Bonjour! I hope you are well and safe, finding a way to navigate your shelter-in-place orders. Here in Paris, we’re on Day 14 (or is it 13? of lockdown. Our lockdown has been extended to at least April 15th. My family and I are healthy and doing well.
Paris is silent and still. A few joggers are out on the streets, a few solo shoppers with groceries. Ambulances race down the wide boulevards, sirens off. There is no need for sirens when the streets are empty. At 8 pm we go on our balconies to applaud. Against the tasteful monotony of the Haussmann facades, I spotted a colorful sign of thanks – “Merci aux soignants” – “thanks to the caregivers.”
We’re allowed to leave our apartment once a day for up to an hour to do grocery shopping or exercise. We can go up to a kilometer from our home. Our leash happens to end right at Arc de Triomphe. Anyone who has visited Paris may be able to imagine how strange it is to see L’Etoile and Champs Elysees abandoned and nearly silent.
Two days ago, on my morning run, a movement in an upper window caught my eye. It was a hand, moving the curtains aside. The movement drew my eyes to the sky above the building, where the clouds were moving swiftly past. In the strange silence, absent the usual hum of tires on the cobblestone street, the clanging of the flagpole on the adjacent building had a lovely ring.
In the video, just above that flag, you’ll see the apartment where Marcel Proust lived with his family for many years. We had been here for nearly a year before I realized I was living across the street from Proust’s former home. It bears mentioning that Proust wrote nothing in that apartment, and only began In Search of Lost Time after he had moved to a different flat, one where he was besieged by terrible neighbors doing constant construction. We too have terrible upstairs neighbors with a penchant for rowdy construction and even rowdier parties, and four young children who never take off their shoes. Fortunately, the neighbors left for their country house the day before lockdown, leaving us in a state of unexpected peace.
Our hometown in Northern California has been sheltering in place as long as France has. For those who are in areas where shelter-in-place orders were issued later, I offer a note of encouragement: two weeks in, it is getting easier to be homebound. One acclimates. One settles into new routines. Despite the restlessness, there is a sense of peace that comes with knowing your community is doing the right thing, and that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
It’s also strangely relaxing. In 20 years of marriage, my husband has never spent this many consecutive weekdays at home. It is a gift and a revelation. I always assumed 24/7 cohabitation would be detrimental to marital accord, but as it turns out, one quickly figures out the new domestic choreography. (It helps if your husband has always been the better partner when it comes to dishes).
Even our teenaged son has settled in with little complaint. For the first time in years, thanks to a shortened school day and less homework, he’s getting adequate sleep, which may be why he’s in such a good mood. (For the record, I think kids have every right to complain right now; they’re the first adolescents in 102 years to live through a pandemic, so we should all cut them some slack.)
France reported more than 400 deaths yesterday, and the hottest spot of the outbreak in the country is now Paris. Sadly, we know that deaths will continue to rise in coming days, but hopefully the rate of new infections will begin to slow. We are encouraged by the news that San Francisco is flattening the curve, but we worry about friends and family back home, especially in California and New York.
Yet I am optimistic, because I can imagine a future in which we’re looking BACK at this virus, reflecting on the way it changed our lives, instead of looking nervously ahead.
Bonjour from Paris, where a bizarre new reality has taken hold, just as it has in the United States. No parties these days, of course, and no la bise. I did attend a party 14 days ago. One of the couples with whom I talked and exchanged la bise is now self-quarantined at home with Covid19 symptoms. I almost didn’t go to that party. At 9:30 that night, I was still telling myself, “Bad idea to go to the party.” But we were in the early stages of the virus in Paris, and none of us wanted to believe it was coming for us. The World Health Organization was still eleven days away from calling it a pandemic. It seemed socially awkward not to go, and I wanted to see my friends and drink champagne, so I put on my party dress and got on the metro.
The party included a lot of parents from my son’s school. Due to the timing, I believe they had to have contracted the illness after the party, but their sickness is a reminder how quickly everything goes from normal to not-normal, how rapidly we have to realign how we interact and go about our daily lives. They were both feeling perfectly fine two days ago, and then she noticed a little scratch at the back of her throat yesterday morning. Later in the morning, she had a fever. Soon thereafter, the fever was much higher. For her husband, it began with tiredness that quickly progressed to fever. It happens fast. So fast. You’re fine, and then you’re not.
