I Forgot I Ate Beets Yesterday
I Forgot I Ate Beets Yesterday
As I always do, I forgot I ate beets. Then this morning, when the angel of death should have already passed over our house, there in my toilet was evidence that I was dying from the inside out. Immediately, I ran through the known symptoms of Covid-19: the cough, the fever, the curious lack of smell. But was blood in your urine one of them? I suddenly couldn’t remember. It couldn’t be good. Even if it wasn’t the secret 5th Beatle of Coronavirus it was something, surely.
And then I wondered, “Who should I tell about this? Is what I have better or worse than Coronavirus? Do I feel cold? Hot? Is that a new cough or am I just clearing my throat? Am I okay? Do we have a thermometer and if I take my temperature will my husband and kids see and will that send them into a tailspin of fear and worry?”
For the entirety of the day I waged an internal battle about telling or not telling my family. I definitely couldn’t tell my mother; she can barely handle not being able to deliver Passover baked goods let alone what was shaping up (to me only and with no facts whatsoever) to look like a very rare, simultaneous case of Coronavirus and bladder cancer. My husband could handle it. But he couldn’t handle my condition and another day cooped up with the kids and their increasingly violent pillow fights. Something had to give.
It would have to be me. I would bear I it stoically like Queen Elizabeth in The Crown. Throughout the day I monitored my bloody bowels, and it was getting no better (apparently, I had eaten a lot of beets). By night, I had asked my father to revisit my will and make sure my second kid was in it. This raised zero flags for my dad, who is mostly interested in his quarantine being about reading and napping and not pro bono legal work.
At least the first kid would get something, I reasoned.
I went to bed that night pleased with how brave I was being. I had never been so tight-lipped about anything. My own child (the second one who would have to beg his sister for mementos to remember me by) often teases that he can hear me on conference calls from outside the house. I’m loud and verbose.
But in this age when we all are grappling with anxiety, confinement and job and food insecurity--let alone the fear of getting the actual virus-- I found a selflessness my family had not previously known in me. I found a silence of which I didn’t know I was genetically capable. In short, I bore the pain like an actual martyr!
But lo and behold, my silent suffering was for naught: the next day my chamber pot revealed the lightest pink hue, and it suddenly occurred to me that I might not have anything. I might have just eaten beets. And the next thought was, “Were there leftovers?”