Social Distancing vs Abandonment
We tease in my multi-generational home about how many people live here. It’s 11. But the ongoing joke is if we tell someone new that we meet on the street we avoid actual numbers because it makes us seem strange. And indeed we get lots of strange questions….
Can’t folks afford a place of their own? Oh that must be hard, I’m sorry for you.
All told, our home rocks. We enjoy the banter, the good food and the grand-babies. Which hands down has to be the hardest part of this social distancing protocol which my husband and I both decided to invoke this week. And upfront, I’ll tell you, not holding a baby is hard. Not helping. Not being there is the most pain filled thought I have. Aside from the thought of loosing my husband to a respiratory pandemic.
When the CDC recommends people 60+ (or those in high risk pools) stay home. They don’t mean a multigen house where a dozen people come and go. They assume, the person lives alone or with their spouse. For them home IS isolated. For us, home is Grand Central station.
We don’t expect people to understand. Because as you can see from the two charts … “everyone” gets the virus (normal distribution) but those of us over 50 or in a high risk pool die.
Our family is compassionate and educated. So they do comprehend our concern, they do. Especially because each of them can imagine if that bottom chart was reversed, they’d build a blockade around the babies to save them.
As it is … most unfortunate and miserable … we need to practice social distancing in our own home if we want to try and beat the dismal odds. We live for family meals, prep and sit downs every night together as a non normative distribution. But keeping six feet away in public … Means keeping our loved ones who move in the world at large at arm’s length.
And we realize there isn’t a short term fix. This is a long range plan, that may go on for a year. (Long pause at not holding my grandbabies for a year. And allowing the tears to gently roll down the side of my face). The catch 22 of being housebound and disabled is the reality of attempting to survive while isolated and housebound.
I fully expect the nature of our interpersonal bonds will be put to the test. Fuck it, I fear it will become Lord of the Flies in a fort night. And I don’t have answers on how we stay strong, chin up, suck it up or ride the mofo out. I don’t. Not at all. Because we both need other people and I can’t fathom how anything works in a bubble.
I know that when I’m not afraid, I’m very sad. When I’m not scared or sully; I’m down right angry. All of that makes little space for the flip side — love. I am simply tapped out.
It’s not that we don’t have a plan. We actually have several plans. We have an ever evolving plan that hasn’t even given the first plan we made time to be enacted before we had to opt out. Cheers to my eldest who is a master micro manager. Everyone in a pandemic needs someone like her. She’s ace and if any of us survive it will be in large part to her efforts over our own body’s defense systems.
You know the irony?
My mother dropped out of our lives, if not also civilization, a dozen years ago. And in the back of my kids’ minds there was this whisper … Don’t do that to me. And I’ve always promised I would never turn my back on them. But “social distancing” … Survival … Feels the same. It feels like abandonment. And the pain is most definitely real. I told that story to my youngest in an outdoor pool side chat (at arms length if not 2 meters) who quipped as I was walking away .. It’s NOT THE SAME! YOUR MOTHER NEVER LOVED YOU!! Because THAT is who we are. All eleven of us. Dark humor, tales of the quipped.
Bless this house.
