Releasing My Former Life
How to Live Happily in Covid-19 Times
For a while, when I first became aware of covid-19 I tried to ignore it. I’m basically a Pollyanna anyway. And I’m a Pollyanna who eats clean and is a lifelong exerciser. I felt optimized for immortality. I’ve done the work. Although I’m 79 in human years, in “karmagoddess” years I’m 36. Karmagoddess was my early handle on the web in the 90s.
So for me, #covid-19 was in New York, it was only in other neighborhoods, it could never happen to me.
But little by little, it encroached on my comfortable existence and forced me to look at my own mortality. This was not fun.
For example, my doctor friend Fred, who is older than I am and has “co-morbidities,” a term we have all recently learned, refused to explore new restaurants with me. I had been dining with him every Saturday night for 23 years since my husband died, but now he limited us to one Chinese restaurant where the tables were always empty. (Chinese restaurants did takeout before takeout became a “thing.”)
As more information came out, Fred refused to dine out with me altogether. I haven’t seen him in person since March, since we didn’t become part of each others’ “quaranteams.” Soon after, restaurants in Phoenix closed down anyway. I lost my favorite haunt, Hillstone, and the two bartenders I had been seeing…
