She appears so quiet and calm at first glance—the wife of a Parisian wine vendor, focused on her knitting, self-contained and self-sufficient. But looks can be deceiving. Inside the quiet woman is a seething cauldron of suppressed rage, hatred, and vengefulness, just waiting for the right moment to boil over and scald everything in its path.
GINA DALFONZO
The crown
Blue Boys visit with the school nurse resulted in his exile to home and quarantine with possible COVID-19, coronavirus. The crown, I call it.
Although the initial saliva tests came back negative for both Blue Boy and ED, swab tests two days later confirmed a positive diagnosis. Which means that we are all trying to isolate in what is essentially a group home.
Now we wait.
Mike and I have both had sinus congestion, mine somewhat worse with a cough. Overall, though, I have been less uncomfortable than with my annual cold/bronchitis. Thanks to the great American way, we weren’t able to schedule a rapid results test for three days. Evidently there is a shortage of kits.
So we wait.
What does it mean that an image of Madame Defarge from A Tale of Two Cities haunts me? Knitting, knitting. But I am waiting, waiting. It has been a long time since reading that epic, but I imagine her possessing a restlessness that fuels endless and convicting knitting. Gee, wish I could knit. Whom would I convict?
And wait some more.
We are all feeling restless. We are done with 2020. And we are done with endless waiting, much of it unnecessary, the result of power struggles benefiting few and harming many.
The good news.
Although sharing a house means that everyone is relegated to separate rooms during isolation, there is joy in knowing my family is close. As Mowgli, who is symptom free, passed through the kitchen, a spark of love popped up in my heart. That spark that makes waiting tolerable.
