Gerty in the Time of Corona

Thank you Gerty for lifting us up and freeing our minds.  There are moments every day that we focus on you, instead of our situation.  You are the ultimate distraction! Gerty, you are a gift that we gave ourselves three years ago and damn girl, you just keep on giving.  

Unlike Bill Gates and Toni Fauci, I’m guessing most of you did not expect a global pandemic to spring upon us.  Honestly, being medical people from medical families, I think it’s safe to say that Michael and I were not completely surprised when Corona came to town.  But I’ll tell you what fucking shocked me. I’ll tell you what angered me, confused me and rocked my world in a very bad way. They closed my kids’ college!  We have a senior and a freshman. For god’s sake, this sucks.  

“Why would they do that?” I asked myself three weeks ago, using an inner voice similar to that of a tantruming child. The answer to my question came in a pejorative baritone similar to that of a disappointed rabbi, “Well Jill, they did that because people are dying and more people are going to die, around the world and right here in New York.  Friends of yours, doctors and nurses, will be at grave risk. Your mom will be afraid to leave her house or even stand six feet from you because you work in a healthcare facility. Millions of people will lose their jobs.  Your own husband’s architecture firm will fight to stay alive. The media will embellish all of it, making it difficult for the public to determine what is real and what is not. There will be no toilet paper on the shelves, but the liquor stores will remain open because they have been deemed essential. You yourself will be wearing your week-old N95 mask outside of work and into the grocery store for protection.  Fear will creep into the dreams of every living person on earth. They shut down college and canceled graduation to flatten the curve. To make a last-ditch effort for Americans to change the ventilator to patient ratio so that the odds might miraculously turn in their favor.”  

I took up talking to myself on paper recently and I think it’s working for me.

So why say, “Thank you” to Gerty?  Because on Saturday I spent the afternoon adhering a Hypalon tattoo to our dinghy and now it’s impossible not to smile when you see it. 

And today, I winched Michael up the mast to fix our Windex (like a wind vane), which had been mutilated last summer by a bird. You can’t not feel joy when someone goes up the mast of a sailboat.  I don’t know why, but it’s just thrilling. It’s fun to lunch on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the cockpit, elevated fifteen or so feet from the ground, with the nearest body of water sloshing forty feet west of the hull.  People walking by on the Hudson River Walk below smile and wave. Sometimes they ask questions about sailing. I think they too, relish the distraction.

Tomorrow I’ll be back to work, where ironically, as a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner, I’ve been feeling underutilized and afraid.  Ever since Corona viscously went after adults, and my patients were told to stay home, I have felt somewhat less valuable. I’m a nervous misfit waiting for a call to be an emergency volunteer, even though I don’t have the skills so desperately needed, such as knowing how to intubate someone or operate a ventilator.  I miss my miniature patients and their families. I wanted to say a glorious, heartfelt good-bye when I resigned. Now, with Corona here, I believe that I will just drift away over the horizon.