Living In Care

by mollykl

While the past year and a half has been horrifying it has also been…enlightening.

Of course, the horrifying part wasn’t just a pandemic that claimed millions of lives, as if that wasn’t bad enough, it was the realization that the horror was our fellow man. As the news got more and more grim, and the lockdowns, and shortages, and hoarding began, people’s true nature appeared, like David from the marble, chipped away by the pressure from the outside world.

I got a front row seat to the show. As an essential worker I saw it all. I saw my coworkers yelled at for wearing masks. I got called a “sheep”. I got temped each day coming to work, holding my breath and crossing my fingers every morning. I was accused of holding stock in the back for myself. I was accused of price gouging. Through it all I tried my very best to keep myself healthy, sane, and still sober.

Looking back on the year, and a million social media posts, op-eds, soundbites, and chyrons, I’ve decided that the world is divided into two groups, and the previously mentioned set us against each other.

The first scream into the void that they will not live in fear. What entails living in fear you ask? Wearing a mask. Buying a mask. Staying home per the “stay at home” order. Not gathering in large groups. Getting a vaccine. Planning to get a vaccine. This group says that the economy is paramount, and businesses need to stay open, people need to get out there and spend. Schools need to stay open, and, well, kids don’t get COVID anyway, do they? Dan Patrick, the Lieutenant Governor of Texas put it succinctly when he said that senior citizens might be willing to die for the economy. He also said there were “more important things than living.” Please keep in mind that this is from the “pro-life” party. If you disagree with them you’re a sheep, a snowflake, or a liberal. Or a combination of all three. A “snowshlib”? Quick, tell Fox News that I’m trademarking that!

To exhibit any caution (over a disease that was remarkably contagious and promised a painful death or slow agonizing recovery) was to be living in fear. Or so I was told by news pundits, politicians, and the president himself, who held super-spreader events that led to numerous cases.

I chose to see it another way, and I like to think I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t “living in fear”, I was living in care.

So what is living in care? Living in care is wearing that mask to ensure that your friends and neighbors are safe. I spent 8+ hours a day, five (sometimes 5+) days a week in a grocery store in 2020. I donated blood every 8 weeks, and every single test came back negative for COVID anti-bodies. I tell you what, around September, which was approximately the 6-month mark of lockdown, I started to feel pretty fucking bullet-proof. That I’d made it that long, as the death toll country-wide was ratcheting up, felt like I was untouchable. News flash: I’m not, it’s just that the masks actually work.

Living in care is the smile, and yes you can see a smile even through a mask,, no matter how tired you are, to the stranger, because you know it’s is actually going to matter. It’s the hug for your kid because freshman year of high school is not what they imagined.

It’s my friend and coworker L, who brought in an unopened bottle of rubbing alcohol from her home to a customer because he needed one for his daughter who was diabetic and needed to clean her injection site.

It’s the restaurants that shifted to take out to keep their staff working.

It’s the school districts that kept their breakfast and lunch programs going, knowing that for many students, their school meal is the only one they get.

It’s nurses, doctors, med school students, working triple shifts to keep up with demand. Staying away from their own families to protect them, when at the end of 24 or 48 hours all you want is a hug and a shoulder to cry on.

It’s my employer, who, when other grocery chains stopped “hazzard pay” after a month or two, continued to pay well into 2021.

It’s “Nana Fran” who made hundreds of cloth face masks to give away for free to people she didn’t know.

Living in care is caring for your neighbor. Hell, it’s caring for people you don’t even like, but don’t want to see suffer.

I guess it’s all how you look at it. You might see that I wore a mask, and washed my hands, stayed home and think I was living in fear.

I wasn’t. I was living in care. And I tell you what: if I had to, I would do it again.