What a surreal time we are currently living in and how quickly things have changed from one day to the next. My 7-year-old daughter was at a birthday party on March 13th and two days later, I opted not to send my son to one.
Before the Virus
Before this virus confined us to our home, I remember thinking how frantic and loud life felt. I found myself often longing for the time when I grew up - when we came home, did our homework, played, or found ourselves relying on our right brain to get us out of an excruciating bout of boredom. When the word social was inextricably linked to physically getting together and had nothing to do with a device. A time when extracurricular activities didn’t consume our every evening and weekend…when we picked up a sport at the age of 14 instead of 5 and we played that sport after school and during weeknights, which opened up our weekends for visiting grandparents and seeing our cousins.
And then the universe handed us this horrible virus and it made us (whether we wanted to or not) slow down and take a good hard look at our lives, our children, our spouses, and ourselves.
At the Start of the Virus
While I was goofing off with my kids the other day, it occurred to me how lucky I was to be able to do just that. For many, this isn’t an extended snow day. Their source of income has ceased and there is no savings in the bank. School districts have scheduled meal pickup sites for families who rely on school breakfasts and lunches to feed their children. People are dying from the virus (and also for reasons having nothing to do with the virus) in isolation without family and friends at their bedside. Their funerals are being put on hold and as a result, families are grieving in isolation.
In the beginning of all this, I was confused by the fact that the grocery store was almost all out of toilet paper. We watched as people put not one but three - three - 20-pack packages of toilet paper into their carts. Wait…why are people buying so much toilet paper? It can’t be because of the Coronavirus, can it? I texted my husband that I was going to hold off on buying toilet paper because we still had a few rolls left and they only had the super-soft, super-thick kind. (We are 1-ply people up in here.) This same day, I passed a local gun and ammunition shop. A line of cars parked in front, across and down the street from the shop. A line of men standing outside it. What’s this gathering all about? It can’t be because of the Coronavirus, can it? I came home and had this conversation with my husband.
Me: “Something is going on at that gun shop in town. There was a long line of people standing outside and lots of people just milling about.”
Husband (matter of factly): “Yeah – people are stocking up.”
Me: “What…Wait…Why?”
Husband (surprised and kind of perturbed-sounding now): “What do you mean? This is what happens with things like this. People freak out.”
Me: “But…what do they need guns and ammunition for?”
Husband: No words. He’s just staring at me now.
(I think it’s important to note here that my husband is a police officer and as such, he encounters unique and disturbing situations on the daily that doesn’t make sense to most of us laypeople.)
At first, we were told COVID-19 wasn’t a big deal (here in the US anyway) and then we learned that it was, in fact, a big deal. Schools shut down and then places of worship, restaurants, salons, gyms and stores followed. And here we are now. In our houses. Trying to fill the days as best we can. Scheduling time for classwork and fresh air for the kids. Family time. FaceTime. Eating gluten-free chicken strips even though no one in the house is gluten-free. More family time. Napkin-less. Gray hairs aplenty (on me, not the husband.)
In the Face of The Virus
This crisis has shown me that when people are panicked and anxious and afraid, they will hoard. There is no “we” or “us”. It’s every man for himself. This hoarding has left me totally taken aback. People refusing to leave any paper products for the rest of us. Or chicken. They buy (a lot of) medical masks but they are not nurses or doctors or first responders. They will even yell at you from across cash registers because you shouldn’t have brought your 5-year-old son out to the store “with the virus going around.” (True story.)
This crisis has also shown me that despite the panic and the uncertainty, people will figure out a way to help. Instead of looking for the helpers, they become the helpers. It’s the first responders in the medical and law enforcement fields. But it’s also the everyday people. People like my friend, Kelly who owns a shop that employs recovering addicts who changed the mission of her business from making designer handbags to making medical masks. It’s a woman you recently met who took time out of her day to drop a book in your mailbox, so you had something new and exciting to read. It’s the teacher who tells the overwhelmed, newly established home-schooling mom to just do the best she can and that whatever she does will be enough. It’s the person who made the phone call that should have been made months ago. It’s the blunt and truth-speaking friend that reminds you that “everyone on Facebook is a f*cking liar” after you tell her you feel like a complete failure because everyone is doing amazing things during this quarantine. It’s the grocery store clerks who are potentially exposing themselves to the virus every day so we can buy rolls and rolls of toilet paper.
This whole thing is overwhelming. It’s scary. But, like the everyday helpers, we can each do our part. Sometimes, it’s the small things in life that can be the most impactful. We can stop the spread of the virus by washing our hands and staying in and away from people. This means no meeting up at playgrounds – including those playgrounds right in our own neighborhoods. We can not only point out the helpers to our kids but model what being the helper looks like. We can buy just one of the liquid hand soaps instead of all of the bottles that are left on the shelf. We can write and mail a heartfelt letter of comfort to the family who lost their loved one. We can have our kids use their sleeves to wipe their mouths and then practice gratitude for the fact that we can clean their dirty shirts in the washing machine that we own.
After the Virus
When this is over and we return into the world again, we can go leave a stack of quarters in the local laundromat. We can slip the grocery store clerk a homemade thank you note from our children. We can visit a stranger in a nursing home who was alone before the virus and will be alone after it. We can reflect on all the good that came from this crisis.
Finally, if there is one thing we can all learn and do, it’s this. Twenty rolls of toilet paper will last you about 20 weeks (or 4 and ½ months.) For a family of five, this probably equates to more like 3 months. Three months from now is June 29th. So, as you shop this week, please go and put those two, 20-packs of toilet paper back on the shelf and leave some for the rest of us.