Most mornings, I’m awoken by my son, who is four months old. Lately, that means it’s somewhere between 4 and 6 a.m. When I’m on morning duty, I change him and feed him. For a few sweet hours, I can pretend life is normal. As I get ready for work, a familiar sense of dread slowly builds. My husband is working from home, so I do my best to focus on the time we have together and be grateful. If not for the pandemic, he’d leave the house at 6:30 to get to work by 7, and I’d be wrangling the baby and our pets while getting ready for work by myself.
I drop off my son at my parents’ house, breeze down the empty freeway and pull up to the store. I take a few sips of water and put on my masks, a cloth one with a surgical mask stuck inside. If It’s a Saturday, the busiest day of the week, I wear an N95 with a surgical mask layered over it. Doubling up masks makes the loops pull my ears forward, giving me the appearance of some kind of apocalyptic elf. By the end of the day, I’ll have a bad headache from the constant pulling. I walked around my house the other day wearing just a cloth mask, trying to understand why some people seem to have such a hard time with them. It was almost like wearing nothing at all.
Once the mask is in place, on goes the face shield. I’m the only one at work who wears one. If I thought there were a chance in hell that everyone I interacted with over the course of a day would be wearing a mask properly, I wouldn’t wear the face shield. Unfortunately, most Houstonians don’t seem able to wear one correctly or consistently, jam-packed hospitals be damned. (And we expect children to wear them in school come fall??) Customers are much better about wearing masks now that it’s mandated. A few of my co-workers are, how shall I say…a work in progress.
I get out of my car and the day begins.
Recently, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said that if the situation statewide continues to worsen, he will have to consider a second lockdown. Harris County judge Lina Hidalgo declared the threat to the county as Level 1: Stay Home, meaning there is a severe and uncontrolled level of COVID-19. And still, so many just don’t care. People will happily believe anything they read or watch online if it serves their own self interest. See: masks are bad for you, that Plandemic video, “Case numbers are only increasing because there is more testing!!”, the list goes on.
Sometimes, in a strange way, I am jealous of them. How nice it must be to carry on with meals out, vacations and children’s play dates, without a care in the world. The only people my son has met outside of my household are my parents and my high-risk sister, who purposefully dehydrates herself so that she can make the drive from Austin without having to stop to use a public restroom. I haven’t seen one friend since I had a socially distanced diaper pickup in March two weeks after giving birth. Living like this long term isn’t sustainable, but it’s what we’re sticking with for the time being.
I tell myself it’s not so bad. The baby keeps us plenty busy and I am more than capable of giving myself a pedicure. But the truth is, I miss my friends and I hate that they can’t meet my baby. I hate all of this.
At work, when I’m busy, things feel pretty normal. I don’t want to give the impression that it’s all doom and gloom all the time, or that I’m terrified every day. It’s not and I’m not. I love my job and I care deeply about the store I work for, so it’s always nice to see customers on the showroom floor, despite the current situation. A global pandemic may be raging, but anniversaries still happen, people are still getting married and babies will be born no matter what. Watch lovers continue to covet watches, and lately, there has been an explosion of couples looking at engagement rings. We’ve taken to calling it Covid love. In many ways, being back at work helps keep me sane during all this. The familiar routine and human interaction pull me out of the Covid spiral.
Although I must admit that at times, it feels like a lose-lose situation. When lots of customers are in the store, I don’t feel particularly safe. But when traffic is light, I worry about that, too.
When I first got back from maternity leave in early June, customers would bring up the pandemic a lot more than they do now. It’s all becoming routine, I guess. I follow their lead and focus on whatever occasion they’re celebrating. It’s nice to be able to make people smile. I’ve always enjoyed that about my job. But sometimes, my face shield makes people angry. “Take that thing off your face! You’re way too pretty to be wearing that!” was a confusing comment I received the other day. Gee, thanks? It wasn’t the first comment and it won’t be the last. I’ve had meaner. I tell myself it’s character building, and that I’ll have some great stories for my son one day. I should add that just as many people want to know where I bought it.
Within my Covid bubble, I am the only one who works face to face with the general public. My sister and husband work from home, and my parents are retired. My parents are watching the baby during the day for the time being so we can avoid daycare. They are willing to risk their own health to protect their grandson. After all, they say you’re only as safe as the least safe person in your bubble. I am that person, and I feel a great deal of pressure because of it. The muscles in my neck and shoulders have been hard as rocks for weeks.
So I stay away from other store employees as much as possible, alcohol wipes and hand sanitizer always at the ready. I scarf down my lunch alone in my office as quickly as I can. Even though I do everything I can to protect myself at work, I know that only goes so far. If I don’t have the authority to make people put their masks on over their nose, I sure as hell can’t tell them what to do in their personal lives. On bad days, I feel something akin to rage bubbling up inside me. I try my best to quash it, but it’s getting harder and harder the longer this goes on.
At the end of the day, I wipe down my computer, keys, cell phone and anything else I’ve touched that comes home with me. Once in my sweltering car, which has been baking all day in the summer sun, I finally take off the mask and face shield. At home, I hang up my clothes in the garage and head straight to the shower.
Overkill? Maybe. But if my worst fears become reality, at least I can say I did everything I could.