David Michael Miller
I wrote a piece last week, now outdated, about how we can all support local businesses. Many of those businesses are now closed or facing closure due to health directives.
So much has happened since March 11. It still keeps happening, and unless you can keep a mental news ticker of timelines and new updates, it is all just a blur. There has never been anything like this. That’s part of what makes this so hard. No one has experience in this scenario.
What’s happened since Friday morning? My kids are done with school. So are everyone else’s. Cities and states nationwide have closed their schools. Everyone I know in the parenting world is scrambling to find child care so they can continue to work. Grocery stores have been scoured for canned goods and paper products. No brats, no Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal. We are weird people. Grocers that are usually open 24 hours are having to close because they need time to put the pieces back together before we show up again. President Trump told us to stop hoarding. Read that last sentence again.
Gatherings went from a limit of 250, to 50, to 10, as now advised by the Trump administration. Bars and restaurants in the city have now been ordered to close for anything other than takeout or delivery.
Some restaurants had already made the decision to focus on takeout and delivery. They are all making the best decisions for themselves. I respect them all. I am gutted for them all. Retail stores will be doing the same. There’s a good chance that more restrictions will follow. I am gutted for all of us. My kids. Your kids. My parents. Our grandparents. You.
All right.
Enough of the woe-is-me shit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sad and scared and don’t know what comes next. That’s not going to help today or tomorrow, though. Hope will, though. Not hope that everything is going to be OK. Everything will not be OK, but we will adapt and have to figure it out. I’m talking about hope that what we are doing and going through is the right thing to do. That it is worth it. Hope that if we hunker down and do what the smart people are telling us to do, we will get the needed results. We must and we will. And it is going to suck for a while.
How do I stay hopeful? I try to stop reading everything that fills my news feed. I try to distract myself from thinking about how various scenarios will play out. I cook and I eat and I drink and I tell my kids to play nicely with each other (which I did two weeks ago and will two months from now). I breathe. I talk to people.
So how can you help and stay hopeful? Still try to buy local if you can. Order takeout or pick-up. Donate to the Second Harvest Foodbank, River Food Pantry or any other local outlet. Be smart and follow the guidelines set out. They will work. Take care of yourselves. Stress is awful for mental health. Be careful in what you consume. Talk to people by phone, not just text and not just online. Find safe distractions (Disney+ is killing it at the Bartlett house; Marvel stuff for me).
We need to do this so that when the time comes, we can go again.
Anyone who knows me knows I’m a nerd Liverpool Football Club fan. Their club anthem is “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” which, oddly enough, is originally a song from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel. It ends, “Walk on, walk on, With hope in your heart. And you’ll never walk alone. You’ll never walk alone.” That seems pretty fitting for right now.
Let’s take care of each other and ourselves.
Craig Bartlett is co-owner of Isthmus.