I did two things wrong last week. First, I turned down an invitation from my Murphy Rotary Club girlfriend to hang out at one of the local vineyards Friday night. I told her I had to work, but instead I spent the evening on my sofa with Robert Downy Jr. stuffing snacks into my lying mouth.
However, the biggest mistake was my second. I attended our weekly newsroom meeting Wednesday with what I thought was a silly summer cold. I did not consider myself dangerous to others, and even attributed half of my symptoms to the raging allergies that have plagued the county with pollen for the last few weeks.
But I was wrong. It wasn’t allergies or even a silly summer cold. It was COVID-19. And it was bad.
The Cherokee County Health Department makes testing dummy-proof by providing a stay-in-your-car testing center. I just pulled up – wearing a mask, of course, because by this time I knew something unpleasant was happening – and waited for the friendly lady to come out of trailer. She appeared with stealth, actually scaring me because I had fallen asleep within seconds of arriving. She held the dreaded Q-tip, made small talk while mildly assaulting my nasal cavities, then sent me on my way.
Two days later, I received notice that I was positive for the coronavirus. But my pounding head, my aching chest and the overwhelming fatigue had already confirmed it for me. And so, for the next five days, I languished alone in my cabin in the woods.
I couldn’t shower, couldn’t speak without spasms of unrelenting coughs that I worried may slice open a lung or perhaps break a rib and lacked the energy to prepare food. I sent out the required notices to people I had infected, and most of them were tender with me. My boss at the newspaper responded to my, “I’m sorry, I have COVID,” with a gentle, “Don’t we all?” which made me feel less guilty.
I sent out a few pity-party texts to my new friends and received unearned gifts of care and love. Peripheral town friends sent emails promising to pray and asking if I needed anything. My martini friend who lives a pretty uncomfortable distance away offered to leave homemade soups and whatnots on my porch.
My girlfriend, true to Rotary’s creed of service, made a supply run, dropping off needed medical bounty and cans of Campbell’s chunky soups on my front porch. People texted, called, emailed, sending all kinds of love and optimism. And, in the foulest place of illness, those messages lit up the darkness like twinkling stars.
Look, I’m a nobody here, a transplant from another place. My grandparents don’t have headstones honoring them at the local commentary. My cousins don’t live on family property with me. I’m just a person who chose to start a new life in the little town of Murphy.
But this past week made me feel like the town’s daughter. I was enveloped in love and concern from people who barely know me.
If this is what it feels like to be a newcomer, imagine what life will be like in five years, 10 years even? By then, I’ll be the soup maker, tending to my neighbors during their rough patches because my community had done it unto me.
The biblical axiom “Love your neighbor as yourself” is something they teach in Sunday school classrooms across town. My neighbors must be overflowing with self-love, because the dose I got knocked me right back onto my feet.
Abigail Hickman is a staff correspondent for the Cherokee Scout when she’s not home sick. Email her at abigailhickman44@gmail.com.