Coronavirus: A Stress Test for Relationships

Prompting the closing of schools, places of work and worship plus venues of entertainment, the novel coronavirus is thrusting partners and families together for extended periods they heretofore did not necessarily endure other than on vacation. To put it succinctly, 24/7 living together has the potential to stress relationships. Or, as my mother said after my father retired, “I married him for breakfast and dinner, not for lunch.”

Some may know my parents worked together for more than three decades, he in the production factory, she in the small glassed enclosed office in the corner of their rented loft on lower Broadway. Mom retired about a decade before Dad. She had gotten used to daytimes without intrusion when she uttered her Garbo-esque “I want to be alone” line.

I can appreciate her position. I retired 10 years before Gilda did 14 months ago. My golden years have been enhanced, but they are different. 

Forced togetherness for couples and families without the luxury of going to movies, plays, concerts, sporting events, museums, even some restaurants and small gatherings with relatives or friends, can strain even the most equanimous of relationships. The uncertainty of not knowing how long togetherness must last is a hidden cost of COVID-19.

Next week’s poker game among my senior citizen friends has been called off. Not as all encompassing as what residents in one Florida retirement complex have to endure: “It is in the best interests of the community to close the social hall, card rooms, aerobics room, arts and crafts, and billiards room as well as the demo kitchen in the clubhouse for 30 days. No HOA (Home Owners Association) or Club events will be permitted,” a notice reads. “… Going forward Bingo, women’s canasta, open canasta, men’s canasta and the March 21 show,  Cove Players, March 30 Board meeting, etc. are all cancelled.” 

Penalty Stroke: Maybe it is because I am bearded, but I have a problem keeping my hands off my face. I am constantly stroking my beard. No amount of coaxing by health authorities advising against it as a precaution against the virus can counterman a habit born half a century ago.

Ah, well, perhaps I’m a little like Trump who repeatedly ignores healthcare advice. He seems to be blasé, even dismissive about professional protocols. A disciple of the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale’s Power of Positive Thinking doctrine, Trump must conduct his life on the theory he is immune to everyday man’s concerns. Exhibit A—his fast food diet, which apart from the girth it has packed onto his body, apparently has not clogged his arteries (or so we must believe absent details on his physical examinations). 

The public has been told not to shake hands. Yet there Trump was during his Friday press conference announcing his declaration of a national emergency to confront COVID-19 pressing the flesh of CVS, Walgreens, Walmart and other executives. You would think leaders of the two largest drug store chains would know better than to shake hands. Most of the assembled team of business and medical leaders did not shake hands (at least in public) with Trump. Only Bruce Greenstein, executive vice president and chief strategy and innovation officer of LHC Group elbow bumped with The Donald. He did it right after the CVS handshake.

Let’s not gloss over Trump’s prior disregard for acceptable hygiene. Despite widespread warnings not to look directly at an August 2017 solar eclipse unless wearing protective eyewear, Trump stared at it with the naked eye even as Melania and Barron wore protective glasses next to him.

And let’s recall porn star Stormy Daniels claims Trump did not wear a condom during their alleged tryst.

Trump’s macho personality and belief in his invulnerability was on display in his initial disdain for taking a test to determine if he contracted COVID-19 after close contact with a Brazilian official last Saturday. Only after repeated questioning during the press conference did he say he likely would be tested at an unknown time when his schedule permits, though the White House physician subsequently said testing was not necessary for him. The test—a swab of the inner cheek—takes seconds to perform. 

Jekyl and Hyde: Trump’s appearances are Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde in nature. He is the latter when reading prepared texts, the former when speaking extemporaneously as evidenced by his dual display during Friday’s Rose Garden statement and press conference.

Answering questions he appeared assured. But as he did Wednesday night during his prime time address to the nation, he seemed boxed in by diction and an inability to comfortably read out loud when making his official pronouncement of national emergency powers. Self proclaimed as a genius with an extraordinary vocabulary, Trump has difficulty reading a speechwriter’s words. 

I Can See Clearly Now

I can see clearly now the rain is gone.

I can see all obstacles in my way.

Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind.

It's gonna be a bright (bright)

bright (bright) sunshiny day.

It's gonna be a bright (bright)

bright (bright) sunshiny day. 

                                       —Johnny Nash (1972)

I’m living a version of Flowers for Algernon. I realized last Friday while driving to Whole Foods that for the first time in nearly 60 years I could see distances better without my eyeglasses than with them. It both excited and scared me.

For those not familiar with my literary reference, or the film adaptation, Charly, Flowers for Algernon is a story published by Daniel Keyes in 1958, around the time I first put on glasses to correct my long-range vision. The plot chronicles the experience of a developmentally challenged man treated with an experimental surgery to increase his intellect. The surgery is successful, as it had been for a laboratory mouse, Algernon. Alas, the successes for Algernon and Charly were only temporary. 

