Learning to appreciate life under quarantine
Ann Foster says she can do a 14-day quarantine standing on her head.
“I like it just fine, thank you very much,” said Foster, a 75-year-old grandmother of 11.
“I’m a painter, poet, hermit by personality. My work is in isolation, anyway. Finally, I can relax and tell all those people to go away.”
Foster let out a mischievous laugh. It sounds like false bravado, but Foster has been on a strict regimen of social distancing since March 2. She caught a nasty flu and her doctor warned her to keep her contact with others to a minimum.
Now, with 50 cases of COVID -19 reported in Quebec as of Monday, she’s one of the thousands of Quebecers ordered to stay in their homes and restrict their exposure to the outside world for the next two weeks. Cases of the virus have nearly tripled since last Friday and with more that 3,000 awaiting test results across the province, that number is expected to keep rising.
Foster quite likes her life in isolation.
“My brother-in-law lives across the parking lot, so I’ll go out on my balcony and we’ll shout at each other,” said Foster, who lives on the South Shore. “They made me chili and dropped it off at my door. The other day I made them that ... what do you call it? The Greek pastry with cheese and spinach. I dropped that off at their door.”
As Foster takes the time to write her next collection of poems — a collection she calls Le fou du roi — others are making use of the province’s shutdown of daycares, schools and other public spaces. Saleem Razek has 22-monthold twins and, without a daycare to put them in, figures now is as good a time as any to get them potty-trained.
“It’s gonna be intense,” said Razek, a doctor. “When this thing happened, I thought, ‘OK, we’ve got a forced function here.’ Rushed out, bought the Fisher Price potties. It’s a real test so far. I’m gonna give it three or four days and see how it goes.”
Virginia Champoux, who is holed up in Notre-dame-de- Grâce with her two teenage daughters, has been practising a form of quarantine since last week. She calls it “an interesting social experiment.”
“I have a 14-year-old and a 17-year-old, so we’re basically living in hell,” said Champoux, who works in marketing. “They’re not too keen about being inside with their mom all day. My 17-year-old likes being on Facetime with her friends, so it’s like, ‘Don’t bother me.’
“And the 14-year-old is very active, so she’s going from (workout) training for 25 hours a week to being stuck inside.”
Champoux worked out of the kitchen Monday morning while her girls put together a puzzle — a 1,000-piece picture of the city of Montreal.
“We’ve been digging through the basement,” Champoux said.
But have they played any board games and, if so, has it tested their patience?
“We’re not that desperate yet.” To Chelsea Gagnon, quarantine is something she has dealt with her whole life. The 31-year-old has cystic fibrosis — a genetic condition in which a person’s lungs fill with mucus and are extremely susceptible to disease. When her friends were out partying in their early 20s, Gagnon had to be disciplined and practise social distancing.
“One of the first things you learn is that you need to like yourself and be OK being alone with your thoughts,” said Gagnon. “That freaks a lot of people out. In the past, it took its toll on my mental health as well. It’s not easy.”
Gagnon is a substitute teacher, but she says her full-time job is staying alive. She takes dozens of pills a day and does regular therapy to drain the mucus from her lungs. When people post pictures of themselves at parties or in crowded places during the pandemic, it scares Gagnon.
On Sunday, she tweeted that if she dies because someone contracted coronavirus at a party, she would return to this world as a ghost and haunt them.
“To me, there’s not an hour that goes by in a day where I don’t think about that struggle to stay alive,” Gagnon said. “Of course, I keep busy, too. I read, I dance, I lip-sync to ’90s pop music. That’s important, to find joy in solitude.”
Though Foster is in no rush to break the quarantine, she is looking forward to a couple of things. For starters, she missed her 75th birthday and says she will make her daughter Angela take her to Florida for a proper celebration.
And then there’s her burgeoning career on stage. Foster signed up for an acting class at John Abbott College next fall and she fully intends to go through with it.
“I told myself this year that I’m going to give myself the gift of being in the present,” Foster said. “You only get one life.”
Of course I keep busy too. I read, I dance, I lip-sync to ’90s pop music. That’s important, to find joy in solitude.