World Turned Upside Down: Let's Get Serious

This is the first, and I hope the last, blog photo you will ever see that I take of myself in a hospital bathroom.

I snapped it several weeks ago to send to Husband and our kids, with the accompanying text "Needless to say, I'm a mess and may deplete the hospital's mask supply."

I had just sent a loved one off to a complicated surgery, and that can lead to tears on the inside of glasses lens. I was worried about the surgery; I was worried about that surgery taking place in the middle of a pandemic; I was worried I wasn't up to the task of being the advocate for this loved one.

Spoiler alert: The loved one came through surgery magnificently, and is now being pampered in recovery.

It turns out that if you are going to require extended hospitalization during a pandemic, this was the exact right moment to schedule that surgery. Just one week earlier the no-visitors policy had been lifted at the giant Big City medical complex but only for one advocate/visitor per patient, and masks were required. The miles of corridors I walked toward the ICU and recovery room were mostly empty, so social distancing was easy.

As a person with at least four entries into the let's-kill-Grandma lottery (pulmonary embolisms/clotting disorder, age, weight, blood type) I have been scrupulous in my social distancing and mask wearing and seeing those choices endorsed by the medical folks were a great comfort. I never felt as if I had to check myself for symptoms of a deadly virus.

But at the end of the week's hospitalization we stopped at Target for extra home-care bandages.

People, it was horrendous. The store was crowded, social distancing was virtually non-existent, and masks were worn by perhaps one in ten shoppers. I scurried to the pharmacy and grabbed one other purchase then checked out.

How could I feel so safe in a place designed for sick people, and so threatened in a place designed for people who are well?

The answer, of course, comes down to a single fact. In one of these locations (the hospital) staff and visitors are doing their best to keep everyone safe and healthy, and in the other (the store) people apparently don't care about this. In one everyone was paying attention to CDC recommendations and science, and in the other...well, not so much.

Yesterday, in the face of our state's ever-rising infection numbers, our governor mandated that everyone should be masked in public places. Not in our homes, not in our cars, but any time we're likely to be in contact with the aerosol exhalations of someone we don't live with. This is the very lowest bar we have to step over in slowing the pandemic--we're not being asked to once again close ourselves in our homes for months on end (although I continue to think "I need a tattoo" is a terrible reason for going out).

It is a way to tell people around us "I care for you, and I don't want you to get sick and die, so I will wear a mask to protect you from me." 

And still, my Facebook feed is packed with people who are literally frothing at the mouth with their uncontrolled rage at being asked to wear a mask. For a variety of reasons they have decided to disbelieve the most up-to-date science. 

I do not understand this. 

Because it's uncomfortable? So is a ventilator. Because it doesn't keep you from Covid? No, but it keeps us from sharing our sneeze-slobber, and sneeze-slobber is the surest way to pass the virus along. Because you aren't feeling sick? Allow me to introduce you to the folks who have covid but no symptoms, because as many as half of the people who are potential Typhoid Covid Marys have no symptoms at all. Don't have a mask? If you live in my zip code and don't have a mask, let me know. I will give you one. Because it is a symbol of government tyranny and YOU ARE FREEEE??? I...have no words, but if I did, the words would include the descriptors "inexplicable" and possibly "uncaring."

And now I will get into the toe-stepping-on portion of today's lecture. My fellow Christians, the ones who are pro-life but refuse to wear masks? You do see the irony, right? That your asymptomatic Covid could kill actual post-birth human beings? You understand that you are telling me, with my increased chances of dying from this disease, that in spite of your holy hugs and declarations of devotion you don't care enough to wear a mask to decrease the chances I will die a horrible, painful, death by suffocation? 

I was already a mask wearer, but during that week at the hospital I wore masks all the time. I cried in them (and man, are they uncomfortable when they're all snotty inside), I laughed in them, I slept in them, I talked to my dear one non-stop through them. Because if there was a single thing I could do to prolong someone else's life or my own, I wanted to do it. I was frantically worried about my loved one, but I did not have the additional worry that someone was sneezing pandemic death my way, or the way of any of the patients.

Think about that. And wear a mask.

Dear Baby Wonderful: Grandma's Here!

