When my daughter decided to lodge herself in my uterus, I hadn’t exactly planned for being pregnant. I had told my partner that if we did somehow end up with a fertilized seed, I would carry the child and raise them. He agreed. Two months later, we were pregnant. Like she’d just been waiting for the right time, my daughter’s little eventuality became reality. I embraced it fully. Mostly. There were hiccups, gas, depression, loneliness, fear, and other attendant difficulties, but I wouldn’t trade it. Ever. Parenting is a ride of vulnerability and growth if nothing else, and that’s my favorite part of it. Right now, it’s especially challenging, more than ever, with a teenager who is a year from launching into the world and is stuck at home due to state and county COVID19 sheltering orders. So far, we’re sheltered.
My dreams lately have a lot of children in them. Children being playful with each other, dogs, dads, and lions. Sometimes they’re scary. Last night, a six-year-old boy came up and threw water on me. I told him that it’s dangerous to do that right now. This isn’t a normal summer. He shouldn’t play that way.
This morning I find myself wondering about statistics. How likely am I to get Coronavirus? How likely am I to die from it? How do those numbers measure up to all the other risks I take on a daily basis? I drive a car, commute by bike along a two-lane state highway with no shoulder, and spend too much time on the computer these days. Other risks include a lack of exercise because I have too much stress and I’m not regulating my seat time. And, I drink unpasteurized milk. Oh, and I didn’t mention — I teach. In a public school. Where studies have shown that the keyboards of teachers have 27 times more germs than those of any other professional anywhere. That’s why most of us are teaching from home right now.
In the Time Before, I also traveled by airplane a couple of times each year and made monthly trips of about 700 miles by car. In my youth, I boated class 5 rivers on a regular basis for two decades, had occasional unprotected sex with possibly trustworthy partners, drank a lot, surfed and spent time in ocean waters, lived in my van in questionable areas, made my home in a tipi for three years and in a cane shack for one, and in the latter, it was not unusual for rats to run across our sleeping bodies. I know, because they often woke me up.
So, is living with coronavirus just learning to live with more risks? What can I do to lessen the risk? We wear masks and gloves in town, especially at the grocery store, and we social distance … but what about my kid? Everything she’s exposed to, I’m exposed to. And she’s getting antsy for social interaction beyond Zoom rooms and Netflix parties. We are having a lot of conversations about how she can be a teenager and still keep both of us safe. She gets it. That’s what makes it harder. My current growth — as a parent and as a human — is a combination of risk assessment and play. I did it all the time when showing up at a put-in for a river trip and scouting routes through rapids. Now, I’m doing it on a river I can’t see.
The next obvious question after assessment is, how can I prepare myself for flipping? In boating, we “rig to flip”, even if we’re on flatwater. It’s a kind of practical prayer and bargain: if we tie everything down and double-check the frame and gear straps, we’ll have minimal to no loss if we do flip, and maybe it’ll actually prevent us from flipping (the river guides’ equivalent of taking an umbrella so it won’t rain). So, how do we prepare for Coronavirus so that if we do get it, we won’t drown? That’s really the million-dollar question, and answer, isn’t it?
Of course, I could stop asking all of these questions and stay on the shore — that is, stay at home and not have any contact with people and continue to keep my 17-year-old away from other people. I don’t have to choose to be vulnerable and grow and learn. I never had to choose to descend burly rivers with class V rapids. However, while the flatwater is gorgeous, the adrenaline is fun. It’s all about play, about safety and risking as safely as we can.
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