Social Distancing Lessons from my 10 year old self

I don’t know if this makes sense, or not, but as I have watched my children deal with the sudden loss of life as they knew it this last month, it reminds me of the summer of 1968 when my father woke up one morning in New York City and dropped dead.  My mother had died five years before. We were in a rental beach cottage with my stepmother, when the phone rang early in the morning.  By the time the fogged had burned off, I had become a ward of New York State.   Then, as now, there were logistics to figure out. How to get home.  Should we drive or take public transportation?  Would I be able to enter fourth grade at my school in the fall?  Who would go to the grocery store? People dropped food off  on the porch.

My stepmother, who had married my father 18 months before his death, became my court appointed guardian.  She and my older sister retreated into their own worlds of grief, and I was mostly left to my own devices.  I hugged my dog fiercely and refused to travel back to the city without her.  I took long walks on the beach.  I made a quick point pillow of a spouting whale. I reorganized my shell collection.  I played solitaire. I worked on jigsaw puzzles. I wrote  silly songs to sing to myself and played music.

Back in the city, I spent hours staring out the bay window of my bedroom, watching the comings and goings at the Barbizon Hotel across the street. I read Harriet, The Spy. I tried to mask my loss and anxiety with humor.  I read joke books.  I played Soupy Sales records. I drew, what I thought were funny little pictures- mostly smiley faces –  with colored chalk on the board that hung in our kitchen.  I left little notes – Have a Nice Day! – Desperately hoping to make anyone smile.

Going out in public was an ordeal. Happy families haunted us. We stopped shopping. Orders were called into Gristedes and Bloomingdales.  Groceries and cases of toilet paper and gin were delivered.  We stopped going to restaurants, movies or theaters.   To this day, I can always entertain myself and make my own fun. I can just make do. I escape into books, arts and crafts.  I developed a “you get what you get and you don’t get upset” mantra. I was too young to know it was resilience.

Life never did go back to the way we were after that.  There was a new normal.  I learned to face adversity and uncertainty and keep moving forward. I learned that all we have is now.  I repeatedly benefited from the kindness of all kinds of helpers, strangers ,teachers and family friends.

So flash forward 50 + years.  Who’s ready for a pandemic?  It turns out I have been social distancing for decades, without realizing there was a name for it. Subconsciously, the ten year old in me is always preparing for a sudden loss of life the way I knew it. When I moved to suburbia, everyone thought I was nuts or lazy because I didn’t go to the malls or grocery stores.  I would shrug. “It’s just the way I was raised.” I am able to find bread, paper products, produce, dog food, toiletries – anything we need –  and have it delivered and in stock when we need it.  I work on jigsaw puzzles,  knit and read, all the time.  I can do all kinds of things with just vinegar and baking soda.  Who’s crazy now?  As scheduling delivery times has turned into a local sport – it turns out I developed another valuable life skill when I stopped going out to shop.

I find myself telling my children that even though this isn’t the spring and summer that they had planned, they are learning the same valuable life lessons I learned when I was 10.   That after they come through this, they will be able to handle most anything.  I know that they are experiencing disappointments now, but going forward, other trips and events will mean so much more, because they now know, what it like to go without. They know that they can cope with circumstances that are beyond their control, and focus on what they are lucky to have.

As a cancer and a stroke survivor, I know I will not be first in line for a ventilator should COVID-19 come knocking on my door,  but I’m OK with that.  I have lived the life I imagined.  I can stay home and do my part, for as long as it takes. You can’t inconvenience me enough to save others.  I have everything I need to get by.  I guess, I have my father to thank for that.

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