The Body and Covid-19

My father sent me a thick envelope with a sheaf of papers that listed all the things my brothers and I should do upon his death.

This wasn’t because COVID-19 is taking him down. He’s feeling fine. It’s because he’s organized and doesn’t want to leave behind a mess. Preparing is one way of gaining control during a time of uncertainty. My dad has lived a good life, and I imagine it makes him feel like a good father to list the things he is leaving us.

He did his work: now he can rest.

When your father writes what he wants you do with with the body, you pause.

When I look back at this time in, say, ten years, I’ll think about hearing of disasters while being surrounded by bird song and grapevines heaving their way to fruit; seeing photographs of people in close proximity and feeling the way I do when I see black and white photographs of people smoking: people really lived like that!, and I’ll think about food, about how I tried to eat my way to a sense of being grounded and safe.

I have a woman’s body. I read somewhere that Lidia Yuknavitch, when asked about her body, said she guessed her body was the size it needed to be for the kinds of books she writes. When I met my birth father, one of the first things he commented on was my body, something about being pleased by my athletic form. (I can hear my daughter snickering as I write this. To a D-1 athlete, I am a pancake flipper, but at least, Kid, I flip them with with some vigor.) He was pleased I was thin. He is not the first man to say that. I have never, ever, ever, told a man I was pleased he was thin. Why? Because I don’t care. Because his body is not my business.

My point is that, as we all know, women’s bodies are up for comments just as a microbe is under a scientist’s lens. This is not news. However, having a strong, womanly body during an epidemic is the best fist bump ever.

If you are feeling bad because you’ve gained some weight during this surreal time, know you are a walking miracle: the body is alive.

When my father wrote the body instead of my body he hit on one of the great truths: we are not the body. It’s hard to read, hard to think that when my father dies he will become the body, but there is also grace in his acceptance, his lack of rage, rage against the dying of the light. It’s like he’s in cahoots with the universe, playing along with the game, agreeing to the terms.

I appreciate my dad.

I hope he stays in his body a long time, long enough for me to be able to get on a plane and give him a hug, long enough for him to see this country that he loves climb its way to a more hopeful trajectory.