Intersection #13
With Intersection, her monthly column, celebrated poet Chelsea Dingman enters a place of questions left hanging—of lyric understanding, of addiction, and womanhood, and politics, and death.
The Point Where No One Sleeps
At the grocery store, I’m told: I don’t trust the vaccine. I probably won’t get one for my family. The woman speaking is in her late thirties, pregnant with her second child. Her daughter is two.
I explain that my son has been in the hospital every year since he was a baby due to respiratory issues & asthma. That my mother had two thirds of one lung removed when I was in sixth grade, so she is also high risk. They both had the pneumonia vaccine last summer, which inoculated them against 26 strains of pneumonia. That I believe it has kept them safer. That I understand the atmosphere of mistrust, but I am hoping against hope for a reprieve from this new threat.
All is quiet. She shrugs & says, so what are you doing for Christmas?
~
At work, our owner is told: you can’t make me get a COVID test. It’s a violation of my rights. The man speaking is a coworker who was called by Alberta Health Services and told that he was exposed to COVID-19 four days prior. He agrees to quarantine, but not to get tested until he is threatened with dismissal. He posts photos of himself drinking at a bar five days later.
What constitutes harm, and to whom?
~
In 9th grade Social Studies, my son’s teacher explains to the class that wearing a mask is not to protect oneself, but others, particularly those who are the most vulnerable.
A classmate asks, why don’t the high-risk people just stay home so the rest of us don’t have to?
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At 4am, in the late fall of 2010, I wake to gasping sounds coming from the kitchen. I race to see what is going on. My four-year old son is standing in the middle of the room, ashen. Breaths shallow. Tears streaming down his face.
Help, he squawks. Please, mama—
In the car on the way to the emergency room, I watch his chest rise & fall in quick beats as he gasps in the backseat. I can’t yet know that he will get so used to not being able to breathe properly that he doesn’t know to complain.
~
At the end of January 2020: my son crawls into our bed in the middle of the night. His skin is scalding. He is weak & short of breath. If he stands, he is too dizzy to walk.
We go to the clinic, to the asthma specialist, to see the emergency physician. He is prescribed inhalers, allergy pills for nighttime, & rest. His temperature stays at 104 degrees for two days, even with double doses of Advil and Tylenol.
Over the course of the winter, he loses twelve pounds from his already-thin frame.
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At night, every fall in Tampa until 2018: the same rasps. The same shallow breaths. The same cries from a small boy who is such a rule follower that he won’t come out of his room until he is already in an emergency because I have told him not to wander the house at night.
This rule is a result of his brother getting out of his crib & almost killing himself by pulling his dresser down, then climbing the sink in the bathroom & covering his whole body in Vaseline one night while we were sleeping.
What constitutes harm, and to whom?
~
My sons have grown almost four inches in quarantine. Neither boy has been sick since March, outside of the occasional sore throat or runny nose.
What constitutes harm, & to whom?
~
At the beginning of November, the snow comes and doesn’t leave in the city we now live in. My daughter starts waking several times per night. She snores. Struggles. Sounds like she is treading water in her sleep. We don’t sleep sitting up. We don’t sleep.
I make an appointment with the pediatrician. When I arrive, I am turned away because one of her symptoms is a cough. I cry on the way home in the car, too frustrated to talk to my husband.
She was born with fluid on her lungs last year, I remind the doctor when she calls while I’m still in the car. I think she has asthma like her brother.
The doctor calls in a prescription for a steroid. They can get her in if she doesn’t improve. We’ve already been shut down twice by people who lied about being positive for COVID, so we can’t take any chances. I apologize, she says.
Last night, we don’t sleep sitting up. We don’t sleep.
~
What constitutes harm, & to whom?
~
At home, my husband and I agree not to gather for Christmas. Our kids go to my mom’s house & skate on the outdoor rink in the backyard, waving at their grandparents through the windows.
The premier shuts down school & sports & the arts. He does not want to shut down the economy or mandate masks across the province. Malls & restaurants overflow when I drive by. Parking lots are jammed. Our COVID numbers have never been higher. We lead Canada in infections as I write this.
My neighbours have people over constantly, the street full of cars. We are lectured to that people will be forced to have house parties if bars are going to close, despite the threat of fines. The group with the highest rate of transmission is adults aged 20-39.
The message my children hear is that adults prioritize the right to drink & eat & shop before their rights to education, physical/artistic development, & mental health. I send angry emails to our political leaders that I know won’t be read.
What constitutes harm, & to whom?
~
When I ask my youngest son what he wants for Christmas, he shows me a hoodie on my laptop. He has had a hard year at home. Isolated. Friendless. He has taken care of his sister alone since March. He cleans the house. He gets straight A’s in school. He has few clothes that fit and nowhere to wear them, so he hasn’t asked me for anything until now.
At bedtime, I lay down with him. He turns to me & says, thank you for buying me a Christmas present even though I’m not worth it.
What constitutes harm, & to whom?
~
I hug my oldest son when he wakes. He is fourteen, but he lets me. He feels as frail as he always has, though I know he isn’t. He’s actually strong & fit. Perhaps I’m listening for that familiar rattle. Perhaps I am just holding on. White-knuckled. Worn.
I will never forget flying with him through London to Copenhagen as he got so sick I thought he might die. As he refused water & food for two days. As we were stuck between worlds. In airports. In limbo. As I got sick too. As we were trying to join my husband while he worked overseas in 2007. As we spent Christmas in the emergency room in Aalborg, the doctor saying, there is a virus going around Europe that you have not been exposed to. You & your son have no immunity to fight it.
I will never forget my son begging me to take him to the emergency room twice a year in Florida. The way he turned purple at a hockey game, skating to the bench and ripping his equipment off, telling me it was trying to strangle him.
I will never forget my mother coming home from the hospital after surgery to remove two lobes from her right lung, which required her to be cut open from front to back. I will never forget the staples. That angry gash. The way she screamed when we bumped the bed by accident. The way we needed her to live because my father had already died.
What constitutes harm, & to whom?
Profound, unspeakable cruelty, who counters this, who does not see.
& so to tenderness I add my action.—Aracelis Girmay