Chances are, you already know someone who has coronavirus. If you don’t already, you will soon — probably within days. Whether or not they’ll have access to testing is, of course, another story.
Overwhelmed Hospitals
In Paris, as in America, it’s very difficult to get tested. The problem here isn’t a lack of tests so much as a lack of capacity. With packed hospitals and strained health care workers, the medical system is focusing on the critically ill, asking everyone who doesn’t have severe symptoms to stay home. Only a day ago, only the sick were supposed to self-isolate. How quickly that has changed.
In the past couple of weeks, I posted three times on the blog. Between Feb. 27 and March 9, things changed, but the mood was pretty much the same. Between March 9 and March 13, the numbers of confirmed infections and deaths rose, but the public response didn’t catch up with reality. Thursday night, Macron finally announced the closure of the schools. Friday morning, I awoke to the headline, “All Travel from Europe Banned.” Not normalhappens fast.
Here are my posts from the last couple of weeks on The Reluctant Parisian, tracing the mood of the city as reality crept in
Why I kept my son home before the schools officially closed (and why you should too, if you can)
Several of my son’s friends’ schools back home in the Bay Area closed early, when there were far fewer reported cases in all of America than in the Paris region. This includes Catholic and private schools in San Francisco and on the Peninsula. Even if it seemed annoying or unnecessary to parents at the time, even if it presented significant scheduling issues, early school closures are one of the most effective ways to slow the spread.
My son’s school was open last week, but the last day I sent him to school was Tuesday. From everything I was reading, the risk of being on the metro and in classrooms was too great. You don’t know intimacy until you’ve ridden the Paris metro, where the distance between your body and other bodies is zero centimeters, and the distance between your mouth and other people’s mouths is four to six inches. On Thursday, the school held an assembly, packing 90 kids into a poorly ventilated room. Earlier in the week (Monday), the kids had done yoga, and the teacher had instructed them to press their faces into the dirty mats that had just been used by other students. When the school nurse visited my son’s class to talk to them about coronavirus, she told them they only needed to wash their hands for 10 seconds. The urgency and the common sense just wasn’t there.
When I wrote on our 9th grade WhatsApp group that I’d pulled our son out of school, I discovered that some families wanted to do the same, but without any direction from the school, many felt uncomfortable doing so. Forgive the bold type, but I feel passionately about this: you don’t need permission from the school to keep your kids home during a pandemic. You’re the parent. It’s your choice.
The Are-We-in-A-Movie Moment
On Thursday night, in a sobering address to the nation, President Macron finally announced that all schools will be closed beginning Monday. Spring break starts in two to three weeks, which means schools will be shuttered for more than a month, allowing France to slow the spread at a crucial time. My son’s school is going online. The kids are still expected to “attend” school every day. They’ll still learn; they’ll just learn differently.
If you have children in schools that are still open, please consider keeping them home if this is a possibility for your family. If you can work from home, do. When communities speed up social distancing by even a single day, it can have an enormous impact on how fast, and how widely, the virus spreads. A few days of missed school is so minor compared to the uncertainty of the virus entering your home. While children have fortunately fared well so far, many healthy adults in their 30s, 40s, and 50s have developed critical complications.
My husband is still going to work, of course, because the federal government must keep functioning. I worry about him every day, as there was already a confirmed case in his workplace last week. Although he needs to see a doctor for a non-virus health concern, doctors and institutions here and at home are overwhelmed, and besides, it’s not a great time to go to the doctor if you can avoid it. This is another reason social distancing is so important. You’re not just trying to protect your family from this virus, but also from any other condition that, in normal times, would warrant a trip to the ER or to the doctor.
Social Distancing
For many families, it’s difficult to skip the playdates and the playground, the small social gatherings. For young professionals, it’s difficult not to meet up with friends. It’s difficult not to go to your place of worship or grab a coffee or baguette or takeout. Social distancing is anathema to our way of life, but what we know now is that serious, unusual, even painful social distancing is essential. It is far better to be safe and socially awkward than to engage in risky behavior. Right now, so much of what we’re accustomed to doing every day is risky.
