My mother was a worrier.
She worried in the way that a bird builds
its nest, part instinct, part purposeful endeavor. The worries formed a web of
protection around those whom she loved. A web like that of a spider that grows
from a seemingly inexhaustible supply of silk. Spreads wide over everything
that feels uncontrollable, uncontainable. Only her continual anticipatory
caution kept disaster netted at the edges of perception.
A habit of mind? A genetic quirk? A prayer
that never ceases?
I was five years old when the polio
outbreak began. I would sit on the tile floor of my grandmother’s sunporch,
scribbling in my Big Chief tablet while the adults, chatting nearby, switched
from English into French to discuss what they didn’t want me to hear. Names
swam up out of the rhythmic flow, familiar names—of friends’ children who had
become sick, I learned later.
I can only imagine my mother’s inner
terror. No one knew how the illness was spread, Was it from flies lighting on a
piece of fruit, on a sandwich? Did the virus lie in wait on the doorknob of the
supermarket?
Ne touche pas! became a litany that
required no church. Wash your hands! Do not touch your face! I thought it was a
matter of deportment. Proper little girls were not to fidget. They were to fold
their hands neatly in their laps and be quiet. They were to be clean and neat
at all times, vigilantly observed by their elders.
How frightened she must have been. How
restive I was at the restriction.
Is it a requirement of youth to rebel
against limits whose purpose and rationale they don’t understand?
Six years passed before the Salk vaccine
arrived. Six years of ordinary life with an avalanche looming. The mothers then
were tough. They’d endured and survived an even longer period of world war with
familial deaths, rationing and privation, and Victory Gardens, a nation pulling
together to defeat an enemy they could visualize.
Polio was a hidden enemy and it had a
specific cruelty, because it focused on children. There is no fear like the
fear of harm to your little ones. And yet part of a parent’s job is to prevent such
harm. The reflexes are in place. The fear of polio merely expanded and
intensified the need to be on guard.
The Novel Coronavirus that we face at this
moment seems to spare children. In exchange, we believe that it imperils our
mothers and fathers and grandparents. To protect them, we are asked to accept
disruptive limits to our lives in every aspect.
We are asked to accept a drop in income, a
denial of pleasure, a disturbance of the process and conditions of our work—all
to diminish a deadly outcome we cannot yet visualize.
We are taking these steps based on faith, a
faith we share in the knowledge of scientific experts, whom we are never more
aware of needing than at a time of crisis.
But it is a faith we share in the goodness
of our neighbors, too.
Our local businesses, our neighbors’
livelihoods, are taking a serious hit from the numerous cancellations. We need
to patronize their businesses.
We need to order takeout when we are social
distancing; we need to find a way to visit the grocery store without exposing
our elders to higher risk. (Maybe the local smaller stores can offer telephone
orders for pickup.)
To feel secure in patronizing local
business, we need to have faith that they’re taking this crisis as seriously as
we are. That they are committed to the high standards required to minimize the
spread of the virus.
That includes requiring workers involved
with food service to stay home at the first sign of a respiratory symptom.
If a local fund is needed to help
businesses implement these extraordinary measures, I would certainly contribute
to it. And I suspect many others would join me.
(This post appeared as a column in the Fayette County Record in March, 2020.)
