Looking back, I think the time before the lockdown was like one of those horror movies that shows everyone going about their business before everything hits the fan. I had to take Cilla to dance class in the morning. (She has added hip hop to ballet, so that's two hours a week, not counting transportation.) In the afternoon, I took Betsey to the Mall. We picked up Ilse on the way, and Nikki walked to the car with a bag of books she was getting rid of. I said “Terrific" (an English major never turns down books), but I was going to clean out all the drawers and closets and maybe even the attic. She said, “I don't think it's going to last a year,” and we laughed.
Ed, who is very practical and likes apocalyptic and dystopian literature, has always insisted we keep a stock pile of paper products and canned food. We have an overflow of canned chili, and I thought I might as well pick up a few bags of tortilla chips and jars of salsa (all strength as well as pineapple and watermelon), but the parking lot at the supermarket was packed and people were rushing to their cars with overflowing baskets. (Karen told me she had put in an order on the computer, but at 5:00 the store told her the order had been canceled.)
I went to the drug store and got the chips and salsa (although they only had hot and mild. Hard times.) We were waiting to hear what would be closed. There was the feel of waiting for a snow day for the kids. Ed and I would both be working at home. The kids were delighted when it was announced that schools would be closed. What they hadn't thought of was that they would be home-schooled and that locked down means you are locked in your house, and so is everyone else.
Josh called the isolation “solitary confinement” and “house arrest.” Betsey said that lack of human contact makes people crazy. I asked them what was their family, chopped liver? Josh said Ed and I were the corrections officers and the girls were his fellow prisoners. Probably at the instigation of the others, Cilla had made an ankle bracelet out of Legos and duct tape.
I said “good one,” and, as I do when they fight, I told them I had wished for siblings all my life. I would have even prayed for them, but I was a Unitarian. The Only Child Card may get old for them, but never for me. Cilla looked sympathetic. Betsey rolled her eyes and Josh told me how lucky I was to have all that extra money spent on me. Betsey said I hadn't had to put up with anybody getting in my stuff or walking by and hitting me on the back of the head. Josh said he just tapped.
Ed happened to be walking by on his way on his way to the kitchen, He said anybody who had siblings would say I was neurotic. I said maybe that was what made me that way. Not to mention being raised by two scientists/and having most of the family named after writers or literary characters, including an Aunt Pooh.
