Beginning last Wednesday, the day my son left for spring break, COVID-19 came to the top of the Kansas news feed as the outbreaks in NY, Washington, and California were really warming up. We here in the center of the country were coming late to the realization that the timing for sending our young people off for spring break might not have been ideal. As they returned, what would they bring with them?
The colleges reacted first, with KU and ESU announcing extensions of Spring Break by one week with plans to then move to online class formats. At ESU, the initial date was "until April 10" when things would be re-evaluated. Pretty quickly, we started hearing that it would likely be through the end of the semester. Through about Friday, I was feeling rather thankful to live in a small community, thinking that the cities would feel the worst of this and that we would be somehow sheltered. But I was also looking at the calendar and beginning to, at least mentally, cancel upcoming travel and event dates. There was much upcoming on the family agenda. In April our family of five (four living at home) had three destinations -- M was to attend a conference in Houston, E has plans to visit England and Wales with a friend, and R and I were looking forward to a trip to Oregon. March and April were filled with book events, as well.
I did travel to Iola, Kansas, on Thursday for the debut of Meadowlark's newest book, All Hallows' Shadows, Book 3 of the Pete Stone Series, by Mike Graves. Iola had selected Mike's first book, To Leave a Shadow, as the winter community read book. In Iola, we were already fumbling with handshakes versus bumping elbows. Social Distancing was not quite to the center my radar, but I was thinking quite a bit about for how long and how often I was washing my hands and reminding myself not to touch my face and doing my best not to touch any unnecessary surfaces when I was out and about!
I spent too much of Friday and Saturday reading articles about the virus online and attempting to stay off Facebook as the energy there was making me feel quite ill. I spent a lot of time contemplating my "nobody tells me what I can and can not do" contrarian roots. I wrote the following note in my daily to-do log: "Hospital capacity is the real chiller with this virus, and this means our small community will stand no benefit over larger cities. Our only hope is to lie-low and hope that we can slow the spread of the virus so that its pace never fills our hospitals to capacity, so that our doctors never have to choose who gets the lifesaving equipment, the beds, the medications, all of which may quickly run in short supply."
This sounds like hysteria to a calm Kansan's ears. We are the people who stand on the porch so that we can see exactly where in the sky the tornado is dangling. We are accustomed to taking responsibility for our own well-being and nursing our own family members through cancer till death-do-us-part. We know we are capable of long days of backbreaking work, and that we are capable of doing with less if we need to. It's hard to imagine a future where our grocery shelves aren't always lined with an abundance of food--or toilet paper--and where we can't just pop in to the quick clinic or make an appointment with our doctor when we feel a little under the weather.
Even though we have neighbors for whom these things have been a going concern, we live lives of such abundance that it is hard to really see, to take seriously the plight of our poorer community members when we are working class ourselves. We know what it is like to struggle to get the bills paid, yet we have managed to take care of ourselves just fine--thank you very much--so far. Why should any of that change?
In the coming weeks, one of two things will happen. People will stay home, possibly hoard toilet paper, and we'll see the needed break in the cycle of spread of this virus. It will still get here, but hopefully slowly and with little loss of life because our hospitals will be able to take care of those who are most affected and most of them will recover. If this virus does not hit us hard, we will have succeeded. Fingers crossed.
The other possibility is that we are going to learn that our efforts were too little, too late. As surreal as the events of the last 3 to 6 days have been, the feeling that our world has been turned on end--our cancelled concerts and potlucks and book signings--are going to seem mild in comparison to what's ahead.
I don't like to imagine what it might be like, but I know that we will adapt and learn to cope. In the meantime, I am making a list of "take care of me" items. I can still take walks and do yoga. I can still turn up the music and dance like nobody's watching! I can check in with my sister and my son and the rest of my family and friends through this marvelous technology I call a phone. (Hey--it does more than take pictures!)
I can use this time to write and publish books (or at least get books ready to be published). I can catch up on the family photo albums. I can pretend it is spring and deep clean my house (wait, it almost really is spring!)
Here are some images I came across on Facebook that I thought were beautiful for this time and all times.
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| What To Do In a Pandemic (Animals) – by Ricardo Levins Morales Please visit his website and like his Facebook page. IMAGE via URL to artist studio page - shared with attribution as requested by artist. **Attribution is important, as is permission!** |
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