The Devil’s Snow Globe

Ever get the feeling you are being watched — messed with — slid across a board like a pawn? In nightmares that feeling looks like teeth crumbling and falling from your mouth, or sitting in the passenger seat of a car with a stranger at the wheel, or defecating in bathrooms with glass walls or wading through flood waters, looking for a boat.

Your mind says, we should rub lambs blood on our doors and slam them shut until someone has slayed the dragon we know as COVID-19…

But it’s time for school. I am both teacher and mother. I go in everyday on edge. After a week of breathing problems from L.I.P. and TBM**, I was allowed to wear a face shield instead of a mask. My lungs work much better, but I never breathe easy. Children don’t understand social distancing. In the halls they huddle. They bunch up together around stories they need to tell. They giggle, and sing, and laugh and argue. I wait to see the dragon’s face.

Now, the snowglobe has been shaken again. They want my children’s school to start. They want to push them into this reality. Being little ones, they understand social distancing far less than my high school students. I want them to socialize, to learn face to face, to get special education benefits that they need, and yet, I wonder: Will someone that loves me unwittingly bring death to my door? What will that do to their psychee if I am gone?

I wrote my will just in case. It actually helped me relax. I found it theraputic. Teachers, I highly recommend it.

On day one I told my students, either they will follow the health and safety rules at school, or I have approximately 4 weeks to live. Two weeks for the virus to take hold, 2 weeks in the hospital, and then…

Will someone I am responsible for unwittingly bring death to my door? That is the question plaguing my dreams, when I give a masked driver directions he ignores, or when the flood waters fill my mouth.

My student Becca says “Sometimes you have to have faith just to be healthy.” She means that being scared everyday makes you sick, and she is right. It raises blood sugar and blood pressure. Now another dragon has come: diabetes. And yet, when people say to have faith I scoff only because I know stories of good people of faith that were grasped by the dragon while serving others, while worshiping God. I know good people of faith who prayed, who were enveloped in the love of church families, but are now empty shells wrapped in plastic in refrigerated trucks.

Heaven is a wonderful place. I’d love to visit sometime…but not today…not in 4 weeks…not now.

So I put the lambs blood on the door, wear the rabbit’s foot, say the prayer, distract the mind with TV, food, shopping, love making – even though I know, I’m just a figure inside the devil’s snow globe that he can shake at will. I’m Job, blistered and battered in a spiritual game. I am not driving the car.

**L.I.P. stands for lymphocytic Interstitial Pneumonitis; TBM stands for Tracheobronchomalacia Chronic Lung Diseases make people more likely to have negative outcomes from Covid-19.

#Anxiety #CovidAnxiety #Covid19 #SchoolReoppening