Editor’s note: This is a continuation of Jen Cowart’s series regarding her family’s experience during the two-week self-quarantine period for the Cranston High School West community.
April 4-11
At the end of last week a friend of our three daughters, whose family we had known for years and years, announced that she was going to be doing a mask drive to help provide masks for first responders in need.
She had been a student at Jerilyn’s Sewing School here in Cranston for a number of years, and so had all of my girls. Their sewing skills are top-notch, and even though I can barely sew a button – I’ve been known to staple a hem – I can cut, pin and hand-sew well enough that we decided we could definitely help her out. We had yards and yards of fabric here collected over the years, and now we could put it to good use.
Coincidentally, at about the same time we heard about the mask drive, Gov. Raimondo and state Health Director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott announced that they were strongly encouraging all Rhode Islanders to cover their mouth and nose with a mask or mask-like covering whenever out in public. We had heard during the week that the CDC was considering putting this recommendation out, so we knew it might be coming and we were not surprised. But it was another step in a serious direction, and it left everyone scrambling for masks – or the means to make a mask with what they had on hand at home.
On Friday afternoon, we set up at our dining room table – which also serves as a workspace for work and school, in addition to the place we eat all of our meals – with measuring, pinning, cutting and sewing stations. Our youngest got started designing tags on her computer that we could include with every mask explaining safety instructions as to how to wear them.
We had 10 yards of elastic, enough for almost 30 masks, but enough fabric for dozens more. By Tuesday, I was heading out to get 20 yards more. We were cutting and sewing into the middle of the night every night. There were thread and fabric, needles and pins, multiple sewing machines, shipping boxes and envelopes everywhere, but despite the clutter – which we always have in some way, shape, or form anyway – I love a good project.
I love being creative, and most of all, I felt a sense of purpose and a sense that this was a way we could help other people despite being in such a helpless situation. This gave me the motivation to get through the things I needed to do first during the day so we could get to the time of day when we could sit and make more masks to help more people.
“This is why we sew,” my daughter Caroline said to me one night as we talked about it.
The first time our youngest daughter, Alexandra, tried on a mask – the first mask that Elizabeth had finished and sewn completely by hand – I took a picture to send to my parents so they could see it. When I looked down at the photo I had just taken, I was struck then by the intensity of this situation.
Seeing her in a mask gave me a sudden pit in my stomach, even though the mask was covered in sunshiny faces and clouds on a sky blue background. I was once again amazed that this was where we were. Never in my lifetime, or in my time thus far as a parent, had I ever expected to be doing this or to be seeing this, and I had a hard time wrapping my head around the enormity of it all. If you had asked me two months ago if we would be making and wearing masks, I don’t think I could have even imagined it then.
It made me think of other serious times in history when families had to mask themselves and their children as they tried to protect them for their health and safety, and I specifically remembered an essay my youngest had written just last semester in her English class about the Dust Bowl era when people had to cover their faces and block their doors to protect themselves and their children from the dust. She had made up a story for an assessment about a fictional family whose mother had made a game out of running around and covering the doors, making the situation as light-hearted for her children as she could. We are now those parents trying to protect ourselves and our children as best we can, just like those families then. These masks are another layer of protection, another step we are taking to try to keep this virus away.
As we sewed, I tried to make the best of it, keeping it as light-hearted as I could, too, focusing on all of the fun or pretty patterns of the fabrics we had on hand and trying to pick out patterns we knew people would like, just as if we were making them an item of clothing during normal times instead.
Over that first weekend and into the days ahead, as we went out for our essentials we noticed more and more people wearing masks. It added to the surreal feeling that I’d been experiencing all along. While a week or two ago a rare person might have on a mask in the grocery store, now almost everyone had one on. Everyone in line at the post office had them on as I shipped out a half-dozen boxes of masks to our family members all over the country. It was as if we were in a movie, a totally new reality that still didn’t feel 100 percent real.
