Out of my seven children, three had comfort items they toted around. For my oldest son, Orion, it first was a puffy blanket from Target he named Dekey. The original was lost on a cross-country road trip somewhere in Idaho, which caused him great anguish. To my horror I found out that blankets like that were no longer made due to safety concerns about babies suffocating because of thick blankets. Fortunately Orion’s great aunt still had an old blankie like that from when her son was a baby. Dekey Mark 2 eventually disintegrated from being loved so much and Orion moved on to a stuffed, toy shark. Corvus took to a blanket I had initially sewn for a friend’s newborn baby, but didn’t deem good enough to gift. He has it still, although he rarely uses it as a comfort blankie anymore. Altair was a bit different. Altair chose an orange fly swatter…
A bit unconventional, sure, but I’m an easy going mother. If the fly swatter made him happy, I wasn’t about to take that away from him. I’ve also never forced, bribed, or tricked my children into giving up their comfort items. I’ve never seen a 16 year old toting a blanket (or fly swatter) around, so I correctly assumed that children give up their comfort items naturally, when the time is right for them. The world can be a strange, confusing, scary place for wee ones, so I understand why keeping something familiar around can be helpful for them.
We adults have our own versions of comfort items, of course; Lucky charms we keep around, because we assign some special meaning to them. Our comfort items take many forms; a keychain, grandmother’s pendant, fuzzy dice on the rearview mirror of our car, a photograph, a gift from a friend. I myself carry many talismans around in my Big Book.
Why do we do this? Perhaps the world is a strange, confusing, scary place for adults too, now more so than ever.
This brings me to the point of this blog post. While I try to stay away from the ugly, nasty depths of the internet as much as possible, I cannot help but notice there are quite a few people out there being very ugly about how other people are handling themselves during this pandemic. I could go into the basics of biosecurity with you, and the steps my family takes to avoid contracting COVID (I used to write biosecurity protocols after all), but that really is not important. The important thing is to remember this:
You cannot control what other people do. You can only control what you do.
Did you read that? Good. Now read it again.
Your health, safety and comfort are your responsibility. Most of your friends, neighbors, and fellow human beings are not actively trying to spread disease. You may not agree with your neighbor wearing a mask when they go out, or maybe you are upset they don’t wear a mask. It doesn’t matter. You should assume everything outside is contaminated and act according to your comfort level. It makes me feel better to carry a bottle of Virkon on my belt when I go out, so I can disinfect my bank card if a cashier has to handle it. I don’t rely on the cashier to wear gloves, or not wear gloves; I carry that bottle. And it makes me feel better. Remember in Pirates of the Caribbean when Tia Dalma gives Captain Sparrow a jar of dirt? And while he scoffs at this talisman at first, he refuses to give it back to her. “Then it helps,” she says. My bottle of Virkon is my Jar of Dirt.
I wear a different set of gloves for each errand and they get discarded before I touch my car door handle (which gets sprayed with Virkon anyway). That does not mean I am not washing my hands. My hands, like yours, are raw and chapped from washing so often. But there is no sink next to the gas pump, so I wear gloves when I fuel up.
Don’t concern yourself with my routine though. Or anyone else’s for that matter. Assume I am a walking disease farm, and do what you feel you need to do to keep yourself healthy.
I’m sure you have your own lucky charms, your own comfort items, whether they be pandemic born or not. And I will not mock whether it’s a bottle of hand sanitizer or an orange fly swatter. I’m an easy going mother, after all.
