Keeping Apart

Creative way for kids to return to school while keeping six feet part. Reading this made me think of my great grandmother whose OCD tendencies were legend in the family. She did not eat anything she did not cook herself, she washed everything she wore by her own hands and she did not allow people to come too close to her. Grand kids were the only exception but they too had to be bathed and clean before coming into contact with the grand matriarch. She had a wooden chair at the far end of a long balcony that was out of bounds for the rest of the family. If someone sat there by accident, it would be washed and scrubbed clean before she used it again. 

If she had found herself in the middle of the current pandemic, she would likely carry on business as usual. There would be no need to adapt to the times - as above and beyond as she already was. She passed away a long time ago and even today, when the family gets together they talk about her extreme rules of daily living. If I think back now to what she was trying to do it was likely being in control of her life where uncertainty was so rife and her agency non-existent. Furthermore she did not trust others to do the right thing so she did it herself. This also meant there was very little she could do - she could only go as far as going solo would allow. This is a semi-literate widow with eight children and absolutely no means to support herself. It defined hard boundaries that she did not attempt to cross.