Wednesday, April 1
I love the colors in this one. You?
Nothing funny about today. No jokes played by anyone in my house.
Today I learned that Jacob’s Pillow cancelled it’s 2020 season. This is not surprising, but I am so, so saddened. My daughter and I go to Jacob’s Pillow every summer. It’s one of our favorite places. We go to as many Inside/Out shows as we can, taking picnic dinners and sitting on the railroad tie seats, and watching dance on the edge of the world on the outdoor stage. For the past three or four years we have also gone to one ticketed show. Our treat. Often with GG. We’ve seen Santa Fe Ballet and Houston Ballet and Sara Mearns. Last summer, my daughter took a master class with Wendy Whelan while I sat on a bench and watched dancers of all ages soak up her every word. There is magic at the Pillow, as it’s called, and I will be among the first to show up when it reopens.
Tonight my son, who is a sophomore in high school, received a new online learning plan that starts next week and includes Zoom classes. There hasn’t been an update on the school closing being extended beyond May 4 yet, but I would be very surprised if the kids go back to school this year. I am trying to prepare myself for a long absence from work and a very solitary summer and, maybe, another period in the fall where we have to do another, shorter stint of physical distancing. It’s weird to focus all of my energy on keeping people safe. It’s so much a part of being a parent, but now the only way to stay safe from an invisible danger is to go nowhere, to be isolated from any possible threat. For years and years my kids have known to wash their hands as soon as they walk in the door, in addition to all of the other obvious times. It’s really the only rule that we have in the house, and when information about the virus started populating all of the news stations, and every program had a clip focusing on how to wash hands, my kids all kind of rolled their eyes and teased me about, what, being newsworthy? Ahead of the trend? Now my son asks if we have enough soap for a while, as he washes his hands before we eat our tacos for dinner. No one in this house, including me, chief hand-washing enforcer, has ever been concerned about not having enough soap. It’s probably unlikely (I am purely an armchair scientist), but I wonder if our immune systems will change in other ways during this time that we aren’t exposed to any germs outside our own homes. Will we all get raging colds when we finally enter the public sphere again? I wonder, too, how long it will be before I can take one of my kids with me while I do the grocery shopping. Weekend errands with just one kid at a time was my quality time with each of them. And I miss it.
The weather today was cool, but it was sunnier, and everyone got outside for a bit. We definitely all feel better when we get some fresh air. But the allergies and the sneezing! On my walk this afternoon I suppressed a sneeze. I didn’t want to have to explain that it’s legitimately allergies. That I’m not sick. It’s eerie how isolated we are from one another and how, at the same time, when I’m out walking, everyone seems so acutely aware of every other person within sight. We all move out of the way of each other, walking in the road or on the grass, keeping a distance, maybe nodding or smiling from what feels like is still too close.
The girls have been cleaning their room. Going through bins of old school papers and finding treasures, like a card they made their dad years ago. Notes from friends. Lots of other stuff I’m not privy to but the discovery of which is resulting in giggles I can hear from downstairs.
The total number of known positive cases worldwide is nearly 1 million. At more than 200,000 cases in the U.S. (just three weeks ago the total number was 10,000), we have more than twice the number in Italy now. There have been more than 5,000 deaths in the U.S. But no matter how many numbers I include here, they are not a complete reflection of how many are affected.
When I wrote day 1, I didn’t think much before I ended with stay safe, everyone. But what else is there to say? We are doing our best here. Living in a world with a very uncertain future, focusing on safety one day at a time is all we can do. So.
Stay safe, everyone.