The Day Things Changed

Today is the day it all started to feel real to me.

Obviously, things aren't factually all that different today than yesterday. I knew this was coming. We all did. Or should have. But today is the day that it started to feel real, and these days, it seems that *feeling* real is almost more important than *being* real. 

So I knew it was coming, this emotional reckoning with reality, and I knew it was coming soon, but I didn't know exactly when. I spent all day yesterday and the day before working on my laptop at a table in the Tiverton public library. I wanted to spend as much time outside the house as possible before that wasn't an option any more. Yesterday, I brought a bottle of hand sanitizer with me and wiped down the table top I was working on. That was my first real concession to the Pandemic. 

I suppose that's not entirely true. Sam and I had been watching the news before this. We knew what was happening out West. We knew that Boston & New York were both seeing widespread community transmission. And since the first case was identified in Rhode Island 2 weeks ago, we've been keeping it on our radar. Last week there was a sale on frozen vegetables, so we stocked up on them and on shelf-stable staples like rice and flour. They've been telling people to stock up on groceries so that you have enough food in the house to last you for 2 weeks in case there's a general quarantine. But apart from that and the hand sanitizer, we haven't really had to make any accommodations yet. 

We've been watching the situation regarding school closures closely, of course. Sam's still student teaching, and we were worried that if the school closed, he might not be able to complete his program this semester. Luckily, earlier this week, URI & the RI Department of Education jointly decided that if Sam (& the others) can't get the required hours of student teaching time due to the coronavirus, that won't impact their certification process. That decision, it turns out, came none too soon.

Sam called me shortly after noon today to tell me the governor made the decision to move Spring Break (which had been scheduled in April) up to next week. Teachers are expected to use that week to prepare, because the week after is going to be "distance learning", where all the students will be doing their work over the internet instead of going into the classroom.

For some reason, it was closing the schools that really did it for me. That piece of action from the governor's office really drove it home to me that this is happening, this is not a drill. I jumped in my car as soon as I was off the phone with Sam and drove straight to the supermarket. I was going to do my weekly shopping on Sunday anyway, but I didn't want to wait the extra 2 days, and I wanted to beat the crowd of shoppers that I guessed would show up after people got off of work and news of school closures spread. 

It was chaos in the store. There was no toilet paper. There were no frozen vegetables. Like, at all. I was really glad we had stocked up on them last week, because I couldn't have bought them today. I was lucky: since we had bought all the high-demand stock-up items last week, most of the things on my list for today were still available when I got there. Everything except chicken-flavored ramen noodles. (We wanted some things that were easy to make in case we got sick). In what I felt was a stroke of brilliance, I realized I could I buy whatever flavor ramen they did have (some weird shrimp varieties were left) and a container of powered chicken bouillon to make the same thing. I was very pleased with that bit of resourcefulness. 

Overall, I feel pretty proud of almost all the decisions I made in the store- and making good decisions wasn't an easy thing to do. Obviously, having the shopping list helped- but the hard part wasn't remembering all the things I needed. The hard part was making good decisions about what I didn't need *now*, but thought I might need in the future. The entire supermarket has an unsettling emotional vibe, and it was hard to not just panic-buy stuff. It was a little unnerving to see all the empty shelves. I came home feeling a little low grade sense of trauma... Maybe that's too strong a term. I don't exactly feel traumatized now, but if this keeps up, I can totally see people in my generation developing weird Great Depression-esque hoarding habits in response to this experience. 

However this plays out, today was the day it all became real to me.