Sophia Wilson
Today was our deadline. It was still dark when we hugged on the driveway. Your embrace felt solid, warm, stable. Within it I felt frail. We don’t know who is more at risk. You, with your chronic night cough. The insufficient protective gear. The leaky protocols. Me, with a relapsing and remitting immunological disease and on the wrong side of fifty. Children are supposed to be okay, but what about our middle daughter, the one with severe allergies, who is taken down for weeks, even by a common cold?
Four years ago, when mice got inside, I pulled everything apart to find their entry points, which were numerous. I plugged holes in the floorboards with Blu-Tack and taped over them. I stuffed newspaper behind the sink and taped over that. I wedged an old breadboard behind the kitchen cupboard to seal a hole in the wall, and ran tape along the base of every skirting board in the house. It worked. After a while, we no longer even noticed the tape.
A month ago, mice chewed their way through the blockades, penetrating cupboards and walls. They nested in our couch. We found one in our six-year-old’s bed. I’ve been frantic with re-blocking and cleaning.
A fortnight ago, dozens of black moths made their way into our living room, where they died. Our eldest daughter googled ‘black moths’ and informed us they were a harbinger of death.
Some people have found the lockdown a reprieve of sorts, albeit a troubling and strange one. Some have found it extremely financially worrying. We’ve experienced an intensely fraught period of anxious adjustment, on top of work as usual – only there’s nothing as usual about work anymore. We’ve grappled with how to negotiate the future. We’ve assigned guardians for the kids in the event of our deaths. We’ve borrowed a caravan and made it ready – an isolation chamber; a father and husband’s new home as of today. We don’t know how long this separation will go on. Only that it’s likely to be longer than anticipated. We will be hypervigilant and alert for the appearance of symptoms. We’ll wave across the gap. Take the dirty laundry in with gloves. Deposit meals at the caravan door and then treat the dishes as fomites.
This morning you set out to care for the unwell. I watched the headlights of your truck disappear around the bend in the dirt road. I shed tears, turned and went inside. The kids were still asleep. A mouse rocketed down the hallway.
Sophia Wilson is a writer living in Otago with her rural GP husband and three children. She has a background in arts, medicine and psychiatry. Her recent poetry/short fiction can be found in StylusLit, Not Very Quiet, Ars Medica, Hektoen International, Poems in the Waiting Room, and elsewhere.
Absolutely marvellous! I am living in Turkey and was drawn to your honesty and I was astonished by it. How can this be? Then I read you are a New Zealander! Please keep writing! Anything! As the mouse hurtles, so do we, down the hall. Thank you!
Thank you, Claire. It’s heartwarming to know Corpus connected us from here in the Antipodes to you in Turkey. Yes, mice certainly get us hurtling- lots of movement within the stasis of our bubbles.
All the best,
Sophia
I guess I meant mind heart and body hurtle from one inconsequential act to the next, being so destabilised a lot of the time lately…Speaking personally!
Yes, I agree – surprisingly hard to settle despite less venturing into the outer world. Things are changing so fast it’s hard to keep pace.
Thank you Sophia. Thank you and your family.
Thank you Sophia, and good luck.
Wonderful writing, thanks for sharing Sophia…
Love this, so evocative. Thank you!
Thank you all for the lovely feedback. I hope everyone stays well and safe in these strange, worrying and transformative times,
Sophia
DEAR Sophia,
Thank you again for your writing and sharing something so personal and real. Magnificent writing. Your actual family circumstances are so difficult. I send heartfelt wishes for your family, for your health and general protection. Your gift to the nation at this time is huge. Bless you all.
Thank you, Claire.
Oh Sophia – so glad you wrote but your description was so vivid I found myself looking around wildly for the sight of a small brown shadow running along the wall, just visible out of the corner of my eye. We had some mice last year and they drove me crazy. What you wrote brought it all back to me. I do hope things improve for you and your family. – you must keep writing – you are an inspiration to us all.
Dear Heather,
Thank you. I think our situation is one reflected in so many forms here and abroad currently. I find many people are inspirations in this crisis- whether they are on the front-line working the supermarket checkout, stacking produce out the back of a Four Square, in ICU in the hospitals caring for current Covid 19 cases, policing the streets for those flouting lock down, opening up websites to help others connect, or at home bravely trying to adjust to new circumstances. We’re all in this together. Even the small, brown mice.
Aroha nui,
Sophia