Pandemic summer

In March 2020, COVID-19 came to Kansas and everything shut down in the blink of an eye. For us, it was the week of spring break. Our kids were at a spring break art camp (big L) and with a neighbor at her at-home daycare (little L). I was spending the week in a fog and panic. I knew it was getting really bad because my friends in Seattle had been watching it spread. I knew it was coming to Kansas. I knew it was probably here. I was writing letters to our school principle, the state department of health, and the governor pleading with them to shut down sooner rather than later. The longer we waited, the more trouble we would be in.

Wednesday March 11 was big L's birthday. The Sunday before, we had a few friends over and talked nervously about how things could change. We had dinner together, and the kids played with each other. That was the last time we had friends over or a play date for the kids. On March 11 (big L's birthday), The WHO announced a worldwide pandemic and about 200 higher ed schools moved classes online. I was horrendously late picking big L up from camp that day because I was on the phone with a colleague about the letters I was writing to the governor. I got really mixed reactions about the letters and my colleague was worried I was going too far.

The next day, I went to the dentist. They asked me how I was doing, and I told them I was a little shaken by the pandemic. They were shocked to learn KU had just joined all the other schools in moving classes online. They told me not to worry about it because it was just like the flu. I told them NO, and explained why it wasn't.

The next day, the state of Kansas shut down all businesses, including dentist offices, indefinitely. It would be two months before anything, including my dentist office, could open again. They also shut down public schools. We sat around the dinner table and were all in shock. The kids were worried about their new schedule so we sketched one out for them. I would take the morning shift watching kids and my husband would take the afternoon shift. We would do academic work in the morning and play outside in the afternoon. We would turn on the TV at 3 pm and let kids watch for 2 hrs while we both worked. Then we would put kids to bed and work all evening. Weekends would be split catching up on work and housework. We had no idea how long it would last. We had no idea about a lot of things. I was really worried about getting my quarterly botox shots for my cervical dystonia, which was coming up in two weeks at the KU medical center (I went and it was fine). We were worried about our family, who were constantly asking me questions about what they were seeing in the news. We were worried about the Study Hubby's job, which was a contract position at a movie theater company (his contract was abruptly ended the next week, but he picked up a new contract several weeks later). We spent all our spare time looking at the news. Everything was shutting down. Big L's sewing class cancelled, her theater performance and chess tournament and school music performance all got cancelled. The library closed and there was nowhere to return all the books we just checked out. There was a run on the grocery store and we had to buy whatever we could find instead of what we normally wanted for about the next month. We were terrified they would run out of almond milk, which was the only thing little L likes to drink and he needs it as part of his night routine (he is lactose intolerant). There really was no toilet paper.

In my career many of my colleagues are doctors who eventually become my close friends. Some of them were getting called into the ICU to treat COVID patients. With shortages of everything, they had no idea if they would have appropriate protective equipment to keep themselves safe or enough beds and ventilators to keep their patients alive. I cried when I found out one of my closest friends and colleagues in Seattle had started his shift in the COVID ward in Seattle. Another close friend in Montreal did the same. My neighbor who is a doctor at the local hospital and my sister in law and cousin in Iowa were all in the same situation. We were terrified for all of them.

Now, we've been sheltered in for two months and summer is coming and cases are going down. We are starting to emerge though very carefully. No one is sure what the summer or fall will look like. We all need haircuts and staples like flour and toilet paper. We want to go to the library and get ice cream but aren't doing anything without careful thought. We are still splitting shifts with the kids and it has been brutal (more on that later).

The first three weeks of quarantine we were in shock and survival mode. Now, we are getting used to our new routine and the scarcity of flour and toilet paper and we are finding ways to cope. To try to document some of what we've been through and learned about ourselves and each other and our community, I thought I'd resurrect the blog. In the next posts I will try to focus on some different topics and some snapshots of what our every day lives are about.