I have been debating for a while about writing some of my thoughts down concerning this virus. For the last few weeks, I've been getting texts and calls from people checking up on us, because they know we live in New York City, and they are wondering how things are going here. I appreciate that a lot, and this is a chance for me to respond to all the inquiries and share some of what we are experiencing.
I live in Jackson Heights, Queens. To the north of us is East Elmhurst. To the east is Corona, and South of us is Elmhurst. If you've heard or read anything about "the hardest hit area in America," you'll recognize these names. The news has been calling us the "epicenter of the epicenter."
This is my neighborhood, my community, and a portion of my ward. The rest of my ward is also hard-hit. The whole of Queens--the whole of New York City--has been hard hit. But my neighborhood has been especially affected. A very large number of people are out of work. They are out of food. They are sick.
Some of them don't have to go to the hospital, but wait it out at home. (I have friends who have had it and recovered quickly, but I have several friends and acquaintances, otherwise healthy individuals, that are going on 5 to 6 weeks of fever and chest pain.) Some of them end up in overcrowded hospitals, alone. No one is allowed to be there with them. No visitors. This disease is terrible for those hit hard by it. I know that some people who get it just get mild symptoms, but for those that get hit hard, it is a long and miserable fight. Please take it seriously, because it is not "just like the flu" or "just like a cold" for a lot of people.
If you don't know anyone who has had it, and you want to know what it is like for those that are hit hard by it, there are plenty of articles about it that describe the experience in detail. Just google it. And if you want to know what the hospitals were like here during the apex of the virus in April, google Elmhurst Hospital Center and coronavirus. You'll find articles like these:
https://www.baltimoresun.com/coronavirus/ct-nw-nyt-tragedy-new-york-virus-epicenter-20200410-mktotr4gd5ftzmklhhc4iq4eem-story.html
I would share the NY Times articles, but if you don't have a subscription, you can't access them. Let's just say that Elmhurst Hospital, just a mile or so from my apartment, was among the hardest hit.
We have had people sick with Covid19 in our building. We've had people in our co-op who have passed away from it. It isn't unusual for us to go outside and see ambulances parked near our building, or near other buildings, and just wonder who else is sick. A member of our ward, a friend of ours, passed away in his home, alone. The sadness of that, when I think about it, makes me physically sick to my stomach. It's just so devastating to think about what he might have gone through by himself. We've lost other members of our stake, as well, and we have many vulnerable members in our ward that we worry about, and pray for, every single day. We hope that they will not get sick, because it probably won't go well for them if they do. Some of them are in nursing homes. Some are fighting off other diseases--heart disease, kidney failure, cancer, autoimmune diseases--this virus could be catastrophic for them. I am among those in our ward with an autoimmune disease, and I treat it with immunosuppressants. Although I am in otherwise good health, and I'm hopeful I'd get through if I contract the virus, I still live with this worry.
Apart from the sickness, there are other worries. Many businesses around us have closed down. We don't know how many of them will be able to reopen. Our neighborhood might look very different when all of this is over, and it makes me very sad to think about.
At the beginning of this mess, as the stores began limiting the numbers of people who can go in at a time, the grocery store lines extended around the blocks. More recently though, those lines have all but disappeared. Now, it's the lines for the food banks that have exploded. Every day I take a morning walk through my neighborhood, and I see people lined up hours early for the food banks. Here is a visual example, if that helps:
Yesterday, as I took the kids out for a walk, we passed a line that was probably half a mile long. One of our state senators was hosting a produce giveaway that was going to start at 4 o'clock. It was just past noon, and the line was already that long. Many people have been out of work for weeks now, and it is starting to feel desperate.
Our stake runs a Bishop's Storehouse every two weeks. A month ago, we had the biggest number of orders in the history of our stake. The need in our community is high.
The schools give away grab and go bags for anyone who needs them. Those lines have gotten long. There are several food banks in our neighborhood alone--generally on different days of the week. So almost every day I go out, I see long lines of people, trying to feed their families. They are out of work. Many of them are probably undocumented immigrants, and they did not receive any help from the stimulus bills. Even those that did receive help, probably didn't get nearly what they need. Rents in NYC are high. 1200 dollars of stimulus money for an adult might not even cover a month's rent--let alone have any left over for food or other necessities. I feel so helpless and frustrated when I see what this virus has done to my neighborhood. (And to be honest, I feel a lot of anger right now towards government officials who are openly scornful of the problem and completely unwilling to help in any way.)
Erik and I have been doing our best to support our community and our stake. I hesitate to write this, because I do not want it to come off as bragging, but just to illustrate that even though we are committed to donating and helping where we can, I still feel like we are not doing nearly enough to address the need. I cannot, personally, feed all of these people, but I want to. So, if you feel like your community is doing okay, and you have a little extra you wouldn't mind sending to my neighbors, here is a good place to donate:
https://secure.cityharvest.org/site/Donation2?df_id=1680&mfc_pref=T&1680.donation=form1
Apart from the sickness, and the deaths, life is very different here now. Everyone is required to wear a mask. (I fully support this, and just wish that EVERY person in my neighborhood was actually doing it. One of my new pet peeves right now is when I see someone coming down the sidewalk, not covering their face. Or with their mask below their nose or chin. I am trying to learn patience, and remind myself not to judge, but there is no way to stay 6 feet away from every single person in NYC without EVER going out, so I get frustrated. Because I am not perfect, yet. Working on it.)