Remember what they told you in health class circa 1988.
If you’re my age, remember your AIDS education from the 80s: “When you sleep with someone, you’re sleeping with everyone they slept with.” These days, when you shake hands with someone, you’re shaking hands or hugging everyone they’ve shaken hands with since they last scrubbed their hands. Even more concerning, the virus can last a few days on surfaces, so when you touch the metro pole or the Philz Coffee counter, you’re touching everyone who’s touched those surfaces.
Lean in to the unprecedented gift of dedicated family time.
One good thing is that we’re all going to be spending a lot more dedicated time with our immediate families. When was the last time you got to hang out with your school-aged kids without the pressures of sports, recitals, extra-curricular activities, playdates, school events, and volunteer functions? Whether your’e a family with kids at home or a couple, when was the last time you were just home together, with no events on the calendar, watching movies and playing board games and talking? When was the last weekday you woke up and made pancakes and sat around together for breakfast? If you live alone, when was the last time you stayed in every day, working without distraction, reading, writing, listening to music, and, okay, catching up on Homeland?
Sure, there’s still schoolwork, and there’s still work. For those who are able to be home with our kids right now, there’s no forcing your kid out of bed early in the morning to get dressed for school. There’s no rushing to the train or the metro or piling kids into the car. No lunchboxes to pack. There’s no coordinating different kids’ schedules, figuring out who has to be where, and when, which parent will do what, who’s driving, who’s meeting whom, etc.. This is a tremendous gift, even if it comes at a cost. It has never before happened in my life as a parent. Probably not in yours, either.
Of course, many families will not have these luxuries. For millions of families, there will be new and complicated burdens — those with health care workers in the family, those with no adult to stay home with the children, those with differently abled children who depend upon the school environment and teachers, those who are facing food shortages, devastating loss of income, medical deprivation, and other catastrophic situations. And those who lose loved ones to the virus.
These are such complicated issues, I think all of us are waiting to see how our governments and communities will respond. One thing has become clear in the last few weeks: We need to listen to experts and scientists beforea crisis happens. We desperately need a well-oiled, well-funded federal government that can respond robustly and rapidly in emergency situations. Those who denigrate federal workers and institutions, minimizing the crucial work they do for our country every day, cheering on the dismantling of the necessary systems, are now discovering like never before how much they need those workers and institutions. Underfunded, understaffed institutions threaten the welfare of every citizen.
Dreaming of California
I think longingly of our home in Northern California, surrounded by trees and beauty, with the long walk down the back stairs to the wooded canyon, where the big deer like to hang out. To wait out the isolation there, instead of in a cramped Paris apartment with our disco-playing, clog-wearing, house-renovating upstairs neighbors, would be a dream. That said, our family wants to stay together, and my husband has a job to do. So we’ll be here in Paris, waiting it out.
Fortunately, there are books. There is music. There is Monopoly and backgammon and Risk. Oh, and Netflix. Soooo much Netflix. And you can still walk outside and notice beauty. The weather is lovely in Paris right now, the cherry blossoms (or some kind of blossoms) blooming. I go to the park near our apartment in the morning, before the crowds, and look at everything in bloom. It soothes the soul. It gives me hope. It offers consistency, normalcy, and calm.
May you find your cherry blossoms wherever you are. May you enjoy your newly intensified time with your people, your pets, with the ones you love the most. May you make something, read something, remember something that has been buried beneath the busy-ness.
Eventually, we’ll be walking the halls of the schools and universities and offices again, seeing friends, grabbing a coffee that’s better than the coffee we make at home, eating a pizza that came out of an actual brick oven, giving la bise and hugging and shaking hands, watching movies on the big screen instead of living a scary end-of-the-world movie in which we’re all unwitting extras. We’ll be sending our kids out into the world to play their sports and hang out with their tribes. We’ll be back in the busy thick of it, remembering our strange hibernations, the weird solitude and surrender to a life-changing spectacle that gripped the entire world.
