March 2020 was 43 months ago. We’re all impacted by the countless events that have happened since, and the fear of a virus rooted deep in me. The tendrils started with rumors of China, and I vividly remember the security agent trying to ask me if I’d traveled there when I was trying to get into Cuba. I didn’t understand her English, nor really, the impact of the question.

For 43 months, I avoided the virus, until this week, when I tested positive. I took three tests, just to be sure. When I called my mom to tell her, I started crying. I’m in quarantine, and I’m going to be fine. Sniffles and body aches are the result of vaccines and perhaps blind luck. I don’t know, trying to make since of why things unfold the way they do doesn’t really give me much to go on. My tears were out of fear for others, my baby, my mother, my husband. But too, for the 46 months worth of fear that layered inside of me in the shape of headlines, and collective loss, and a culture that makes sickness our own individual problems to be mended in literal isolation.

I hesitated to write about my experience because most of you, most of us, have already experienced this virus intimately. You’ve had the bug once or twice, or perhaps would rather forget about the terror when we watched Italy shut down, hospitals filled up, schools closed, people died. We all want to move on. But these markers of trauma linger, and in my facing a 43-month old fear, I had to weep.

It’s tempting to switch to platitudes, to the cliche phrases we use when life keeps happening. And a transition to hope or beauty feels weak here, like the wobbly little legs running around my house. With all of this found time, I’m discovering the old way of being in the world isn’t as satisfactory as it once was. Pre-baby, and during the years from 2020-2022, every week brought the choice to read all day, to binge watch some tv, to paint my nails without disruption, to write every week. And then, along came a baby and everything changed.

As the world moved forward, I turned inwards, moving to care taking, and with the pivot, came an elevated pace of tending to the needs of others. I haven’t read a book in months. But, on this bedspread in the upper corner of my house, I’m finishing novels. I’m painting my nails. I’m binge watching hours of television. While I isolate, I hear little steps and giggles, and a man I loved turned into a father attempting bedtime solo. I hear a toddler falling off beds and shouts of hooray and watch the lights turn on and off as days turn into nights. Friends are dropping soup on the stoop and texts come in and my husband I talked on the phone last night, like we did when we were dating. Perhaps the prior years taught me how to be alone. And these recent months, taught me I don’t have to be.

While reading a book all day will continue to be missed, mostly I just want to hug my little one. The old years are gone, and new ones unfold.

To hear little noises of family life, receive help, and let fears release, especially while in quarantine, are beautiful things.