It has now been four years of this little exercise in using December as a month to focus on my friends. This year, I’ve been focusing in particular on one friend, who has been with me, and who I have seen, every single day of this year.
Once again, on the day closest to Christmas, I want to talk to you about Fox.
2020 has not been a fun year. One of the elements in that for me is that in the context of our early warnings about COVID19 was that the disease presented an increased risk for three categories of people; elderly people, pregnant people, and people with a pre-existing respiratory difficulty. What this meant was that even when people around me in Australia were umming and aahhing about whether or not this was a problem problem, I was locking stuff down and creating plans for how to minimise my contact with everything.
Fox has asthma, and that means that for me, the potential risk presented by my passing this disease (that I probably? would survive? even if it sucked immensely?) to her was unacceptable. I think this year, Fox has literally only left the house a dozen times or so, and a number of those trips were to the doctor.
I have spent this year in more constant, everyday contact with Fox than I have any time in my life. There is no time I’m leaving the house for work, nor she for work. It’s a time when you’d expect – I mean, based on media – for this to be a thing that works us raw and makes us even more tense about our relationship, all those little things that never get a chance to cool down, building up in a pressure cooker.
And I have yet to feel it.
I know there are ways I’m not easy to live with. I forget details when there are four or five things to do. I might be able to knock over one through three, but four or five gets lost and once again, there’s another bread tag on the countertop (sorry). But through the whole time, I haven’t ever felt ‘oh god, Fox is such a pain in the ass.’ I’ve noticed the tensions and the stress and the sadness and the pain and all the things we’re having to do because we’re afraid and we’re being cautious.
But it’s never a problem with Fox.
Every day is a gift.
Thank you, Fox.