97. Aftershocks

My grandson came back from a few months in Portland carrying the coronavirus in November. He tested positive the first day back, I quarantined for 14 days, and no one else was touched by what he carried. His symptoms were mild: loss of taste and smell, some headaches and muscle aches. 

 

It’s now been four months since his infection—and he’s having some aftershocks. For those who think that we should just let the Covid roam among the young and healthy, here’s a caution. He’s big and strong and healthy as an ox; 6’1” and 180-190 pounds; plays with 40-pound dumbbells like they’re soup cans, and can probably curl my weight. 

 

But on and off over the last weeks, he’s run out of gas, been extremely tired even after a full sleep, had the occasional headache, and sometimes his favorite foods don’t taste that way. Yesterday he told the doctor that some days he can do a full weight workout with great energy—and find it difficult to lift the weights he did three sets with one day once the next day. The doctor says she thinks this is all related to his Covid, says that he can expect these lingering effects for a few more months, maybe a year!

 

His mood is good. He works the night shift at Safeway and comes home to eat, sleep, and work out. With the Covid and his own personal experience with it, there is great caution about any kind of social life. He says friends from his college year in La Grande are paying little attention to the pandemic, but he’s not even talked about making the short 70-mile trip to join them. He dreams instead of some short community college program that will put him in line for good work at a reasonable wage. 

 

Dreams of a college football career are a whisp; the idea that he might try rugby or boxing while going to community college grows dimmer. 

 

He’s one 20-year-old among millions who’ve had their lives disrupted by Covid. We’ve all—even those who don’t believe in it—had lives disrupted. Life courses have been changed, relationships ruptured, and imagined futures clouded. 

 

But there is something tragic about this time for the young. And we, the parents and grandparents of today, are not unlike the parents and grandparents of 1972—or 1942—watching the young go off to war, or return from war. Changed forever by the events of their youth.

 

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