Dear Baby Wonderful,

When I sat down at the computer this morning I wasn't sure if I remembered how to blog. It's been so long since the last post--May was a month of stories that weren't mine to share, which is an occupational hazard for family bloggers. You might notice that this is the first post to lead with your beautiful face in almost three months.

The world you joined has been, quite frankly, a mess during that quarter of a year. Everyone has been socially distanced and societally outraged, economically shattered and politically appalled.

You, my dear one, have been pretty much the best thing in the world and you were six hours away. But the initial wave of pandemic was subsiding a couple weeks ago when your dad called me.

"I don't know if you'd be interested, but our parental leave will run out two weeks before Baby Wonderful's spot in day care opens up. Any chance you'd like to come over for a week and be a nanny?"

 Remember that gif I posted a couple decades months ago? Yeah. Pretty much that.

I have to admit that I was a little nervous about being the grown-up in the room for a full week with you. I mean, it's been a long time since I held a baby that I didn't return to its proper owners within a few minutes. We've been FaceTiming with you almost every day since you were born, but you have a shocking tendency to be bored with your grandparents' faces within a few seconds. I know! It seems impossible that we wouldn't be riveting conversationalists, and yet...

As it turns out, some things have changed.

Stuffed toys and board books are so pre-pandemic as gifts to be pulled out of the tote bag on arrival. Note the bee-themed mask in your photo today--a colorful AND practical house gift. (Also totally a photo prop since the internet misled Grandma and she severely underestimated the pumpkin-sized noggin you inherited from your paternal grandparents' sides of the family. It almost pulled your sweet little ears completely off but you were a good sport for the five seconds it took to snap the picture.)

 Also mind-boggling are the strides that have been made in baby gear during the past few decades. Somewhere I have a picture of your father in his umbrella stroller. Umbrella strollers are essentially a sling of fabric between two cane-shaped rods that are attached to a cheap set of wheels, and your dad was slumped in that thing like a half-raised batch of bread dough. Your stroller, on the other hand, had dual sun blockers, a five-point harness system, and solid state ignition. (Okay, it didn't have solid state ignition. Or at least I didn't use that feature.) Ditto on the advances for the swing, and we won't even mention your fancy bassinet that not only rocks you to sleep, it also senses if you get squirmy in the night and ROCKS YOU BACK TO SLEEP. I'm not kidding when I say it has a back-up camera so that your parents can check on you from any room in the house.

But some things haven't changed.

You, like your father and uncles, are a chatty baby. The best part of each day was the moment in the morning when I came out of the guest room to find you in your spot next to the breakfast table, and said "Why good morning, Baby Wonderful!" Your grin took over your whole body, and you wiggled and laughed. Often you would wind up to tell me something, pursing your lips and gazing at me intently before saying something unutterably wise. At least I assume it was wise; you gave it great depth.

You, like your father and uncles, are easily roused from naps. That was an easy fix, though, because once you drifted off to sleep on my shoulder I had the luxury of just holding you until you woke up, even if that meant we dozed in the recliner for hours. Nothing is more soporific than the presence of a sleeping baby, and I would like to apologize to your parents for ruining your bed-napping forever.

I spent a full week kissing your neck, watching you knot and unknot your hands as if casting baby magic, and making you put up with my irresistible urge to patty-cake your feet together.

And I discovered something I had known instinctively but had never experienced.

I found I could forgive you pretty much anything. I laughed when you barfed on me within seconds of my arrival and didn't mind that I smelled like baby spit-up, except for brief moments immediately  after showering, for the next five days. Or there was the day I was changing your dirty diaper when you decided it would be appropriate to deposit the second stage of that intestinal evacuation directly into my palm. With any other kid I would have had to amputate my hand but with you, again, I laughed.

You see, there is something deep and primeval about the bond of kinship. With rare exceptions my interest in babies has been minimal for the past 27 years. I loved your father and uncles instinctively, totally, rawly, with a bond nearly visible in its intensity. No other baby had ignited that same fierce emotion when I held them and I was afraid it might be gone forever.

But then there was you, my Baby Wonderful.

I can't wait to kiss your neck again.

Much love,

GrandmaQueenBee