Day 2 – Saturday, 28 March
There are no luxuries or time to waste this cold autumn morning. Outside, the sky is blanketed by thick grey clouds, predicting rain showers in the late afternoon. My husband and I need to be at the hospital at 7.15 am, where I am scheduled for a quick medical procedure.
From the comfort of our car seats, the streets look eerily quiet for a Saturday morning. The tennis courts opposite our residential complex are deserted. A middle-aged woman dressed in layers of warm clothes is walking down a street towards the shopping centre nearby, presumably to her workplace. I hope she stays safe.
We arrive promptly at the hospital, armed with our identity documents and a signed letter from the doctor, allowing us to be there for medical reasons during the lockdown. No one has stopped our car during the fifteen minutes drive to get there, but we are nonetheless prepared.
It’s fairly quiet when we get to our destination. It’s easy to find a parking space when there are so few cars. I remember, just weeks ago, wheeling around the lot for minutes in search for an empty parking spot.
At the hospital entrance, we pass through the mandatory screening check-up. Two female assistants wearing facial visors and masks write down our contact details and proceed with sanitising our hands and handing over facial masks for us to wear inside. The security ladies finally give us the green light to go into the consulting rooms, both wearing a colourful sticker bearing the ‘screened’ word.
I must commend the hospital’s preparations and awareness effort in the face of the virus threat. Everything happens behind a protective screen, with minimal human contact. Only one person is waiting behind us at a respectful distance.
Once inside, we wait at the reception, sitting on the opposite side of another couple wearing, like us, protective facial masks. We are called out shortly before 8 am, and the medical procedure is over in less than half an hour. It is the first time in my life that I receive mild sedation, and I fall asleep happily, still tired from my early wake-up. We get back home just after nine, my eyelids still heavy with sleep, despite the effect of the drug slowly fading away.
Today my husband is taking care of me, making sandwiches and hot tea for breakfast. I don’t have an appetite, but I eat to fill my stomach, take the recommended painkiller, and go back to sleep. I wake up at noon, the worst part of the drowsiness over. There would be no major writing today, I decide, just home rest. I finally pick up a book from the nightstand and start reading a few paragraphs, happy to go back to at least one of my daily habits.
Lunch today is homemade butternut soup, a welcome respite from pre-packaged soup meals hard to be found nowadays on supermarket shelves. My husband boils the butternut chunks while I settle downstairs on the couch, coffee mug steaming on the low table, and greet the dogs. Our furry children are, as always, happy and excited to play inside.
Thank God for Youtube and travelling music videos that allow us to follow imaginary travels from the comfort of our living rooms. I put on travel music videos and resume reading. Minutes later, the heavenly creamy butternut soup is served with fresh bread slices smothered in salted butter, just as I like. We eat together while the tv plays holiday footage from some faraway exotic places – Thailand, Bali or Maldives – all destinations now closed for international travel during this pandemic.
Outside, short tropical showers come and go, a Saturday perfect for indoor activities. Another painkiller later, and I am ready to rewatch the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Today we revisit the first instalment in the series, the three-hour marathon that is The Fellowship of the Ring. In these unexpected times, Gandalf’s conversation with Frodo is becoming.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
I make a silent vow to order and read J.R.R Tolkien’s books, although, from where I am sitting on the couch, I can see the bookcase brimming with piles of new books silently begging to be read. I’m almost done with my tenth book for the year from an audacious goal of fifty books, meaning a book per week. I have plenty of catching up to do, and I intend to use the lockdown to my reading advantage.
Slowly, I return to my old self, feeling better after the morning’s intervention. There’s more filling soup to be had and a dish of cold ham and cheese sandwiches for dinner. We catch up online on the latest news, showing that the number of novel coronavirus cases has surpassed the 1000 threshold in South Africa, which was to be expected. Sadly, one death has been reported. There is not much we can do aside from self-isolating at home to limit close contact with other people and prevent spreading the virus. Even inside the house, we take precautions and wash and sanitise our hands several times a day, including before and after meals, as usual.
The second day of lockdown ends with another mug of fresh bean-to-cup coffee thanks to our hard-working coffee machine, a welcome handover from my in-laws I haven’t seen in months. The coffee addict in me reminisces about coffee shops and alfresco weekend brunches which have become fast non-essentials in times of crisis. Luckily, we are spoilt for choice at home with instant, ground or bean coffee varieties. I think of the less fortunate whom coffee, among other things, is definitely a luxury these days, if not permanently. The thought stays with me long after bedtime. I fall asleep grateful for another day to live and enjoy throughout this enforced lockdown.