I’m coughing.
It’s late and my 10-year-old keeps coming downstairs begging for ibuprofen.
She can’t have any more. She just had a dose an hour ago. She keeps asking anyway, begging me to think of something that will make her legs stop aching… and her throat… and her nose. Each a separate trip. And also, could I please turn off the AC? She’s freezing. The thermostat says it’s 78 degrees. Downstairs. Where the AC actually works. Not upstairs in her bedroom above the sweltering garage.
This has been our routine for three days.
And now I’m coughing.
It started with a sore throat. Followed quickly by a bone-crushing exhaustion I haven’t felt since I was pregnant with twins.
Runny nose: check
Headache: check
Fever: who has time to find batteries for the thermometer when you’re frantically trying to meet deadlines, administer pain meds, and track the online schooling of four suddenly homebound kids? But I think it’s kinda cold too, so… maybe?
My family has been quarantining since Monday when Juliette arrived in my bedroom at 1 a.m. sobbing and feverish.
Maybe it’s not COVID. I can’t say for sure. We took her for a test Monday, but it turns out the labs are completely overwhelmed and results that used to come back in 24 hours are now taking more than 72.
Here’s what I do know: our school district FINALLY decided to start contact tracing on Monday. It’s Wednesday. In the last 48 hours, I’ve gotten FIVE calls from the health department telling me that there’s a COVID positive kid in one of our classrooms. Y’all. I only have three kids in public school.
So, if not now, then when? Yeah, the whole world feels like some fucked up backwards self-improvement mantra.
This is not a series of unfortunate events. This is not an unavoidable example of “Into each life a little rain must fall.” (According to Google Classroom my kids are studying metaphor and literal vs. figurative language, so there you go.)
This is what happens when you live in a state that is so pissed off that a Democrat won the presidency that the Governor and other leaders (I’m looking at you, Blackburn) decide to BAN the very public health measures – hello mask mandates – that might keep our kids safe in school. To prove what? That they have big balls? That they’re stupid? Really, someone has to help me out here.
It’s not all the government’s fault. Don’t get me wrong. I totally believe in individual responsibility and individual choice. I just can’t swallow the fact that so many are suffering because more than 60% of my fellow Tennesseans have made the INDIVIDUAL choice to refuse vaccination. I don’t have the numbers for those who refuse to wear masks but based on my highly scientific Kroger study – it doesn’t look good.
I spent the entirety of last year practicing compassion. We’re all tired. We’re all scared. We all hate the way masks fog up our glasses. I spent the first half of this year practicing understanding. New vaccines are scary. Why are there so many? Who really knows the difference between “rushed” and “prioritized” when it comes to vaccine approval?
I’m over it.
I have Covid anti-vaxxers in my own family and here’s what I’ve observed:
- In general, the eligible people who refuse the vaccine are the same ones who refuse to wear masks. It has NOTHING to do with personal safety and everything to do with political posturing. Masks and vaccination = liberal. Liberal = bad. None for me, thanks.
- It’s about lack of control. We all feel powerless. But thinking you have some secret insider knowledge makes you feel a little better, right? The Man will never pull one over on you as long as you refuse to play by his rules – even if his rules could save your life.
- We’re working from entirely different sources of information. It’s like we live in different universes. I had to do this project in the 7th grade about going to a different planet and trying to explain our society to aliens. Yeah, it’s a lot like that.
I’m still coughing. My kid has come down twice while I’ve been writing to see if it’s time take more meds. It’s not.
So, I’m going to sit here with my box of tissues and think about the last year I spent homeschooling five kids to make room in public schools. The year that my oldest daughter spent not going to prom or walking across the stage to get her diploma because there was no vaccine that could keep her grandparents safe. The recent week a friend in kidney failure spent waiting to be transferred into a hospital too full of unvaccinated Covid patients.
Then tomorrow, after I’ve been woken up in the night a half dozen times by a sick kid, I’m going to thank my lucky stars (and my smart doctors) that it isn’t worse. I’ll contemplate my own pissedoffedness and individual freedoms as I decide whether to go to Kroger and cough in the face of every unmasked person I see.