False Imprisonment: A COVID story

by Elizabeth Yeter

I think the term is false imprisonment. But can you be tried for it in a court of law if your motive is love? Because, technically, that might be what I’m doing to my mom.

The novel coronavirus outbreak just so happened to coincide with her semi-annual visit to New Mexico. She arrived from San Francisco toward the end of February when business was operating as normal and people still thought COVID-19 was no worse than the seasonal flu. Then, a mere two weeks later, the world closed and she was stuck here.

I guess “stuck” isn’t quite accurate. My mom could still have caught a plane or bus home, but, with so many unknowns about the virus, I convinced her that the risks in cross-country travel seemed far too great for a seventy-five year old woman to take.

At least once a day my mom half-jokingly begs to be let out of the house. I say “half-jokingly” because I know she really does want to go somewhere. Anywhere. But where I live, to get to “anywhere,” you have to have a car. And I keep the keys to my SUV tucked away for safekeeping. Safekeeping of her, that is.

My mom is not the stay-home type of person. For as long as I can remember, she’s always been on the go. Gym, yoga studio, grocery store, drug store, bagel store, coffee shop. And those are just the places she visits every single day. In fact, I’m sure I’m missing a few more daily destinations, but you get the idea. I think sometimes she invents things she “has” to do just to be out and about. Rain or shine. Healthy or sick. She refuses to slow her pace of life.

But sometimes you have no choice. Like when the entire world shuts down.

“Mom, you know how they say age ain’t nothing but a number?” I say one day after she asks me to take her to Costco.

“Yeah, and that you’re only as old as you feel?” she replies.

“They lied, Mom. Your body knows exactly how old it is. It’s seventy-five.” I take out my phone and navigate to the local news website. They publish a daily list of people who have died from COVID-19 in our state, and I rattle them off. “A male in his eighties from McKinley county. A female in her sixties from San Juan county. Oh, here we go Mom: A female in her seventies from Bernalillo county.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she says. But I know she gets the message. People her age are dying in large numbers, and it’s my duty to keep her from becoming a statistic.

But in the meantime I do feel a little guilty about it. Sure, she can walk around the neighborhood and admire the inspirational chalk art that adorns driveways and walls, but I know she craves more. Have I, to some degree, imprisoned my mother because I think she won’t be cautious on her own?

Her flight home is scheduled for one week from today, and I’m nervous. She’ll be traversing three different airports on two different planes. Once she gets back to San Francisco, she’ll be asked to self-quarantine for 14 days. I want to believe my mom will do the right thing for her health and the health of others, but I’m really not sure. Because I’ve had her locked up for so long, she’s been isolated from the physical signs of how much the world has changed. Lines snaking around the block to get into the supermarket. Empty highways. Masks covering everyone’s' faces. Plexiglass separating customers from cashiers. I expect that there will be a period of rebellion for my mom, a breaking free where she relishes walking though the sliding doors of Trader Joe’s and picking out her own apples so much that she goes every day and buys just one.

But, like any good daughter, I have to let my mother go. I’ve gotten her through the top of the ever-flattening curve (hopefully, anyway), and now I have to allow the proverbial fledgling out of the nest and hope I’ve instilled enough fear in her to keep her safe. Well, that is, if she can get to the airport. . .