We could just stay home all day, every day. But just for context, we live in an apartment. It's not a tiny apartment. We are actually really lucky. We have three bedrooms and two bathrooms. We are spacious. And yet, with the kids home from school all day, and Erik home from work--it is feeling smaller every day. So, for our mental and physical health, we have been trying to take the kids out at least once a day. We carefully put our masks on before we leave the apartment, and they remain on until we are home, when we carefully remove them by their straps, before washing our hands. I have been making a lot of masks just for our family, because they are cloth masks and we are really supposed to wash them after every use. I don't have enough made yet for that, but I am still working on it. (We have a large shared laundry room in our building, and I only do laundry once every two weeks. That is nothing new for us, but it's extra helpful now when we are trying to cut down on the amount of time we spend in shared community spaces.)
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| Some of the masks we've made. I really need to get some pictures of the boys, as well! |
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| Ginny's mask design. She loves this one! |
When we go out, we can't go to our neighborhood parks anymore. The mayor closed them all down. (I will spare you most of my thoughts on this, but I am pretty annoyed that the mayor closed not just the playgrounds (which I get), but also the ball walls, and the field, and even took away the basketball hoops. I know why he did. I am still not happy about it.) So we usually take the kids out on scooters or bikes. This has the added benefit of keeping their hands occupied, so they aren't touching or climbing on every fence or railing or street sign or mailbox that we pass. We try to stick to areas that are less crowded, but this is NYC. There is nowhere we can go to avoid all human contact. We cannot even stay 6 feet apart from most people we pass. But we are doing our best.
I am trying to be extra careful and follow all of the tips we've been given for limiting our exposure. We avoided going into any stores for most of April. I have since started going shopping again, when needed. But I try to make sure I am in and out as quickly as possible, and I try to touch as few surfaces as possible, and avoid as many people as possible. I usually shop in the morning, for this purpose, but grocery stores in NYC are small, and have tiny aisles, so there is really no way to avoid everyone. Again, I just have to do my best.
When I get home from my errands, or just from my daily walk, I have been wiping down all of our high-touch surfaces. I am careful about touching packaging. We wash our hands after touching the mail or anything else that comes in from outside. I don't know how risky those types of things really are, but there's no point in taking chances. So we are erring on the side of caution.
We are a little lonely. Our ward is very spread out, so we haven't seen any members of our ward--even at a distance--in weeks. We keep in touch by phone and email, and we have started having Zoom Sunday Schools, so that has helped us feel not as cut off. But we don't even see our neighbors really. Everyone is being careful to follow the guidelines, so we are all keeping to ourselves. Saying hi if we pass someone in the lobby, but mostly we are in our apartments, waiting this out as individual families. I am especially thankful right now for all of the technology that keeps us connected by video chat, phone calls, emails, etc. Those things are so helpful right now. I know that's true in many places now--not just for us.
Likewise, I feel like I don't need to write much about "virtual learning" as they are calling it, because everyone across the country is experiencing this together. It has gone okay for us, but I know that's because we are lucky to have good wifi (mostly), and access to adequate numbers of computers. Ginny and Ezra miss school (Isaac has never loved school and is ecstatic to be doing school from home), but they have adjusted well to the new routine. Some days are better than others, but I think they would all agree that finishing schoolwork by lunchtime, and then getting to play Minecraft for most of the afternoon has been a real perk! We are grateful for their cousins, who link up to play with them from across the country.
I have quite a bit of mom guilt over the vast amounts of screen time they are getting, but without a backyard, or even a playground to go to, I have decided to let it go for now. I am really hoping schools will be able to open in the fall, though! And I am very grateful for the kids' jiu jitsu school, which has been doing online Zoom classes three times a week. It's definitely not as good as in-person, but it does get the kids off the screens and off their bottoms for an hour a few times a week.
So those are some of my thoughts about all of this. We are grateful to be doing okay. Erik still has a job and is able to work from home. The kids are managing school well. I am not going completely crazy (most days). We are healthy, so far, and incredibly grateful for that. I know I have just expressed a lot of negative emotions--sadness, worry, grief, and anxiety. It is hard to see what is happening all around us, and I just wanted to share some of what we are experiencing. But there are good emotions, too, and there are some parts of this that I have liked. (Mostly Erik having so many fewer meetings on Sunday so we actually see him most of the day!) There are also a lot of people banding together in the community to take care of each other. There is a lot of goodness there, and I am grateful for the selflessness that I see among my neighbors.
Please do help out if you feel you can. There is real and desperate need here, and not much hope of reopening soon. The governor has stated that parts of upstate New York will start to reopen in a week or so, but he has also said that downstate New York is not out of the woods, and will not be reopening soon. So we have a ways to go and a lot of work to do. I do have faith that we will get through it, and I have faith that God is with us through all of this. And I am trying to trust Him, and be less afraid.