Our daily routines continued to be just that – very routine. We had the responsibilities of work and school much of the day, and each night we looked forward to what was for dinner as if it was a major event. We also looked forward to our 8 p.m. walks and we never missed a night unless it rained. Getting out, even if we were walking the same route every day, was exciting.
As the weather continued to warm up, our kids were spending more and more time outside, and I continued to be thankful that this pandemic hit us in the springtime rather than in the colder winter months. The days were long, the windows were open, and the weather was warm. As bad as things were out in the world, in our little corner they could’ve been much worse. We remained healthy and we were all together.
Tuesday night we took a ride to deliver two masks to my aunt and uncle. We all got in the car to take the ride to Warren, and we even took the dog, just so everyone could get out of the house.
“Take the scenic route,” I told my husband. “Go the long way to make the ride as long as possible. It’s a beautiful day.”
When we arrived, we stood 6 feet apart from my aunt and uncle, them on their front steps and us in their front yard, talking about how everyone was and how things were going. Another person walked by with a dog and I started to run over to pet the dog, an adorable old Basset Hound, before stopping in mid-step as my kids yelled out to me, remembering that I couldn’t. We waved from far away instead. We drove home later and noticed the sun setting on one side and the supermoon rising on the other and I was glad we’d gotten out and taken a ride, glad we’d gotten a little personal interaction, even from 6 feet apart.
We, like many other families, experienced the loss of a family member during this time. It was due to an illness unrelated to the coronavirus, but nevertheless it was a sad time made all the more difficult by being unable to connect with the rest of our family to offer our condolences or our help and support in the traditional ways, to be able to see them in person or to bear witness to the funeral services. It was hard to just offer a “hang in there” or “we’re all thinking of you” instead of a hug when we knew they were hurting and nearby, but yet we could do nothing. I hoped that this would be the only loss we would have to grapple with during these months, but as I looked at the numbers and predictions for coronavirus, I had to wonder and worry, and I know we were not alone in our worries.
I was grateful that the public schools in Rhode Island had all been asked to adopt an April calendar that included an extra day on Thursday in addition to Good Friday as days off from school. For us that also meant days off of work, other than checking emails. As much as school was going well for our kids, the days were still busy enough with all five schedules going on, mask making all week into the night hours, and at the end of every day, I was tired. We clearly didn’t have any big plans for these days off, but I was happy to have them.
As the weekend began, we prepared for Easter. We had observed Palm Sunday the previous weekend, listening to the reading of the Passion from the comfort of our couches with our coffee as the various roles were read aloud by different members of our congregation. Each was in their own home, a carefully orchestrated and rehearsed event that I was grateful for. I listened to their voices through the live stream, and although I couldn’t actually see their faces, I was easily transported back into the pews of our church on a regular Palm Sunday “before,” and I could “see” each of them standing up to read their parts aloud when the time came. I was again grateful for today’s technology, and I wondered about generations past and what it was like when they celebrated holidays under a similarly difficult situation, without the benefit of these modern abilities.
We switched gears on Saturday from mask-making to egg coloring, along with cooking and baking. We had made approximately 75 masks in a week and we were ready to take a break from that project and move onto another. I found myself thankful for my panic shopping and stockpiling of gluten-free flour during weeks one and two, as I was hearing on social media now that flour of any kind was scarce. I was also happy that we had gotten our white eggs for coloring along with the eggs we needed for cooking and baking last weekend, as those seemed to be in short supply these days as well.
I know I wasn’t the only one really looking forward to our Easter meal and I was excited for some semblance of normalcy as we began to prepare our favorite dishes for the day. Once again, as I found myself doing so often these days, I counted our blessings as the holiday approached. We would be celebrating Easter all together as a healthy family of five.
Each day that went by seemed like a milestone we had reached as the weeks passed thus far and no one had fallen ill. With all that we had we had given up during this time, we still had a lot to celebrate and a lot to be thankful for.
Jen Cowart is a regular contributor to the Herald and a communications specialist for Cranston Public Schools.
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