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A hug, a beer and a bag of chips
How are you doing, today? As I write this it’s Sunday, May 31st. Today is our eldest son’s birthday. I remember the day he was born in Humber Memorial Hospital in Weston/Toronto. It was a shocking reality for both LOML and I. Pregnancy was one thing, but suddenly we weren’t a young, hip couple anymore. We were parents. We had a kid who relied on us for everything. In the truest sense of the word “awesome”, it was. We were mesmerized by a wee human who wrapped us around his little finger and took full control of our lives. Everything we thought, or did, centered on what that newborn was thinking or doing. To heck with an Arts and a Business background, suddenly we became research scientists. “Is he too hot? Is he cold? Is he hungry? Is he wet? Is he tired? Does he need a cuddle? Does he have gas? Is that diaper rash? Is that poop-face?” On our first day at home with him we saw all of the facial expressions and heard all of the grunts, groans, gurgles and cries, but had no idea how to treat the symptoms for whatever was ailing him. We had been pretty cocky about being parents and suddenly, in the face of reality, we were flummoxed. We would try everything to bring a bit of peace to our home. We were never sure of what actually worked. Sometimes he’d fall into a peaceful sleep with the two of us standing there, not knowing what the cure had been and fearful the problem would start again, at any moment. We didn’t know it, but there we were, forty-eight years ago, in the midst of a newborn-demic. We vowed we’d flatten the curve. Heave a sigh of relief. Try to continue with our old “normal life” and the next wave would hit. We never knew when, how, why or where. We only knew who it was at the centre of it.
And here we are still wondering about pandemics, albeit a different kind. On his birthday, we can’t hug our son and we can’t be there when he blows the candles out. We can’t sit together, reminisce and answer the inevitable, “Grandma, what was Daddy like when he was my age?” question from his daughter, our granddaughter. Here we are, though, still trying to flatten the curve and not knowing, with any degree of certainty, what works and what doesn’t work. Now our elected officials are talking of opening the province, bitby- bit, region-by-region. And it looks like Prince Edward County could be one of those soon-to-open “regions”. The County’s report card has shown almost all As. In no time, someone will officially tell us to “keep up the good work” and “show other regions how it’s done”. We’ll probably have to demonstrate keeping up the good work and how it’s done, while the rest of the province is here, visiting and trying to get away from their isolated lives. How do we handle this “opening up” when we’ve never had to deal with it before? Is there a Dr. Spock-like book about dealing with a chapter on “In the midst of a pandemic, how to act like it’s over” situation? Which page is that on? What do we feed a pandemic it when it gets out-of-hand? Maybe we don’t feed it? Do we know what we should be looking for? Does it make a “poop-face”? Does an almost-post-pandemic have those outward symptoms, like a distressed, newborn human? Does it begin to smell when it goes wrong, about two weeks after the opening? Believe me when I tell you Dr. Spock was, to LOML and me, as worthless as a degree in Health Sciences from a Trump University. Our kid never slept peacefully between feedings. He never burped without a huge, shocking “throw up”. Our newborn kid howled from ten in the morning until ten at night. Our beautiful infant was lactose intolerant, but Dr. Spock never once suggested such a thing could have existed. LOML and I tried to find the answer to what ailed our little pandemic-baby in the pages of the Spock-lopedia but, mostly, we just bumbled along. One day we threw the babybible out and went with our gut feelings and offered endless cuddles, hugs, songs, co-sleeping and a non-dairy milk-like substance. Who knows how scarred he is because of our bumbling. He’s still lactose intolerant, so there wasn’t a cure for that problem. We’re still his parents. We still bumble along, by times.
Maybe we can handle a “soft” opening of Prince Edward County. Goodness knows, economically, the County is suffering in many areas right now. Maybe we should let the tourists in, but vow to just stay away from them. We could tell them they have to wear special “tourist masks”. Something to identify them and which we could recognize from a distance, so we could keep our distance. No? Not a good idea? For certain, however the opening of the County happens, someone needs to be writing it all down. Careful documentation of what it all looks like before, during and after. And, when Thanksgiving Weekend has passed and most of the tourists have gone home, we can all sit down, socially distanced from each other, and figure out how to flatten a curve we hadn’t dealt with in the first place. I say we might have to skip the distancing and just give in to some hugs.
By October, we’ll all need a big hug, a beer and a bag of chips.
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