“Today we’ll talk about the virus,”
Miss
Minnish said, and drew a perfect circle on the board
Then shaded
edges ‘til it was a ball, (she also teaches Art).
Then she
drew spines, with tips so finely rendered
“They look
sticky,” Erin said, and I agreed
“And just
for fun, let’s put a window here
So we can
see inside,” Miss Minnish said
And looking
through the window we saw
Two jagged
lines, “These are its genes,” she said
“Of which
it has but two. Enough,” she said “to guide it to
A hungry
human cell in noses or lungs and order these same
Human cells
to make more COVID cells just like it.”
(Like birds
that lay their eggs in others’ nests, I thought
And Erin
said, “More like ten million for the price of one.”)
“But How
big is it,” Jeremy sitting at the front wondered aloud.
“Bigger
than a fly’s eye?”
“You take a
fly’s eye, say,” Miss Minnish said,
And drew
one on the board (she also teaches Art)
“Now cut it
in half (she cut it with a brush)
Then cut
the half in half, and again and again and again
For 6
gazillion times!”
She told us
then about masks and spittle and droplets carrying viruses
Like
vagrants on a bus, and how 2 meters equals 6 feet, 6.7 inches
But I was barely
listening.
I’ve always
been afraid of big, big things
Like
hippopotami and elephants, grizzlies and tall giraffes
And other
things I’ve only seen in zoos. (Not so much dogs
Unless they’re
big like Larsen’s German Shepherd.)
But now, tiny,
evil things are everywhere: I feel them crawling in my bed
My hair, my
pillow, my clothes, my book . . . Peeyoo!
No leash,
no bars can hold them safely back.
Darn you,
COVID, for wiping out the edges of my fears:
I may not
sleep again, hay for my nightmares fills my universe.
At
midnight, mother comes and sits on the side of my bed. She takes off my mask .
. . and then takes off the second one. We talk about bears and rhinoceroses and
how they almost never show up in Rosthern. We talk about dust and flies and
germs and COVID and we admit small stuff is everywhere. Then we talk about the people
world . . . the middle-sized world in which we humans live. She says the big
things and the little things sometimes creep into our world and we middle-sized
have to learn how to protect ourselves. She says there are no rhinoceroses or
COVIDs in the room so I’m safe ‘til morning. I tell her she can go now and she
does, but just to be safe I put one mask back on . . . but not the second one.