“Do you think a faint line means a positive?”
Jeremiah sent the picture of his covid RAT test via WhatsApp, with a faint red line along side the “T.”
“You can’t be just a little pregnant,” I shot back. Any line at the “T = test” spot means a positive. And the kids and I are clearly a ‘close contacts,’ with all the isolation requirements that evokes. The isolation times aren’t as long as they have been in the past, but are still quite real.
I sat at the kitchen counter with my head in my hands, coming to grips with the next seven days. Mainly, no work trip to Auckland next week, which I had been planning for a while and was quite looking forward to. No hair cut tomorrow. No orthodontist appointment for Milo on Friday. No farewell lunch for Bronwyn. No walk with Carrie on the weekend. No rugby for Milo on Saturday, and no zones cross country competition either….he’ll be gutted. NO WORK TRIP TO AUCKLAND. I’m gutted!
“Can I do anything to help you?” Jeremiah was not feeling that poorly, yet. Actually, he was rather chipper.
“No. You can’t. There’s nothing you can do.” Only I could count the losses and come to grips with them. Minor as they were in the scheme of the world, they seemed big at the moment.
Jeremiah offered to kiss me, but I shied away. “Come on, you’ll want to get it at the same time, or you’ll probably be in isolation longer.”
I acknowledge the truth of what he’s saying, but I just didn’t want to visualize the biology of the transfer, the spikey little balls moving from his spit to my lips. The spikes are always red in the news graphics…..
The next morning we broke the news to the kids, and RAT tested us all.
Milo was a definite positive; in retrospect he probably had it before Jeremiah. Despite testing negative in the morning, I was gratified to feel a sore throat coming on in the afternoon. We’re all going to get it, let’s not stretch it out.
Give It A Burl 
Bummer! It won’t make you feel any better but just to let you know I understand your frustration and disappointment, I missed my 1st great-grandchild’s (due June 28) baby shower on May 1st because I tested Positive on April 29; my son, grandpa-to-be and daughter, great aunt-to-be, also missed it. This is a snarky bugger and I’m sorry you are all missing the manyactivities you’ve looked forward to in the coming few days. I wish you all a very speedy recovery. Be well and strong!
Hi Bonny, so sorry to hear that Tom passed away last year. Glad to hear you’re welcoming new great grandchildren into the family, even if you missed the shower.
Thank you; we all miss him a great deal. I feel like a piece of my heart is missing but I’m doing OK.Tom never forgot you folks and would have enjoyed meeting Naomi and seeing how Milo has grown. You were good neighbors and we missed you when you left but we ‘lucked out’ wth the folks who moved into your home. They are great people with 2 children who are now both, in college. They got rid of the bamboo that was in the back for so long and replanted grass; it looked like a park out there. Unfortunately they’ve lost many of their trees to the ash borer disease. They’ve taken down many by themselves but more to go. It’s still a great neighborhood to live in. I love reading your stories and seeing your photos. Really a day brightener to hear from you. Hope this finds you all well and thriving. New Zealand looks like a beautiful place to live.
Hope you all have a minor case of the “virus” and are feeling chipper soon. We had it last Fall and are hopefully done with it….
This is precisely why I don’t test, but then, nobody is requiring me to. I’m trusting the vaccine. When I wanted the test back in March of 2020, it wasn’t available to me, so I just wrote my funeral service, and had a good time doing it. Now I can get tested any time I want, and I don’t want it. By the way, I’m not betting that it’s one and done, with how easy this virus mutates. I’m just hoping that eventually society comes to grips with the fact that the vaccine is pretty helpful to prevent hospitalization and death, and will stop testing so much. I watch those hospitalization and death curves in NYC occasionally, and I’m happy with the results.
yeah, I know the feeling about not testing….sometimes it feels like we’ll only find out information we don’t want to know. But at this point I didn’t want to be spreading it around my workplace, so it was better to know.
Trusting you are feeling better now and it is past. I am personally beyond done with all of the protocols and am grateful that people don’t seem to be getting as ill as before.