Views on a Pandemic

"I write to you now from my home in Seattle, former ground zero of the U.S. coronavirus epidemic, on the fifty-fifth day of our isolation. I write to you nine months pregnant, from the attic bedroom where I fatten on dates meant to hasten the child's arrival, perhaps upon this very bed. It is a rather Victorian confinement, subplot of the quarantine that is pregnancy itself. Friends and acquaintances reach out to say they are sorry, that it must be difficult to be expecting during this time. And it's true that contracting the illness is somewhat more complicated for me. Mainly I fear getting sick enough to need a ventilator and an emergency cesarean. Mainly my fear is not being able to hold and kiss my baby when he's born. Otherwise, my days don't look all that different from my life before. I'm a writer who mostly works from home, accustomed to long stretches of shut-in solitude. I still manage to waddle out for my daily stroll. Pandemic may be, I dare say, the single real-world situation for which I am uniquely well equipped." Poet and writer Lisa Wells shares more in this essay.

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