polluted as they are, teem with life. We are a jewel, and I want humans to survive for eons to bear witness to the astounding beauty of this world. On a micro level, of course, what I want most is for my family and my loved ones to survive this pandemic. I miss my parents, who passed on a few years ago, but more than once I’ve had the thought that I’m glad they are not here now to be threatened by this relentless coronavirus. I’d be soaked in fear that I’m so far away from where they live, unable to help them or protect them. The course of this virus is so cruel for some that I can’t bear to think of it ravaging Mom and Dad. Or my sisters, or my chosen family of friends. I have always hated and feared suffering, and I do not wish it on anybody.

We’re not exactly suffering in this decreed silence. We are physically comfortable, with plenty of food and fresh air, with Netflix and Prime and Kindle. But the days are too long, too much the same. Even watching the valley road below while I exercise, I am struck by absence. The absence of cars, of noise, of movement. We have had a blanket thrown over our lives, and at times it feels suffocating. It must be worse for my wife, Andie. She’s such a talker, an extrovert, and her life this past nine months in Saorge has been one of nurturing, cooking regularly for our friends, going out to eat, socializing whenever she can. She is of course chatting with friends via Facebook Live, reaching out when she knows she needs to, seeking connection to help her through these solitary days. She loves us, our little family unit of three, but she needs others as well. I do too, but not nearly as much.

While out walking the back mountain path behind the town this week, I ran into another walker, a man from our end of town to whom I have never before talked. We fell into a discussion of “The Incident,” a night a few weeks back when some unhappy or unstable soul decided to slash the tires of most of the cars in town. A few cars escaped harm; some had one tire flattened; others, two. Or three. Or four. This is not a wealthy town, and I grieved for those who would struggle to find the money to replace their tires — but at least most of us aren’t going anywhere right now. Our own car (two) has still not been repaired, but at least the tires are on order.

This man opined that The Incident has caused a loss of trust in town; we don’t know if the perpetrator is from Saorge or another of the little towns down in the valley. He said the unknown suspect might be crazy; I suggested he might also be angry — angry at this confinement, or at his life. My neighbor cocked his head, and with only the hint of a smile on his face replied, “Well yes, he might be angry, but you must know that the French are always angry.” I burst out laughing, and heard my laughter bounce off the hills around us, and the very sound lit up my soul. I realized I haven’t heard unrestrained, loud laughter like that in many weeks — another casualty of COVID-19.

We derive small laughs each night from our bedtime ritual. We brought with us to France, in our crammed-to-bursting, way too heavy suitcases, a little stuffed creature named Kickface, blue, with a wedge-shaped head, one eye, and two large, fang-like front teeth. Every night, Kickface entertains us: first, by hiding somewhere in Jonah’s bed; next, by singing, or doing the Hokey Pokey, or musing wistfully on whatever subject Jonah demands he talk. Our two cats also opine on matters great and small; all of them seem to me to have the same voice, although Kickface always sounds, to my ears, naive and gentle. Apparently these are the qualities I choose to channel for my son.

Lately, Kickface has begun to serve as the spokesmonster for PSAs on commonsense matters such as the dangers of ingesting bleach and the need to support the U.S. Postal Service. He is funny, and Andie has visions of making him famous on YouTube, despite the fact that neither of us has any experience of YouTube. Also, Kickface is shy, like Jonah, like me, and he shies away from the camera. But he is undeniably charming, and you never know. He also speaks some French; he’s not fluent like Jonah, but he can converse fairly well. He generally speaks French when he’s agitated; make of that what you will. It’s possible it’s just the confinement getting to him.

Our second stage of confinement ends in 12 days, and I’m sure everyone else is counting down as well. We are so much safer here in France, with a government that is actively leading the fight against this coronavirus. I’m sure social distancing measures will be in effect for a good long while to come, but I am so looking forward to cocktails and dinners with our friends, even if we have to sit a ridiculous-looking six feet apart. I am most especially looking forward to, hoping desperately for, our summer trip to the United States to pick up our dog. She is old, and we thought we would only be in France for a year, and we were wrong, and we want her with us for her final adventures. Please, please, pretty please.