2020 Life Logs, Day 74: A Virus Changing the Way We Think
Date: Saturday, March 14, 2020
Weather: Sunny and Windy; High 51 degrees, Low 34 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
This evening I was talking to Heather on the phone about our new lives living with the threat of the coronavirus. We are having to change the way we live very quickly, but on the phone call, I realized that I also have to change the way I think. There is no set roadmap to follow. Each of us has to make decisions about what we will and will not do to protect ourselves and to protect others in the next couple of weeks. And this requires that we change the way we think. I thought I had things under control and then I said to Heather that I would be going to play Mah Jongg on Wednesday evening. She quickly replied that I needed to rethink that decision. Basically she was saying that if we are going to be successful in flattening the rise in COVID-19 cases, we all need to stay home for the next couple of weeks—no indoor social gatherings no matter how small. Somehow I thought getting together with just four other people would be fine. Not so. Living with the threat of this virus demands that we change what we do AND we change how we think. This is a huge challenge and one that I have not faced in my lifetime.
Justin called this afternoon and I was hoping to hear that Puerto Rico was being spared. But that is not the case. The virus arrived in San Juan on a cruise ship and it is spreading across the island. As it was here, the announcement that public schools will be closed for the next two weeks was made yesterday. Justin and Jo have not heard from the private school the kids attend, but they are thinking that they will keep them home even if school is not called off. Jo thinks she might have been exposed to family members of someone with the virus at the supermarket yesterday. For the sake of others, they feel it is prudent to self-quarantine themselves for two weeks so as not to spread the virus in case she was exposed. The real change of thinking here is that we have change our own actions, not just to protect ourselves, but to protect others.
I continued my writing project today but got caught up fixing issues with the way one year of my logs were saved. I had to make changes in the names of one whole year of logs, day by day. Getting that tedious job done today should allow me to spend time writing tomorrow. I am bouncing back and forth between writing about the Voyage of Windbird and writing about growing up in West Virginia in the 1950’s. This has required that I call my sister a few times to do some fact checking. She has been told by her daughters that she is not to leave the house for now due to her age and underlying medical conditions. She is feeling the effects of being housebound and seems to enjoy the phone calls. And I enjoy getting her perspective on my memories. Shadow is enjoying the extra walks each day and not being left alone as I run here and there. So there is an upside to this new stay-at-home lifestyle.
