My teen daughter and I share our cars. In other words, she drives the Jeep until it runs out of gas, then she drives the eGolf till it runs out of charge. The eGolf is a 2016 model, so despite its battery limitations, most things work. The Jeep is more like the rest of our cars have been. It features something we affectionately call the window snake. When you press the button to lower the driver side window, unless you lower it manually with your hand as you press the button (a tricky maneuver I do not recommend if a police car is close by as you cannot actually have any hands on the steering wheel), a thick coil of wire snakes up in a U shape, accompanied by a terrible grinding sound. You get used to it.
Last night we left home together, me first in the Jeep, her following in the eGolf. As I drove down our road I noticed the Jeep gas light was on and the tank needle at empty. I called her. Did you drive two hundred miles today? I’m sure I put gas in this thing . She laughed. Mom, no. Just turn it off and turn it back on, the gas indicator will go back to normal.
I was feeling good, despite the broken gas gauge, because yesterday I finally put oil in the Jeep. The oil reservoir cap had been stuck for an indeterminate amount of time. The oil light had come on, but then it went off again, so things were ok, right? A while later it came on again, this time with a really insistent beep. I knew this beep said your car is about to die, so I tried taking the cap off again. It was truly stuck. Eventually guilt and fear made me take it into a garage where a very judgie mechanic took it off with his bare hands. He checked the oil. I didn’t ask him to do this because I knew he would need a microscope to see the amount on the dipstick, and he was already looking severe. Why did you not put oil in? he asked, staring at the dipstick. Why did you drive it around like this?
Why did I not put oil in the car? I wanted to say to him through my mask. Because I’m a single mom of a teen with a full time job as a nurse during Covid and I’m trying to pay the rent and the PG&E bill and remember to put the trash out on the right day and I’m afraid of mechanics.
I couldn’t get the cap off, I said faintly.
There was something else wrong with the car, some electrical fault. The Bluetooth and some of the dash lights flickered off periodically. Then they came back on. Nobody knew why. I had resisted bringing the car in to get this looked at with almost the same tenacity I had resisted the oil top-up. But now I was actually in a garage, with mechanics, people who fixed cars. I asked the judgie guy if they worked on Jeeps. Sure he said, and I felt a flood of relief. This was easy! But when I described what was wrong, he shook his head. This was an electrical problem and they didn’t fix electrical problems. I would have to take it to the dealer.
Dealer? What are those? I have only ever bought cars from shifty individuals on craigslist who specialize in selling lemons to morons or, in my more mature recent years, from my Jaguar mechanics when they are ready to sell their loaners. We left the garage in our separate cars, Jessie playing loud music and singing along, me crushed at my inability to take care of basic life issues like car maintenance.
Tonight we drove to a local store for some essential purchases. As I left the car, Jessie reminded me to lock it and I noticed her phone in the coffee holder. When she wasn’t looking, I reached in and slipped it in my bag, then locked the car. This was to teach her a lesson. She likes to leave her phone in the car, so she’s detached from it for a while. I’m all for that, but I think it’s important to emphasize to her, in a responsible mom kind of way, that if someone breaks into our car and steals her phone, I’m not buying her another one. That’s not really annoying is it, to keep emphasizing that? It’s just true.
We shopped in our masks for our essential items and got back into the car. I was secretly kind of eager for her to notice her phone was not in the coffee holder. I even had a little speech prepared. Your phone’s gone? Oh no! Someone much have broken into the car and stolen it! What are you going to do without a phone till you can afford a new one?
Instead, I noticed that although her phone was gone, she didn’t seem perturbed. In fact, as I reversed the car, she took it out of her bag and started texting on it. Wait, what?! I stopped the car in the middle of the parking lot, my special little speech frozen on my lips and started digging in my bag. Where was her phone? I could only find mine! It turned out that must have been my own phone I took from the coffee holder. She already had hers. I put the car in reverse again and as I left the parking lot, I told her about the lesson I had been ready to teach her. She gave a little laugh. Mom. This kind of thing happens to me a lot.
When we got home, I put all the groceries in the fridge without wiping them down. Then I didn’t wipe down my reusable bags either, because reusable bags are now okay again in some grocery stores (though not in others, because Covid sticks to them some places but not everywhere) and I washed my hands for twenty seconds but I didn’t sing happy birthday because fuck that, and then I laid on my couch reading my book and wondering if I should have saniwiped down my credit card and wallet and car keys like I used to but I sort don’t any more because that was then and this, I think, or at least I sort of assume, is now.
Then I decided to clean out my car because my car is, as always, a shame-spiral inducing hot mess. It’s not a moldy food sort of mess, just stuff I haven’t attended to for a while. And since this is Covid-19 novel coronavirus pandemic shitshow fucked up entire universe reality, the mess in my car consisted of a) unused nitrile gloves that fell on the floor so I don’t feel comfortable using them b) empty SaniWipe packs, c) empty cardboard boxes of nitrile gloves and d) a broken sturdy reusable faceshield.
I loved my sturdy reusable faceshield. It was given to me in the early days of the pandemic when I first starting visiting patients with the virus. It was made by friends of our Chief Medical Officer at UCSF and I always felt that the word sturdy epitomized safety in a way that no number of happy birthdays really could. It was only stiff plastic and foam with elastic to hold it around my head, but when I went into Covid facilities wearing it, it sort of felt like Darth Vadar protection, like you could hear your own breath, in and out, in and out, you have controlled your fear. But then I slung my heavy nursing bag on top of it in the back seat of my car one too many times and the plastic extensions that held the elastic snapped off. Both in the one day, just as I was about to put it on for a visit. It was an ominous moment in my covid hospice nursing trajectory. It felt like Darth Vadar had just had a massive stroke and was drooling out of the left side of his mouth.
There are clearly many other aspects of life with Covid that I would like to cover here, particularly as I nurse Covid positive patients in the last days and weeks of their lives. So much to say. But life is short, there’s no knowing how long any of us have, particularly now that the Bluetooth and dash lights are flickering off periodically on the Jeep. So I guess the most profound piece of wisdom I have to impart through this whole life-altering never-before-experienced phase of the evolution of the human race is this: don’t keep slinging your nursing bag into the back seat of your car on top of your sturdy faceshield. Those plastic elastic holders really aren’t as strong as you think they are.
