Page 90 - COVID Consortium Journal - An Edited Collection of Student Art and Writing

My Family & COVID

Valerie Soloway, School of the Future

It was like most other Fridays. Or so we thought. My cousin who goes to
boarding school in France, had just come back to the city for one night, because
there were no direct flights from France to Mexico where he lived. This was the
first time in a long time we saw my cousin and my uncle. We thought it would
be a good idea to see people right before the city shut down. We should have
been more careful. We should have thought more about going to see them, but
we didn’t. Sounds crazy now. Going to see people who had just got back from
France, and spend time with them in a small room at my grandparents’ house,
but we still went anyway. My brother shared a pizza with my uncle, and he was
handed a slice. My uncle gave a beer to my dad, and he gave me an old phone
that he didn’t use anymore. That night everyone in my family was in some sort
of physical contact with my uncle.

The next day, when my uncle and cousin went back to Mexico, my uncle
started to feel symptoms, so he went to get tested. When he told us he was
getting tested we all said he was crazy. “You don’t have it! You’re just being
paranoid,” we told him, but he got tested anyway. I remember being so nervous
about it at first. I remember thinking and telling myself he was crazy. But I also
remember thinking that he did have it. I hoped he didn’t have it.

At first we ignored him and did our normal weekend activities. We all
thought he was crazy until my dad started to feel sick. It started as a fever, but
it got worse. He started to feel some aches and it got hard for him to sleep at
night. Then my mom started to feel sick. For her it started with a cough, then
a fever, then body aches, then she had trouble sleeping, and then she lost her
sense of smell. And then my brother, he was always tired, and he had really bad
headaches. My grandparents felt symptoms too. They were with us that night
we were with my uncle, so it made sense. Their symptoms were, they were
always tired. They took long naps in the middle of the day, and had trouble
sleeping at night.
After everyone in my house got sick, I was worried about getting sick. I
really didn’t want to get sick. I tried to stay away from my family as much as
possible but it didn’t work. After all, we live in the same house, eat the same
food, and use the same things, but the weird part was that even after hanging
out with my uncle and being at home with my parents, I never felt symptoms.

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