I'm sitting here staring at a brand new sewing machine. It's all set up and ready to go, a constant reminder to me that I should be making face masks. It's a sweet machine and was reasonably-priced and easy to order on-line, just like so many of the new arrivals in our house lately. I have yet to sew one face mask, although I have tried several times. I'm late in the game so there are hundreds of different YouTube videos that offer instructions and it's not only time-consuming plowing through them but also, very confusing. Which one is the most comfortable, the easiest, the quickest, the most durable. I don't know how to chose. I am thinking it must be easier to simply go back to Amazon and order a box of paper masks, the ones used by health professionals, those that were virtually impossible to obtain just a few short weeks ago. I could cross my fingers and hope that from date of order to date of arrival might be before the end of the Pandemic. Those purchased face masks will be good enough, chic enough, and enough for the job for which they were intended. I bet that very soon, everyone will finally give up on the face-mask-fashion-show and when we're shopping in the supermarket, we'll find boxes of paper masks in the diaper aisle, a staple on everyone's list. Toilet paper, face masks. Don't get caught short!
This Pandemic life is filled with so many lessons. As we cut through the layers and become accustomed to living with the fear of human contact of any kind, we also cut through layers of our own personalities. For some of us, that in itself will be a positive by-product, something good rising out of the ashes of this unspeakable horror. For others, it will cause greater problems. Long into the future, we will see the evidence of shattered lives, failed marriages, undiagnosed illnesses, and countless other results that will shape the rest of our lives. I do believe we will survive this and that we will carry forth our new ways, tempering everything with which we come into contact. But for now, we're still just trying to get through each day, week and month, akin to those layers that make up the face masks. And it still does feel quite surreal.
At home, it seems that we're constantly fixing or improving something. How did we not notice that so many things needed our attention? How did I survive without a Swiffer? Slowly, we're replacing things like the old sewing machine, the oven thermometer, the nozzle on the garden hose. We're waiting for the arrival of a sound bar for our T.V., our son telling us that we must have it to improve the quality of the presentations of the Metropolitan Opera that we can pick and choose from at any given time, right in our own den. I guess that the sound wasn't "good enough" before the Pandemic. Like the spray on the hose. Like the oven. Like the old sewing machine.
Like our lives before. Like the lives before the masks.
This Pandemic life is filled with so many lessons. As we cut through the layers and become accustomed to living with the fear of human contact of any kind, we also cut through layers of our own personalities. For some of us, that in itself will be a positive by-product, something good rising out of the ashes of this unspeakable horror. For others, it will cause greater problems. Long into the future, we will see the evidence of shattered lives, failed marriages, undiagnosed illnesses, and countless other results that will shape the rest of our lives. I do believe we will survive this and that we will carry forth our new ways, tempering everything with which we come into contact. But for now, we're still just trying to get through each day, week and month, akin to those layers that make up the face masks. And it still does feel quite surreal.
At home, it seems that we're constantly fixing or improving something. How did we not notice that so many things needed our attention? How did I survive without a Swiffer? Slowly, we're replacing things like the old sewing machine, the oven thermometer, the nozzle on the garden hose. We're waiting for the arrival of a sound bar for our T.V., our son telling us that we must have it to improve the quality of the presentations of the Metropolitan Opera that we can pick and choose from at any given time, right in our own den. I guess that the sound wasn't "good enough" before the Pandemic. Like the spray on the hose. Like the oven. Like the old sewing machine.
Like our lives before. Like the lives before the masks.
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