I know I’ve been remiss in posting; my apologies. I’ve had a lot on my plate.
Some of it has been practical: we haven’t been wearing masks because we don’t go near anybody when we go out, whether it’s my husband’s regular necessary trip to the supermarket, taking my kid to the doctor, or just going for a short neighborhood walk. That said, it’s likely to become mandatory at any moment to wear facial gear when out of doors and we should be prepared. I’ve been laboriously making masks, thus, but I do not
sew. I know the basics, I’ve had training, but I’m just not any good at it and furthermore my sewing machine, some knock-off brand from the 1990’s, either has never really worked properly or I seriously suck at using it, so I did these by hand. I love to embroider; hand-stitching is no problem at all. A friend found me a great pattern for a simple mask made from old t-shirts, of which I have a bin full, intending to paint them one day. It’s supposed to be a no-stitch mask but I doubled it and sewed it together to create a space we could put a coffee filter into, or some paper towels. I’ve decorated mine, as you can see, but still need to embellish the others’.
Some of it has been stupid; I ended up doing too much trying to help my neighbor lay tiles in my garden that were left over from renovating his. The man showed up out of the blue, obviously at the end of his regular work day doing something that must now be truly terrifying: driving a city but. He announced that he now had time to lay tiles by our gate, which he offered to do a couple of years ago when they replaced our shared fence and all became muddy. Far be it from me to tell him no when he asked if I could clear an area where the old, ugly gravel tiles had lain while he retrieved the new ones. My husband was of course imperiling himself retrieving victuals and household necessities and the affable, exhausted bus driver before me only had so much time before his dinner. I quickly learned that removing the top 15 centimeters or so of very gravelly soil with only one arm was both strenuous and ill-advised, and it took rather a toll on my sprained rib. He turned up again when I’d managed a third of it and was considering bursting into tears of frustration and seized the shovel from me, finished the job very quickly, and, while I popped inside to feed my hungry teenager, laid a marvelous brick edge and a grey stone tile mini-patio so that now, instead of laboriously dragging our recycling and green-waste bins across a jagged landscape of tile pieces, weeds, and mud, we can roll them effortlessly down a gentle slope into the well-drained alleyway (which didn’t used to be; I don’t know whether from incompetence or subsidence (or both), but until a couple of years ago, when they completely regraded it, after a storm it would be a river, more than ankle deep, with drain grills on low concrete pillars sticking up, dry, along its length). I retreated to the embraces of a hot water bottle for my stupid rib. Doing stupidly physically ambitious practical labor is still my most persistent bad habit.
The big thing is, though, that my kid is sick. Not super sick (yet) or anything but definitely solidly and miserably ill.
Is it covid-19? Well, I mean, probably. It could be a flu of course, but the symptoms I’m seeing would be textbook for the onset of corona if corona were already in textbooks. It’s impossible to have a test done because here in the Netherlands, the covid response took on a too-little, too-late character, although not, luckily, matching the shambles evident in some countries. We do not, therefore, have enough tests to go around, and only those with serious symptoms can be tested. Like so many other places, we are also short on safety equipment (and a shipment of millions of masks was recently discovered to be unsuitable for medical use, prompting a dispute with China, which says the Netherlands knew that when they bought them). My kid almost never gets fevers; this one’s lasted two days now. I’m concerned, of course, but not unduly so; this age group is not particularly at risk, barring underlying factors. Still… It’s my child, suffering. And we’ll probably be next; here’s hoping my kid’s fully recovered before I go down. Not to mention my poor rib; coughing sounds nightmarish right now.
Only a couple of days ago we were walking in the park together, a few of blocks from our house, studiously avoiding other people. I was pleased to see that everyone else was too; only a week ago I was bemoaning groups of joggers, close enough to sweat on each other, and masses of children in the neighborhood playground.
We found these clovers, but I don’t feel all that lucky today – not that my luck is ever good for much beyond finding the clovers in the first place. I found most of these and my kid found three, including one of the five-leafers. Already though, I was noticing reduced energy, a peaked look, a trace of cough. And now here we are.
With some trouble I’ve arranged new supplies. The battery in our thermometer is low, and now batteries cost more than a new thermometer; we’re running low on vitamins and cough syrup. The trouble came around when it became evident that, out of the three major drug store chains here from which I could order online, one had the thermometer, one had the vitamins, and one the cough syrup, and all charge a hefty delivery fee if it’s under 20 Euros, a value well in excess of the cost of each of these items. Well, not the vitamins for all. I went a little berserk for a couple of minutes when the main online-only drug store turned out to have NONE of these things in stock, but luckily a bit of searching coughed up another one which, miraculously, had everything (I got the last bottle of teenager-vitamins). We’re getting a different brand than we usually take, but who cares? They’re multivitamins, they’ll do fine.
I don’t know what the future holds for us in particular. As of today there are in this country 16,627 confirmed cases in this country, but of course, without adequate testing, we can’t know the real number. It’s certainly much higher. Two people I know, both like me over 50 and slightly alarmed, are convinced they’ve had it and are in recovery. We’ve been sure all along we’ll get it; chances of not doing so are much lower than the odds of picking it up. We’ve been acting like we have it for the sake of social distancing, so we’ll just keep on doing that now that we assume it’s among us. I’m less than sanguine about this hitting at the weekend, with all of tonight and tomorrow and another night to get our kid through without being able to consult with our GP, but of course should anything alarming develop there are several options, starting with the off-hours GP post and ending with ambulances. We don’t expect trouble, though, just the misery of a bad illness and all it brings. I hope we can stagger it a bit. All three of us creeping and moaning around all dysfunctionally would put a serious cramp on our lifestyle, which depends on someone being able to buy groceries once in a while.
We’re just going to keep taking this one day at a time, keep taking precautions, keep taking care – of ourselves, of each other, of our family, friends, and neighbors from afar. I’ll try to keep you posted regularly but I don’t know yet, of course, how busy I’ll be taking care of my kid, how I’ll be feeling, all that kind of jazz. Stay well yourself, or if you aren’t, get well! Don’t do anything inadvisable and make sure you respect the protocols and stick to the guidelines.
It’s going to be OK.
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