The Dangers in Short-Sighted Views

Day 19 of being homebound

I make light of our circumstances to try and normalize my days, but that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate the gravity of the situation. This invisible threat is downright terrifying on so many levels. Aside from the possibility of taking ill with it myself – which is not my main concern – the idea that on the rare occasion I leave the house for the grocery store I could become an unwitting carrier is beyond difficult to accept. It boggles my mind that not everyone feels this way.

Twenty-five years ago, I was pregnant with my oldest son. It wasn't planned and I spent the first trimester crying my eyes out. The moment I felt the first flutter of movement, something inside me flipped. I was still scared of the unknown changes that would accompany my child's entrance into this world, but everything I did from that moment forward was anchored in protecting him. I watched what I ate and what I drank, where I went and what I did. The life growing inside of me depended on my awareness and responsible behavior, as it did my love and nurturing. When he was finally welcomed into this world, his entrance was marred with health concerns. He was taken swiftly to another hospital with a neonatal unit, and I had to stay where I was. In an instant, I could no longer protect my child – his care and safety now in the hands of medical staff in another facility just over a mile away.

Fear bubbled to the surface and I quickly wondered if my son's health condition was due to something I had done or hadn't done while pregnant. Had I eaten the wrong things, did that fall down the stairs affect him after all, or was my body somehow inhospitable post-rape? The number of questions that flooded my head was dizzying, and once my son was released from the NICU, I was almost paralyzed with how to care for him. What if I did something wrong? What if someone else did something wrong when they held or watched him? Being a mother to this tiny little being with all his fingers and toes was not as I had imagined. It was filled with second-guessing, apprehension and all-out fear that I was not going to be able to keep him safe.

As the days turned into weeks and weeks into months, I found the joy in watching this little human grow. My heart ached to burst with how much I loved him. I eventually relaxed and allowed him to fall without scooping him up instantly, I gave him the freedom to explore his surroundings even though I wanted to bubble wrap everything in sight. He bumped his head countless times, fell flat on his face when learning to crawl and then walk, and he'd cry for a bit, but I didn't prematurely console him. When he was old enough to carry on conversations, he asserted his independence. This threw me into another cycle of panic. I knew he needed to figure things out on his own, but watching your child fail, get frustrated or banged up as they learn is one of the hardest things to stand by and do.

When my second son came into the world, my oldest declared he was too big for nearly everything I had come to love with him. Cuddle time was for babies and he wanted to do everything himself. There are no truly adequate words to describe the pull between the infant who needed me for everything and the nearly four-year-old who wanted total independence. As the years past and the boys got older, my instinct to protect and comfort them never left. When they'd gotten into an argument with a friend, injured themselves on the field playing sports, had their hearts broken by their first girlfriends, my heart ached with them. The desire to pull them into an embrace and hold them safe from it all forever was powerful and difficult to resist. The bigger they got, the more I had to face the fact that I couldn't protect them from life. I could give them as many tools to guide them as possible, but I would not be able to shield them the way I had when they were babies.


They've become adults and all the pride I have in who they are aside, I still feel that instinctual pull to cover them and deflect life's bumps and tumbles. I feel no less yearning to take their pain and disappointment away than I did when they were frustrated toddlers falling down every few steps. If anything, the intense need to protect them when I was carrying them during those pregnancies is far greater after 2+ years. They are my children no matter how old they get or how independent of me they become.





I feel similarly to my siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. Their importance in my life is always synonymous with their well-being and safety, because if they are at risk, then their role in my life is at risk. I make every conscious effort to consider my actions–my choices and how they affect those around me. Consideration, awareness, the ability to recognize that even if I don't know someone, the likelihood is there are people in their life that feel as I do about my sons, my family, and my friends. Every single life matters. I don't have to agree with a person or even like them to understand that they have a right to live the best life possible.


I understand that the irresponsible choices I have made had effects that stretched beyond my own consequences. While few of us are able to get through life without inadvertently affecting those around us in a negative way, we all have the ability to learn from those mistakes and poor choices. What good is having the freedom to do something if what you choose to do infringes on the rights of others, leaving them bearing the weight of consequence they did not deserve to pay?

I stay home in this time of uncertainty because every person out there is someone's family, someone's treasured friend. Exercising my freedom to move about the world, come and go as I please and continue to do whatever I want would be selfish and irresponsible in this crisis. I have no desire to unwittingly become a vehicle for a virus that could end someone's life, simply because this is 'a free country.' It completely blows my mind that anyone would resist the urge to act in the interest of the many when it counts the most. Whether people choose to see it or not, we are all in this together. Our actions and inactions affect others, and in ways that are unconscionable. It doesn't matter that you might not believe the situation is as bad as it is, what matters is that it's better to over-prepare and overreact than it is to wonder if we did everything we could have later on.

The act of choosing to take one for the team and stay the fuck home right now is not difficult. Sure, it's inconvenient, it's boring and even intolerable at times, but it's a simple act that has widespread benefit. Consider the people in your life. You don't have to be a parent to identify with fierce bonds that evoke protection and a caring instinct. You don't have to know someone who is COVID-19 positive to accept that this virus is ravaging the lives of hundreds of thousands. You and those you know do not the gauge of legitimacy and it's small-minded and egocentric to think that because you aren't directly affected that the virus is bullshit or the concoction of some political ploy. Just because a person has never traveled to and knows no one who has ever traveled to Antarctica doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Get your heads out of the sand and accept that there is more to the world than your narrow view. Stay home, wash your hands and accept that it will take all of us to do our parts to get through this pandemic if we hold any hope of recovering as a society and as the human race when it is finally over.