“Don’t touch doorknobs, handles, gas station pumps, grocery carts, or anything else with your bare hands.”
What about actual public bathroom floors and toilets? Dirty snow? The ground in a busy parking lot? Then putting your hands immediately on your face and in your mouth?
Or how about dropping your food on the floor in a crowded, muddy ski lodge and then picking it up and nonchalantly eating it, then grabbing your mom’s bottled water and chugging it down, making sure to backwash at least half of it back up into the bottle, and then wiping your face on her shirt? Is that bad?
In the face of a helpless pandemic pandemonium, a mom of 5-year-olds feels mildly screwed. I have been trying to teach my kids to wash their hands for the recommended 20 seconds. As a relatively patient human adult who has endured bouts of mindfulness training here and there, I can barely wash my hands for 20 seconds myself. Have you guys tried timing this? It’s a really long time!
We’ve tried the ABC trick — where you slowly sing the ABC song while washing your hands. Experiencing moderate success from that. Eliza so far finds it charming. Phoebe is bored with it already. At any rate, if I get them to watch their hands the recommended 872 times a day, the ABC song will quickly become old news around here.
I have been pretty calm (for me) about this coronavirus thing. I don’t watch televised news and try to get my news from what I consider reputable sources like the New York Times and NPR, as opposed to Fox or Facebook.
But when my basically level-headed friends start telling me they’re opening Costco memberships to stock up on basics “in case they close the borders,” okay, my pulse goes up. I may or may not have spent upwards of three figures stockpiling Lysol wipes and other end-days supplies at Price Chopper late last night.
It doesn’t help that the general symptoms of coronavirus are the exact same as, oh, the way we all always feel around here in winter: coughing, sneezing, wheezing, and a light fever here and there. I think I speak for most parents when I say it’s not realistic to keep kids home from school for a light cough or sniffly nose; they would literally never go to school in the winter. We’d all have to quit our jobs to stay home with them. Civilization would quickly crumble.
Or maybe it already is? Maybe this is what civilization crumbling looks like?
As a precaution, I’m keen to stop hugging people for no reason. This is a bad habit I picked up on the West Coast. For those of you born and bred in the East, West Coasters like to hug hello and goodbye if they’ve spent even one fun time together. Coming from a super-WASP family, I’ve often tried this move on members of my own family who’ve looked at me like I’m completely lacking in boundaries.
Meanwhile, this morning I woke up to the first glimmer of spring-like weather. I went for a walk in the woods after I dropped my kids off at school. No sign of coronavirus there, and for a moment, I felt total peace knowing the world is still revolving on its axis.
What I’m watching:
Not the news. Jesus, I do not need to hear any more about coronavirus!
What I’m reading:
Survivor’s Guilt in the Mountains in the New Yorker
What I’m listening to:
Blexodus: The Black Exodus From The GOP on Code Switch (the podcast)
What I’m eating:
Skillet Ravioli from Food 52 is my new favorite weeknight dinner everyone will eat.
