Parenting in a Time of Pandemics: What Masks Don't Protect You From

After four days in a Philadelphia hospital, where he was being treated for COVID-induced pneumonia, my son was released.  He returned by medical transport to the apartment he lives in alone for now, since his roommate left to live with his girlfriend when my son returned sick from his spring break from graduate school.

Hearing that my son was likely to be released, my husband and I made plans to head down to Philly and do a "dump and run," dropping off all kinds of supplies.  We'd done something similar the week before he was hospitalized, when we were still able to be near him, inside his apartment, however briefly.  Even then, we didn't touch.  I just blew him kisses from the hallway as we left, and gave him a mock hug.  If you want to know one thing that really sucks in the life of a parent, I can tell you that it's giving your sick child a mock hug.  Such things should never exist.

We made good time to Philly from New York City.  It was just us, a smattering of cars, and a steady stream of trucks on the highway, hauling goods this way and that.  You realize who's really, truly important in the pecking order of working folks.

We let our son know that we were five minutes away, then that we were just outside his building.  He didn't want to come down.  He's so afraid of making someone else sick...us most of all, I think.  It so happened there was a woman just to the side of the building, directing two youngish African-American women how to get into the building.  Turns out she was letting them in to help her husband, who is home getting chemo treatment for cancer.  "Bad time to be sick with that," she said.

"Do you know how we can get into the building?  Our son doesn't want to come down."  "I can buzz you in, but if you punch in his apartment number, he can let you in."  Of course I didn't recall my son's apartment number, so I texted him.  Then I punched it in and got a voice I didn't recognize, a Mr. Goldstein.  "Who are you here to see?"  I told him, and he buzzed us in.  That wasn't Sam and I'm pretty sure it wasn't his roommate, but we were in, so I'd solve that mystery later.

We took the elevator to the third floor and walked the long hallway to his front door.  The building's a converted factory, and it feels like one.  I pulled the suitcase behind me, while my husband carried the two reusable tote bags.  The suitcase had essentials, like clean underwear and socks, the PS4 Sam's sister got him for Chanukah, and a bunch of books, including All the Light We Cannot See, which I've been reading.  Since I had both a hardcover and softcover version, I was able to give him one.  I often recommend and pass books onto my son, so this was just that, in the middle of a pandemic.

The tote bags had homemade banana bread (mine), and homemade vegetable soup (my husband's).  It had toilet paper, hand soap, body soap, mandarin oranges, oatmeal packets, energy bars, a mask, a box of tissues, a bottle of Purell, some wipes, some sliced turkey, salmon salad, and a loaf of bread.  I don't know how long my son will be quarantining post-hospital, so I gave him what I hope is enough.   Of everything I could think he might need.

We got to his door, put down our stuff, and I knocked.  Then I stepped back.  He opened the door slightly and urgently waved us off.  We backed up some more.  Then he opened the door, and I could see him, in his blue face mask, gray sweats, and light brown slippers.  Before he took the bags inside,  I waved to him.  I think I blew him a kiss.  "Love you, Kip," I said.  Or was that only in my head?  I made sure I didn't cry.

Then we turned around and left.  Per usual, I desperately needed a bathroom.  The nearby gas station didn't have one I could use, so a security guy suggested we go to the train station.  We did.  It was eerily quiet.  I did my business, and was grateful for automated soap and water at the sink.  When I came out, not two feet from me, a homeless guy asked for money.  "Sorry, I don't have any on me," I replied.  Then I went back to the car.  Told my husband that I hoped that close-up exchange didn't leave me sick.  I've been trying so hard to practice serious social distancing, and in a split second, it all went to hell.  But it is what it is.

Back in the car, I remembered that for some reason, Sam had venmo-ed me some money a while back.  I never used it, and I decided he might need it more right now.  So I venmo-ed it back to him.  I saw a "Thank you!" with a big red heart emoji from him for the care package.  "Banana bread's great!"  Thumbs up and a kissy face blowing a heart from me in acknowledgement.  It all seemed so gentle and innocuous.  But it's all so indescribably awful.

When I speak to Sam, for the briefest of minutes, he sounds sick and depressed.  Am I hearing fear in his voice too, or is that the voice in my head getting in the middle of our calls?  I don't honestly know.  But I do know that even if a mask can protect you from the droplets in the air, it can't protect you from the hole in your heart, the one that's supposed to be filled with the hugs and kisses parents give to their kids.

Parenting in a Time of Pandemics

As I've watched the virus tide rising, and what was just a virus morph into a global pandemic, I've been interested to see how I have--and haven't--reacted.  I'm one of those people who can get undone by something simple at times--like not being able to find those socks I know I put down a minute ago--but give me a real crisis, and I can be weirdly calm.  I think that comes from having grown up with constant complications and challenges on the home front, so my normal has consistently been lived at an elevated pitch.  So much so that I gave up noticing a long time ago.

I dealt years ago with a full time job, a dying father, and a disabled son, all at once.  I'm not sure at the time I appreciated the toll all of that took on me, but it surely left an imprint.  Fast forward some years, and my mom is now dealing with her sixth (or is it seventh?) bout of cancer, on top of heart disease, and the general diminishments of aging.  And that disabled child is now a young man, with ongoing needs and challenges.  One of which is how to explain to him just what a pandemic is.  That one just makes me laugh honestly, because it's so utterly ridiculous.  I talk about germs everywhere, and people being sick, and why we can't travel and no, I don't know when we can take a trip, and what we'll be doing in April or May, and on and on.  I remind him to wash his hands coming and going, and not to touch the elevator buttons with his bare hands, though he can still play elevator operator in our building, announcing floors to everyone or no one, depending on who's in the car with him.

For my child with anxiety, I try to keep the news at bay, and provide other distractions and conversational topics, but real life inevitably seeps in.  It's about not having that seeping become a flood that overwhelms and terrorizes.  In fact, I took the radically opposite approach by taking her very recently to Madrid for a long weekend, slipping back into the U.S. just ahead of the latest idiotic travel ban.  We had a wonderful time.  Full stop.

Then there's my child with a fever, chills, and pounding pressure in his face.  Just a head cold?  Sinus infection?  Who knows, but I had to tell him that he couldn't come home, because his brother is on immune-suppressing meds and that's a risk we can't take.  So I'm trying to monitor from afar, checking in with the university's health services, relaying what they told me to his girlfriend, and hoping that she--being the wiser and more pragmatic of the two--will take good care of him.  And keep herself healthy and safe in the process.

Life has never been uncomplicated for me.  So this feels like an extension of that, with everyone else folded in this time.  I guess it's like going from an all-volunteer military to all of us being conscripts.  It changes everything.  Or maybe for some of us, it changes nothing much at all...