CREATIVE NONFICTION | SALLY KRUEGER-WYMAN
Again and Again By Sally Krueger-Wyman
News: March 4th: California Governor Gavin Newsom declares a state of emergency due to Covid-19.
News: March 19th: California issues mandatory, state-wide stay-at home order.
We begin the pandemic scared. My father has tiny crystals in his lungs from a particular allergen he was exposed to as a child in Kentucky. Plus, he was a preemie baby, and one of the last things to develop fully are the lungs. My mother had breast cancer – she just hit her six years-free mark. But she did intensive chemo that wrecked her immune system. My health has always been an issue. I have autoimmune conditions, and I’ve been sick four times between Christmas and Friday, March 13th – when I move back home with my parents.
When life is out of control, I grasp with both hands to try to reign it in. I sensed the pandemic coming in the time before it was officially in Los Angeles. LA is just one of those places – we’re very international. There’d be no keeping it out. Scientists have since speculated that the virus arrived in our city before any of us admitted it. I had learned to be a germophobe early on in my life. I’ve had a chronic health condition (dysautonomia) since I was nine, and my immune system has never exactly been ideal. So, as I watched the news and waited for our city to go on lock down, I started organizing. My house, like my life, has always felt just out of my control. I have a lot of interests, and I work from home. I also have very little storage space. And a habit of making piles of things. Plus, I collect books…and plants. I cleaned all my kitchen cupboards and bought lovely glass jars from Ikea to store nuts and pasta and oatmeal. I’d begun to organize the other rooms – got as far as covering my dining room table with piles meant to be organized, when the pandemic really hit, and I decided to move back to my parents’ home. I go back every week or two to water plants and get the mail, but my dining room table still waits, covered with random piles of my life put on hold.
News: March 13th: Breonna Taylor, a twenty-six-year-old black EMT in Louisville, is shot to death by police in a midnight, “no-knock” raid on her home. At first, I tell my parents I will do my laundry and clean my room. I have to fight for this. My parents often have to help me with things in life because of my health, and it can be difficult to maintain a line between when I need their help and when I do not. When I state my line is laundry, and it is lovingly crossed, I am upset. This is the beginning. But then we all realize the world is in isolated trauma and all we have is each other. We just try to love from then on. Thankfully, my parents’ home allows us each our space. There’s nothing like space in relationships.
CANYON VOICES
News: April 1st: California schools are ordered to close or move to distance learning.
FALL 2021