My husband usually spends a third of his time in New York City, visiting his father, who is 101. I enjoy his company when he returns, but my hermit tendencies make me relish having the house to myself for a week at a time. Therefore, we were apprehensive about being cooped up together in quarantine, but it was going fine. We were cooking together, watching movies online, taking nature walks in which I taught him bits of plant lore from my past life as an herbalist and forager. I felt we were lucky to have each other's company when so many people were having to live alone.
It took a few weeks for our peaceful coexistence to unravel. I was growing weary of fixing his daily computer crisis. I was ready to explode if he asked me again to set the timer for cooking the rice, a measure designed to avoid aggravating his carpal tunnel issue. When he wasn't trying to tell me about the latest Twitter meme, he was walking around the house, shouting into the phone.
Finally, I said, "If only you could go to the city for a few days."
He was hurt.
We had to have a long conversation, in which I apologized for not keeping up with my irritation, for being in denial about the discomforts of quarantine. "I'm sure if I expressed my frustrations on the spot, I wouldn't sound so aggressive when I ask you to live in the garage. I'd be gentler when I tell you to go build a doghouse in the yard and—"
I am not known for my sense of humor, but at this point, I began laughing so hard, I couldn't finish the sentence. Luckily, he took it the right way, and we both laughed helplessly as I added, "No, maybe I'll move under the bed. I can take a flashlight—no, I'll use my iPhone. I can plug it in right at the head of the bed. Or I could live in the crawlspace under the house. It's nice and warm down there. Or I could send you out to live in the woods, now that I've taught you the wild edibles."
The rest of our day went just great. We took a walk under tall, silent pine trees, and then had a cozy session watching back-to-back episodes of an Icelandic TV murder mystery. It's called "Trapped."
Violet Snow has been published in the New York Times "Disunion" blog, Civil War Times, Woodstock Times, American Ancestors, Otter Magazine, and many other periodicals.
