In The Moment - Debbie Terranova
March 2020
I’m in the moment. The Covid moment. At first, we called it Coronavirus and made jokes about ay-corona and beer.
In lockdown now. TV blaring. Stories of horror across the world. Body bags, mass graves, doctors helpless and weeping. Sick people dragged screaming from their homes. Here I’m safe, snug in my house in the suburbs. Birdsong, cicadas, a garden.
Five months ago, I was sick. Very sick. Fever, a throat that refused to swallow, a cough that would wake the dead. We’d travelled around Spain, flown to Germany then to northern Italy. My birthday in October was celebrated in the packed waiting-room of an ENT specialist in Berlin. Everyone in that room had a cough. Mine was the loudest. Covid was not invented then. Good medicine patched me up and we continued the Grand Tour.
I’m in the moment. Coronavirus TV. Experts, statistics, speculation. The virus spreads like wildfire. New York City, where my son lives, is a war zone. Vision of overwhelmed hospitals. Bodies in refrigerator trucks. My heart grips and bleeds. My son is okay ... so far. He wears a mask, barely leaves his apartment. ‘I’m fine Mum. Don’t worry.’
Covid cases in Venice and Bologna. My impossible cough was there not five months earlier. Numbers across Italy explode. Was it me, the unwitting carrier?
I consult my doctor. ‘Why does my throat still hurt? What if ...?’
Reassurance. ‘The Virus wasn’t in Europe in 2019. Don’t worry.’
I’m in the moment. Out of food. At Coles, a woman in a mask sidles past. Sideways
glances, eyes full of fear. I hold my breath until she’s gone. Only a handful of cases in Brisbane. Was she one? What about all the other people? The assassin is invisible.
Snatch and grab in the aisles. Meat: nothing but mince and chuck. Pasta: none. Milk: going fast. Flour: 12.5 kilo bag or nothing. Toilet paper: don’t get me started. Pack my own bags at the checkout. Credit card only. At the chemist, no facemasks. At Bunnings, no seeds. Race to the car. Wait at the lights alongside three empty buses that should have been crammed with uni students.
At home. I cut up old bedsheets, sew them into masks. In the garden, we plant seeds of vegetables we’ve eaten. Capsicums, melons, tomatoes, pumpkins. Sprout butt-ends of shallots, garlic, potatoes. Sow vintage seeds from the eighties, long-forgotten at the bottom of a drawer. With the flour, I make bread and biscuits. One kilo down, 11.5 to go.
I’m in the moment. My morning ritual. Check case numbers, turn on TV news. Over breakfast, watch panic and loss. Morbid fascination. Can’t tear myself away. Spain has the virus now. Beautiful, friendly Spain. Images of Madrid’s Plaza Major. Deserted. In September, it was vibrant with colour, music, cafés. Cross to Berlin, home of my daughter. Cases escalate, deaths mount. Not as bad as Britain though.
Outside there is sunshine, birdsong, cicadas. But I’m here, living the Covid moment.