It’s Saturday, and it’s also Day 2. I kept my kid home from school yesterday, because after a week spent campaigning in various ways for LAUSD to close its schools, I had a feeling they’d have a special announcement to make. That, and it was raining, which mean my kid would be sitting in a gym with a few hundred other kids for an hour in a building that until recently had never had soap available in the boys’ locker room bathroom. Funny: every election cycle that it’s been on the ballot, we’ve voted for more funds to be channeled to LAUSD and the returns we’re seeing on the user end are fairly absymal. We’ll be voting differently next time.
In terms of food and cleaning supplies (I’m tired of the topic of TP so am just not going to say anything else about it), we’re fine. We’re lucky, and we have it better than most, relatively speaking. I’m not worried about us. I’m worried about the people who can’t buy the supplies they need, who can’t stay home, who interact with the public all day long. Whose employers have more money than God and yet aren’t offering paid leave but instead are encouraging them to share their banked sick leave with co-workers who need it (that’d be Amazon). I worry about people with new babies. I’m baffled and irritated and worried about the conversations I’m seeing online about older people not taking the situation seriously. (For a generation that prides itself on being anti-establishment and not doing with The Man tells it to do, there’s a whole of “They aren’t actually TELLING us we can’t go anywhere,” being used as an argument against temporarily suspending normal activity. I…don’t get it.)
For the last 2.5 years I’ve worked from home, so my day-to-day isn’t going to look drastically different. I’m not having to learn new ways to communicate with my team, or needing to talk my boss into letting us work remotely. The main things that will be different:
- Not taking/picking up my kid from school
- Not going to Mass on Sunday morning, followed by breakfast and conversation, with dear friends
- Not being alone at any point during the week
- Not seeing friends IRL
I mean, these are temporary inconveniences. They’re not problems, and I know how lucky I am.
We’re all scared. We’re all doing our best.
The small, kind things people are doing, whether online or in person, have really surprised me. Either I’m a lot more cynical than I thought (!), or people are really making an effort to be kinder with one another than they ever have been before. It does my heart good. I’ll be posting links to some of those things here in future posts.
Be well, my friends. Breathe. May love and peace and wisdom be your companions.
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