Each year during the mandatory eye test at my elementary school I squinted my way to a passing grade until my subterfuge was discovered. I was diagnosed as near-sighted and have been wearing prescription glasses since seventh grade.  

While in my 40s I had difficulty reading name tags at the many conferences and conventions I attended, so I asked my optometrist to make a pair of bifocals with clear glass on the bottom. Not so fast, he said. First, an eye test was required. Naturally, the exam found I, like many aging Baby Boomers in their fifth decade, was suffering from presbyopia, a gradually diminished ability to focus on close objects. 

I tried a pair of progressive lenses, the kind without lines that work for long distance, mid-range, and close-in but I couldn’t acclimate to them. I felt seasick each time I put them on. So I opted for old-fashioned bi-focals with a line demarcating the different lenses. 

Gilda’s eyes, meanwhile, ignored the fact they were just 11 days younger than mine. For the better part of another decade Gilda enjoyed perfect vision. Then, one evening in a CVS, she complained about blurred writing on a can of peanuts. I eased her over to the Magnivision display tower and handed her a pair of reading glasses she reluctantly donned. She immediately started laughing, amused by her frailty. She’s been wearing glasses—designer, prescription, progressive lens glasses, mind you—ever since, though she does keep a pair or two of the cheap nonprescription ones around just in case she can’t find her “real” glasses in a pinch. Astigmatism prevents me from using Magnivision-type reading glasses.

Which brings us back to my current predicament. I keep checking to see (pun intended) if my distance vision has reverted to better-with-glasses, but it has not. I’ve arranged an appointment with my eye doctor, but it’s not until August 8. 

For the next three weeks, should I drive with out without wearing glasses?

Today I Am Officially Old

It’s not my birthday, so no need to rush out to the Hallmark store for a card (or for those more technologically advanced, to the Internet for an e-card).

I didn’t become old when my AARP card arrived when I turned 50 nearly 14 years ago. It didn’t happen when I retired. It didn’t happen when stores and some movie theaters extended senior citizen discounts to me.

No, today I officially became old, and self-consciously vulnerable, because today, for the very first time, I succumbed and allowed myself to be punctured with a flu shot. For the first time I heeded the advice of health officials to get immunized against influenza. Despite common perception among family and friends that I’m a hypochondriac, the truth is I rarely get sick. I admit to lots of complaints about aches and pains, and a lousy digestive tract, but almost never does my temperature rise above 98.6 degrees.

That I submitted to an injection would be most surprising to my brother and sister. When I became ill as a youngster, not necessarily more often than anyone else yet to reach double-digits in years, but often enough to recoil at the very thought that our family physician, Dr. Harry, would make a house call (doctors did that back in the 1950s, especially when they were family friends, as ours was), I knew the day would end in trauma. 

The irony in this aversion to seeing Dr. Harry is that I really liked him. He was funny. Dr. Harry was from Vienna. He was tall and dapper, with receding, wiry grey hair, bulging eyes and a slightly effeminate manner of walking and waving his hands. Harry wasn’t his true given name. It was Bernard, same as my brother’s. But he said he preferred Harry. Or maybe his wife, Sonia, did. Whatever.

Any visit from Dr. Harry produced laughter. And lots of tears. He’d make me laugh during the examination, poking me where I was ticklish, always asking when was the last time I had a bowel movement. It was decades before I knew the significance of that question.

The laughter ended when I would realize my symptoms called for a shot. That reality seemed to please my brother and sister. Nary a comforting word would they utter. They seemed to relish my fate.

Dr. Harry would vanish from the bedroom into either the kitchen or bathroom where he’d wash his hands and prepare the needle. By this time I’d be screaming. My mother would be holding me down, trying to soothe me, making sure my bare buttocks faced upward. Dr. Harry would slip into the room, say a few nonsensical remarks and quickly, surprisingly, thrust the needle into my behind. I’d scream some more. Cry a little louder. Hug my mother a little tighter. Dr. Harry would retreat to the dinette where he and my mother would gossip awhile over coffee. 

Dr. Harry’s office was in Williamsburg, first floor of an apartment building in a neighborhood already devolving. I didn’t go there often, though I do recall the time I accompanied my sister Lee to his office when she had her ears pierced. I waited in the anteroom as she went into the inner office with our mother. The next thing I heard was a loud, piercing cry. Then another. Closed doors could not contain Lee’s chilling shrieks. It gives me the willies just thinking about those squeals. 

I took today’s flu shot like a man, in my left arm. No sniffles. No hesitation. But as I walked out of CVS, I do admit I had a tingling sensation all down my legs. And my arm hurts. They say that’s normal.