Day #81: On Fear
We had a good old fashioned family adventure today. A lot like what we do in normal times except with fewer antique stores and diners.
We road tripped, found some trailheads (not the ones we were looking for...every year we re-learn that the Washington Trails Association website SUCKS,) ate car snacks and a picnic, looked at some views, drove back roads, got lost a couple of times, and generally had a really fun family day. With not much guilt...yes, I know we are supposed to recreate closer to home now that the parks and federal lands are open and everyone is worried about crowds and gateway communities, but honestly we made 2 stops, one of which we would have made anyway at our grocery store and one for takeout food not real far from home and we saw less than a dozen people all of whom we were plenty far away from.
We drove this old Forest Service road up a hill with a drop off at one point and OMG my stomach flipped over. I gripped the doors of the car and thought about earthquakes.
I'm scared of earthquakes. When I look around, I often look for things that could fall on our heads. know pretty much where I'd go in any room in my house in the event of an earthquake. I have a disaster kit that badly needs updating (pandemic stocking up has helped a lot.)
My husband has no fear of them. When I bought him earthquake straps for his computer room, he laughed at me. Then again, he came to Washington in 2002 and as such as not felt one. I have, so I figure I have some experience in that.
In the age of COVID-19, a lot of my fears of earthquakes have subsided. There are other, more pressing things to worry about and there is an element of accepting that life is a bit of a lottery. Bad things happen. If you're standing in the wrong place when the big one hits, not much you can do to survive it. If you're not in the center (and most of us won't be,) odds are pretty good you'll make it through. Worrying doesn't really impact the outcome one way or another.
The first person in the area to die of COVID-19 died February 29 at Evergreen hospital in Kirkland. I was at Evergreen hospital for my volunteer shift with Max February 27. We walked all over that place, touched all kinds of surfaces. Yep, I know how hard they have worked to contain places where they treat infectious diseases and given how good Washington's numbers have been compared to other places, they have done amazing, but the point is that by February 27 we now know this thing was in wide circulation in the community and we were in the hospital. We easily could have picked it up there from an asymptomatic carrier or someone who didn't yet know they were sick.
On March 10, a choir in Skagit county had their rehearsal, following social distancing guidelines. They didn't know then that singing was a super spreading incident. 45 of the 60 choir members got sick and 2 died.
On March 10, my choir had what turned out to be its last rehearsal. We had no outbreak. That doesn't have anything to do with anything we did. It's just luck. It could have been us.
I have said some things on this blog that probably make me sound like I have a pretty cavalier attitude towards the people who have been sick and those who have died. I don't mean it. It's so horribly awful I can't even comprehend it. The New York Times ran a front page story in which they listed the names of people who have died in the U.S. They got to 1,000. That's 1%. That's insane.
It's a really shitty lottery to be in. And it's not the fault of the victims. They all just happened to be in a place where they picked up a virus, like you might pick up the common cold or stomach flu except this one attacked their lungs and made it hard to breathe, attacked their organs, hit them hard and fast and didn't give them a chance. Some of them were older. Many lived in nursing homes. Some were essential workers who are taking a bigger chance, being stuck with more lottery tickets. Some of them just went to choir practice.
The point is, I still think of an earthquake causing a landslide and sending us plummeting down into the ravine on this beautiful road. Because it's normal to be scared of death. Even though it's inevitable, even though it's gonna happen to all of us, it's still sucky and awful especially when it comes too damn soon. Which, that I do have some experience with.
But I also did have the thought, what a way to go. With this beautiful view. With my family on this lovely day. I don't want to go. I want to be here. I will fight hard to be here and to give my kids the full lives they deserve. But if this is our moment I will be grateful I am here right now with them and had this time.
I don't think there's a profound lesson in that. It's not stuff we all don't already know, have lived many times, every time we've been scared of the death of ourselves or someone we love. It's been said the only difference between humans and every other life form on the planet is we *know* we're gonna die so we get to spend our life wrestling with that. And the wrestling makes art and passion and a lot of other things that are pretty great, even though the death part is pretty damn awful. And when 100,000 extra people die in three months in just your country alone that brings it all very very close to where you are and probably explains why some people make masks and some people hoard toilet paper and some people read scientific articles that aren't peer reviewed. Because there's really nothing you *can* do...no way to change the reality. Yeah, you can follow the rules and that helps, but we're not gonna social distance this thing away. That's not how viruses work. There's no possible way we can stay far enough apart from each other to give the virus absolutely no way of spreading. It can't be done. It's never been done with an infectious disease. They couldn't even keep Typhoid Mary locked up. So we cope. And I will grip door handles of the car and both laugh at myself for still being scared of earthquakes and prepare for a very real threat. And try to be gentler with people who do their own way of coping.
Today's media consumption: I read my section of Jo's Boys and even though I am already reading four books and don't need to start another I picked up a book tonight written by the guy who ran the first Ford dealership in Sunnyside, WA from 1915-1932 and started reading it. It's called Me and the Model T and it's adorable, inspired by all the back roads of today.
Today I'm grateful for hiking, my family, books, nice weather, car snacks, hiking, road trips, normalcy, my fantastic husband, and long weekends. And good health!
