When everyone is sick and the news is terrible
Major and minor calamities
On Tuesday night within a six hour span, three of the four members of my family vomited from a nasty stomach virus. Julian threw up on our couch and all over some blankets, Jacob respectfully made it to the toilet, and Ada got up in the middle of the night to retch (and then protest all food for the next 36 hours due to fear of vomiting).
There were multiple soiled sheets, quilts, and bedspreads, a stain on the couch, many pajamas in the hamper smelling…terrible…and the residue of bath that’d been pooped in. Each patient had a plastic bowl or three, and by Wednesday our bowl drawer was mostly empty as they were scattered around the house.
I was the last person standing, and also trying to do some brain-intensive work, and none of us were emotionally regulating all that well because of exhaustion, fevers, stomachaches, and the news.
The news.
The news, of course, was on in the background and we’d listen to the escalating war in Ukraine, the families who are now refugees, with the kids whimpering from the couch about their bellies. The pictures of the children’s hospitals in basements and the small children lying in dirt bombshelters in their colorful sleeping bags and blankets are the images that most undo me. It is hard not to imagine being a parent in this situation. The mothers and fathers enlisting and suddenly with AK-47s in hand. The rapid military training of dentists and accountants and speech therapists and people who formerly sold pillows on Etsy. The fathers and brothers and uncles, ages 18-55, having to separate from their families at the border, hoping they’ll see their kids again.
One is overwhelmed by the immediacy of three family members being incapacitated at the same time and by being a human living in this world. One is humbled by the relative insignificance. All the puke feels both major and minor.
After Ada made it back to school on Thursday she piped up to talk about Ukraine. She mentioned Putin and Russia and bullies and how people were getting killed who didn’t deserve it. I tried to probe into what she knew, and what her sources were, giving her bits of more information without trying to provoke her already fairly intense anxiety about death (i.e. concern about being hit by a meteor crashing through our roof). She knew more than I expected and her sassy response was that she “listens to news on the radio,” a wake-up that she’s far more attentive to NPR during breakfast than I expect her to be.
By this morning our family was largely back to health. Five days of localized misery, lots of laundry and cleaning to do. But the news ever escalates. Independent journalism sources in Russia have been shut down in light of threats of state-run propaganda. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine is on fire. The onslaught goes on, the clean-up is yet intangible, the end so unclear.
My only recommendation this week is to give in a way that feels within your means. There are many efforts concurrently happening to house refugees, direct money and supplies to Ukraine, and help support the many needs of the country.
Here are a few options:
Razom Emergency Fund: Purchases medical supplies for military defense forces
Children’s Voices: Provides psychological and psychosocial support for children affected by the war
World Central Kitchen: chef José Andrés and his team are providing hot meals to Ukrainian refugees
See you next week.