Nineteen days.
Two Saturdays ago I was walking across the grass towards my elder daughter’s soccer field and noticed a little prick of pain on my foot and by the time I sat down on our blanket I had red splotches and streaks in three or four places on my feet. I took my shoes off and noticed a couple of ants in the footbed… It was fire ants. I confirmed it when we got back to the car, and saw that our parking trestle was the center of a line of ant beds. Great.
I got on a plane two hours later, so I didn’t really get a chance to do any first aid, or really even notice my feet as I was going through security and making sure that my bags all fit under my seat. But by that evening, waiting for my cousin, I kept noticing that, yes, I needed something to take the edge off of the pain.
They kept me from sleeping soundly the whole time I was out of town, sleeping in a comfortable yet strange bed, with family I had’t seen in three years.
I checked the internet, and it said that fire ant bites last four to ten days. I made sure to treat them with allergy meds and inflammation meds, and I didn’t scratch them, or pop them, or anything. But finally, I decided to put some bandages on them, but I couldn’t tell if that was helping or not, and still they haven’t healed.
All five of my bites, one on one foot, four on the other, still are angry, red, unhealed. Nineteen days later. I mean, they don’t hurt anymore. They don’t itch. But, I’d been hoping they’d heal faster.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it?
Healing takes a while.
Maybe WebMD only meant when they’d stop hurting, or itching.
The internet has no clue how long it takes for my scars to heal.
And so now I’m wondering if I should have put bandages on them earlier, or if I could have used ice on them (but when, who knows) or if I should have been wearing socks or if I could have avoided them altogether if I’d noticed the ant beds under our car as I was watching the busy parking lot as our kids got out to go across two lines of traffic…
There are a lot of what-ifs, I suppose.
Maybe I should think about a what now.
I mean. This is about covid, right? (I actually do have 19 day old ant bites… but) this is about covid. And little things adding up. And how we have so many what-ifs swirling around us… that now I really want us to switch to a what now. It’s not really helpful to say that we didn’t realize we’d be in whatever situation we find ourselves in. It’s not helpful for me, at least, unless it is to create space for grace in the situation. (Because, well… some of us did imagine that we’d still be wearing masks two years in. I did.)
And so, now: what now?
We get our kids their shots, we get the boosters for folks who are with the kids, and those at risk, and we do what needs to be done so that our community is safe, so that our people are cared for, so that we can work together to do together what we need together so that we will be together as we live together.
And it might be small. And it might be annoying. And it might last far longer than we ever expected. And the solutions now might not be what we do later…
But we don’t let the what-ifs overtake the what-now.
What do we need to do, now?
Quietly Rolling Thunder 