I’ve spent the entire last six weeks sewing my heart out. Sustainably at first, just one project among many I’d spend my time on. A little ironing here, a little sewing there. When I started, people were still scoffing at my cloth masks and calling it alarmist and pointless, but I have a history of good foresight, so I just kept going, hoping they would at least be helpful just to provide a barrier to fluids and smells when other PPE was unavailable.
My family’s livelihood comes from Bear’s career as a nursing home administrator. Whenever a natural disaster comes along, we’re used to dividing up the labor. I handle home, he handles work, we catch up on the other side, hands in, Go Team Edmunds, BREAK! Every year during fires, random flooding or earthquakes, a threat to the building of any kind means he drives off to take care of his residents and staff while I make sure Atticus is safe. And then once Atticus is taken care of, I do what I can from wherever I am for the staff. This pandemic is far from the first time I’ve watched health care workers get treated like soldiers or firefighters, it happens every fire season. Every season we worry about how their kids are doing and what’s happening at home. Because a lot of the people working front line staff medical jobs are immigrants, people of color, and single moms. They need a team. As soon as PPE shortages hit the news, I started sewing.
I drove myself a little crazy with the efforts. When the news is coming out so hot and fast and no one knows anything, it is so easy to get carried away. When the fabric shortages started and elastic became as valuable as toilet paper, the anxiety built higher and faster. By the time we crafters were swapping tips about cutting up dollar store headbands for the elastic, it was hard not to feel like any moment I wasn’t sewing was a moment I was putting someone at risk.
But I’ve got 20 years of therapy under my belt, so I took a deep breath, made a self-deprecating joke about not being Oskar Schindler, and put on the next episode of Ugly Delicious on Netflix while I comfortably sewed in my lovely home. Perspective.
When I ran out of supplies I put out a call on social media and I got such incredible support. Laura and Emily with elastic, Tiffany with fabric, Wendy sending ear guards. It reminded me why I got into this blogging thing way back when. We’re all out here needing each other and needing to be needed.
So far I’ve sewn 216 masks. Everyone at the nursing home has a mask to use now. Things got real stressful for a second once people came around on masks. Overnight it became a legal requirement to use them, when there were none to be had, so I went from panicking about putting people at risk every moment I wasn’t sewing, to *knowing* the facility was in actual legal and biological risk every moment I wasn’t sewing. The stories coming in from other facilities… it’s intense. I’m a degree removed from it and even I am talking about not being able to talk freely with civilians. I don’t want to feed the panic when there’s nothing to be done.
What you *can* do, is find a way to help. Like so many feminists, Rosie the Riveter has always held a special place in my heart, and I like to think I’d be working on planes if I was around back then. The Great Sew felt like something I could do to contribute now. To take all of my own anxiety and fear and uncertainty and battle against that existential crisis with concrete proof of my existence. To take my sputtering rage at the failures in leadership and put it to what I can do in its absence. When you’re on your own you can’t afford to sink into despair. You keep moving, you solve the problems in front of you, and you live another day.
I’m fighting the fight of media consumption like all of us. How much news do I need to watch to be responsible, and how little can I watch without feeling the anxiety tighten my throat? When I feel the terror rise I know it’s time to get off social media, where we’re all just tossing our panic into the void. But in between panic sessions, there is so much heartbreaking good happening out there amidst the heartbreaking bad. Humans. Just when I think there’s no hope, sure enough, someone will be out there giving free rent or delivering food or making art. Fighting against the entropy of despair. People are the worst. But humans, humans I love.
We are what we’ve got. This is what I can do, but each of us have contributions to make.