We road tripped, found some trailheads (not the ones we were looking for...every year we re-learn that the Washington Trails Association website SUCKS,) ate car snacks and a picnic, looked at some views, drove back roads, got lost a couple of times, and generally had a really fun family day. With not much guilt...yes, I know we are supposed to recreate closer to home now that the parks and federal lands are open and everyone is worried about crowds and gateway communities, but honestly we made 2 stops, one of which we would have made anyway at our grocery store and one for takeout food not real far from home and we saw less than a dozen people all of whom we were plenty far away from.
We drove this old Forest Service road up a hill with a drop off at one point and OMG my stomach flipped over. I gripped the doors of the car and thought about earthquakes.
I'm scared of earthquakes. When I look around, I often look for things that could fall on our heads. know pretty much where I'd go in any room in my house in the event of an earthquake. I have a disaster kit that badly needs updating (pandemic stocking up has helped a lot.)
My husband has no fear of them. When I bought him earthquake straps for his computer room, he laughed at me. Then again, he came to Washington in 2002 and as such as not felt one. I have, so I figure I have some experience in that.
In the age of COVID-19, a lot of my fears of earthquakes have subsided. There are other, more pressing things to worry about and there is an element of accepting that life is a bit of a lottery. Bad things happen. If you're standing in the wrong place when the big one hits, not much you can do to survive it. If you're not in the center (and most of us won't be,) odds are pretty good you'll make it through. Worrying doesn't really impact the outcome one way or another.
The first person in the area to die of COVID-19 died February 29 at Evergreen hospital in Kirkland. I was at Evergreen hospital for my volunteer shift with Max February 27. We walked all over that place, touched all kinds of surfaces. Yep, I know how hard they have worked to contain places where they treat infectious diseases and given how good Washington's numbers have been compared to other places, they have done amazing, but the point is that by February 27 we now know this thing was in wide circulation in the community and we were in the hospital. We easily could have picked it up there from an asymptomatic carrier or someone who didn't yet know they were sick.
On March 10, a choir in Skagit county had their rehearsal, following social distancing guidelines. They didn't know then that singing was a super spreading incident. 45 of the 60 choir members got sick and 2 died.
On March 10, my choir had what turned out to be its last rehearsal. We had no outbreak. That doesn't have anything to do with anything we did. It's just luck. It could have been us.
I have said some things on this blog that probably make me sound like I have a pretty cavalier attitude towards the people who have been sick and those who have died. I don't mean it. It's so horribly awful I can't even comprehend it. The New York Times ran a front page story in which they listed the names of people who have died in the U.S. They got to 1,000. That's 1%. That's insane.
It's a really shitty lottery to be in. And it's not the fault of the victims. They all just happened to be in a place where they picked up a virus, like you might pick up the common cold or stomach flu except this one attacked their lungs and made it hard to breathe, attacked their organs, hit them hard and fast and didn't give them a chance. Some of them were older. Many lived in nursing homes. Some were essential workers who are taking a bigger chance, being stuck with more lottery tickets. Some of them just went to choir practice.
The point is, I still think of an earthquake causing a landslide and sending us plummeting down into the ravine on this beautiful road. Because it's normal to be scared of death. Even though it's inevitable, even though it's gonna happen to all of us, it's still sucky and awful especially when it comes too damn soon. Which, that I do have some experience with.
But I also did have the thought, what a way to go. With this beautiful view. With my family on this lovely day. I don't want to go. I want to be here. I will fight hard to be here and to give my kids the full lives they deserve. But if this is our moment I will be grateful I am here right now with them and had this time.
I don't think there's a profound lesson in that. It's not stuff we all don't already know, have lived many times, every time we've been scared of the death of ourselves or someone we love. It's been said the only difference between humans and every other life form on the planet is we *know* we're gonna die so we get to spend our life wrestling with that. And the wrestling makes art and passion and a lot of other things that are pretty great, even though the death part is pretty damn awful. And when 100,000 extra people die in three months in just your country alone that brings it all very very close to where you are and probably explains why some people make masks and some people hoard toilet paper and some people read scientific articles that aren't peer reviewed. Because there's really nothing you *can* do...no way to change the reality. Yeah, you can follow the rules and that helps, but we're not gonna social distance this thing away. That's not how viruses work. There's no possible way we can stay far enough apart from each other to give the virus absolutely no way of spreading. It can't be done. It's never been done with an infectious disease. They couldn't even keep Typhoid Mary locked up. So we cope. And I will grip door handles of the car and both laugh at myself for still being scared of earthquakes and prepare for a very real threat. And try to be gentler with people who do their own way of coping.
Today's media consumption: I read my section of Jo's Boys and even though I am already reading four books and don't need to start another I picked up a book tonight written by the guy who ran the first Ford dealership in Sunnyside, WA from 1915-1932 and started reading it. It's called Me and the Model T and it's adorable, inspired by all the back roads of today.
Today I'm grateful for hiking, my family, books, nice weather, car snacks, hiking, road trips, normalcy, my fantastic husband, and long weekends. And good health!
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