On the first day of Christmas, my true love Tim got Covid. We didn’t know it until later that night, when he started to get really, really sick, but it put a damper on… let’s just say an already very unfortunately eventful holiday visit to my family home in Cleveland.
On the second day of Christmas, I tested positive for Covid. It was (is) the first time either Tim or I have had it, and honestly, I can’t recommend the experience.
On the third day of Christmas, my brother wasn’t able to make it to Cleveland because of the weather (and also apparently he did not want our Covid for some reason), so Tim and I decided to start the 14-hour drive back to South Dakota several days early (masked and quarantined), because if you’re going to be sick and alone you might as well be sick and alone in your own bed and not forcing your poor mother-in-law to drive through the ice and snow every other day to feed your cats. (Thank you, Kay.)
On the fourth day of Christmas (day 2 of our drive home), we ran smack into an ice storm/blizzard and enjoyed many exciting interstate-related perils. But at least we arrived home safely, and there was some leftover pasta in the fridge that hadn’t gone bad yet, so I really can’t complain about that one so much.
On the fifth day of Christmas, I lost my sense of taste. Also, it was my mom’s birthday, and we were super bummed we weren’t back in Cleveland (and sans Covid) to enjoy it with her. (This is where, in another version of the song, we would all yell “fiiiiive goooooold riiiiiings!” to lighten the mood.)
On the sixth day of Christmas, which we had initially set aside to hang out with my sister Bec at the museum where she worked and have lunch together at our fave restaurant back in CLE, Tim and I instead languished and flopped around our house, alternately dosed up with DayQuil/NyQuil and Mucinex. We got sick-people bonus points for hydrating, and for managing to shovel some snow.
On the seventh day of Christmas… wait, I don’t remember. Was this one New Year’s Eve? Because if so, there was more languishing. But also movies on the couch, and snuggles with the cats, and no more fevers, so… maybe that’s a win?
On the eighth day of Christmas, I got some writing done. It was five-thirtysomething in the morning and I was stumbling around in a weird loopy Covid zombie haze but GOSH DARN IT, it was the first day of a new year and I WANTED MY LIFE TO FEEL LIKE MY LIFE AGAIN. I couldn’t taste my coffee, and I produced a grand total of 297 words but HEY I DID IT. And it felt great. Even though I didn’t.
On the ninth day of Christmas, we were warned that there was another huge storm coming. So we ordered groceries and I restructured a nice big chunk of the Girl In Space novel I’ve been working on, which ended my day at a horrifying -514 words, but sometimes we make progress even when it feels like we’re going backward.
On the tenth day of Christmas, I got some more writing done in the morning and, even though it netted me less than a thousand words total, I felt good about it. I texted my family and several friends to tell them I loved them. I read and took a snuggly nap with my kitten, Cyrus. It snowed 17 inches, but at least it looked pretty.
On the eleventh day of Christmas, well… that’s today (if I did my math right, which is questionable). I’m still positive for Covid, but I feel a lot less sick, which is nice. I’m in the midst of doing some writing, but otherwise I have no idea what else today will bring. I can’t know. It’s very frustrating.
On the twelfth day of Christmas (a.k.a. tomorrow), what will happen is anyone’s guess. Maybe I’ll get my sense of taste back, which would be nice. Or maybe one of my arms will fall off, which would be less nice. But either way, I think it’s important to remember that days (and weeks and months and years) aren’t wholly good or wholly bad, despite how we might feel at the end of them.
I know that, as writers and creators, we love to name and label and assign meaning to things. It helps us to understand and interpret the mile-a-minute things that happen to us. But we’re also often biased, based on our own hopes and dreams and expectations of how things are “supposed” to go.
Did I have a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad disaster of a Christmas? Even after everything you just read… I still don’t know. It had its ups and many, many downs, but I still don’t really know how I feel about it.
Seriously, the point of this letter isn’t to preach to you about the importance of a “positive mental attitude”, or to warn you against making hasty judgments, or to scold you (and/or myself) for not finding the silver lining in every little thing that goes wrong.
I just realize that, the older I get, the fewer things I feel like I know for certain. But maybe that’s just how learning works.
Happy 2023. Let’s all be nice to ourselves this year, okay?
Words & warmth,
Sarah