Has COVID simply become my way of life? Am I the fish, no longer aware of the water I'm swimming in?
The realities are miserable:
- I had new students out for quarantine today.
- I had Remote Learners missing class and (hours later) claiming bad wifi connections.
- Last night the lead videographer of our school news program said she'll be out for quarantine (if not COVID itself) for at minimum a week. She's wondering how she can help put the show together remotely without access to the videos stored on our server.
- My face feels masked even when it isn't. My lips are chapped.
- Today fifty-five of Iowa's 99 counties were above the 15% danger threshold set by Governor Reynolds in August as the point at which schools could request permission to move to online learning.
- Our neighbor's dad died of COVID two days ago.
- My friend's mother-in-law (age 95 in a care center) was diagnosed today.
Yet this strangest of times has begun to feel normal. The mind has a way of scabbing over as a means of protection. Raw awareness, day after day, is unsustainable.
So even while this pandemic is raging in my county (including three care center outbreaks), and even as my parents' care-center in Webster County retreated today to its highest level of lock-down in response to its facility outbreak, I am benumbed.
How long can a person confront an abnormal condition before the abnormal becomes simply the new normal?
Seven months, I'd say.
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What in March and April felt like odd COVID awkward, hyper-aware actions have now become simply what I do:
I slap on the mask that hangs on a chain around my neck when anyone nears my space.
I distance, plus a few more feet.
I don't touch people.
I worry.
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When does new water become simply water?
Enough.
Be well.
Write.
Allison
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| Andrea says Wolf is giggling now. |
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