Sixty-seven years ago, when my father was five, his entire spring term of kindergarten was cancelled because of the polio epidemic. He was delighted. He could play outside! All day, every day! At the perfect time, too! Winter had faded; trees were blooming into spring and the days were lengthening into warmth. I imagine him, all full of sass, dusty nose and monkey bars and bikes and baseballs, sprinting pell-mell down the street to stir up mischief. Many kids weren't allowed outside, but some kids were, and they thought it was great fun to sneak up to spy on the houses of kids who were stuck inside, and feel very, very sorry for them.School was closed because a neighborhood girl got polio. The vaccine had just come out—my father remembers the shot— but it came too late for her. Adults talked about it relentlessly. They worried. It was a different time, so the worry and infection was kept relatively local. Dying wasn't the fear; death statistics actually weren't that eye-popping. It was this: Polio sought out kids. Kids! The fever was polio's weapon—it climbed so high kids' arms and legs stopped working. For the rest of their lives. My father knew a boy who got a fever at a church picnic one Sunday afternoon, was hospitalized the next day, and when he came out six weeks later he'd lost use of his leg forever and ever and ever.
My father's mother stayed inside and prayed and made hamburger soup. His father went into the city to work and slept with a gun beneath his pillow. They were scary times, and polio wasn't the only fear. But it wasn't scary for a boy with a free pass to play outside, untethered, for months and months. And besides, with school closed, he wouldn't get in trouble with his kindergarten teacher at nap time anymore. He was asked to sleep on a little rug. He couldn't. He couldn't be still.
And here we are, all these years later. It's been said these are unprecedented times. Maybe not, but they are different. Right now, parents all over are fighting conflicting urges. Let the kids outside to play, or keep them inside with known germs? Hoard food and toiletries, or be generous and take only what is needed? Scramble for schedules and structure, or let things play out naturally? Fight against screen time, or look the other way for a few months? Back and forth, back and forth.
Someone asked me if am am scared. No, I'm not. I wouldn't even know what to fear, actually, and—thanks be— I'm in a mental place where my fears don't take on a life of their own. The younger me worried relentlessly about all possible versions and outcomes of all possible problems. In third grade, I sat in class and systematically, diligently, doggedly gnawed every fingernail down to blood, ripped every cuticle until I bit my lip in pain. Worry used to give me a perpetual stomachache.
Mark Twain said worrying is paying a debt you don't owe. He also said he'd spent most of his life worrying about things that never happened. So worry isn't the answer here. It's a side affect, certainly, but it's not a strategy or a plan.
There are strategies and plans, and they are different for everyone. I'm finding my own, just like I'm finding good in all of this. I won't list my good things here, lest I be judged, but they're there. They always are, if we look hard enough.
