Needs Must When the Devil Drives

I am a mass of conflicted thoughts and feelings these days. This situation is unprecedented and requires more than the usual amount of mental effort to maintain rational thinking. Social media is a double-edge sword—for those of us in rural areas, it has often been the best way to stay on top of what’s happening, but I wade through it cautiously now, buffeted on one side by people yelling “Stop overreacting, the flu is worse!” and by people on the other side yelling “Everyone needs to stay home!”

[I have first-hand experience with exactly how bad the flu can be, having spent a week in the ICU on a ventilator two years ago because of post-flu pneumonia. And I was a healthy 52-year-old with no risk factors, which is a sobering reminder that pathogens don’t always discriminate between young and healthy and old and infirm. Discussions of hospital ventilator capacity are a bit more than academic once you have been in that situation.]

I have a much better appreciation now for how people must feel in times of war. It is an ongoing struggle to maintain an even keel while adapting to constantly-changing circumstances. I seek the middle ground.

And this is what happened yesterday:

The morning started with a Twitter notification from my sister that the Deaconess Hospital system was soliciting homemade masks for their staff. I knew that call had gone out, but I was waiting for verification from my friend, Cathy, that there was a need. I didn’t want to be part of a wave of sewists making cozies for koalas that were never going to be used.

I did, however, get out the plastic bin full of elastic to assess how much 1/4” elastic I had. It was not an insignificant amount:

A few hours later, I got a text from Cathy. Her daughter works at a hospital in New York City and they are desperate for masks. She said they’ve been using ones made from woven cotton on one side and T-shirt knit on the other. I printed out the pattern from the Deaconess website, set DD#2 up with a pair of scissors and the pile of elastic, and got out the husband’s old Carhartt T-shirts. We keep them around for shop rags, but a couple of them were intact enough to be organ donors. I got sixteen 6” x 9” pieces out of the first shirt and cut up an equal number of cotton pieces to go with them.

I ran up a prototype mask on the big Janome machine. In the midst of stitching, I got another text from Cathy asking if she could stop over. By the time she got here, I had the first mask completed. She tried it on and pronounced it serviceable (she would know). We chatted for a bit about the state of things. I know we are all supposed to be practicing social distancing, but oh, my, it was so good to see her in person for a few minutes.

I went back to making masks. DD#2, having finished cutting up elastic, turned them inside out for me. I took a short break to eat dinner and visit with the husband before finishing up the mask pleating/topstitching on the Necchi industrial. (The pleats are thick enough that the Janome was balking a bit. The Necchi goes right through them.) These are some of the ones I am sending to Cathy’s daughter today:

I have enough elastic for about 50 more. (And that, people, is why I have the equivalent of a small Joann Fabrics store in my house.) Cathy stopped at Joanns on the way home to pick up elastic—she sews, too—but they were out. That didn’t surprise me. I thought they would sell out quickly. She found a few packages at Hobby Lobby. I ordered more from the Hobby Lobby website. I’ll keep making these because it sounds like we might run short locally, too.

We also got a call from DD#1. She and her fiancé were on their way to his parents’ house. I am relieved about that. Right after the 9/11 attacks, my MIL made the comment that she felt very much like a mother hen who wanted to gather all her chicks under her wing to make sure that everyone was safe. I know exactly what she meant. We have DD#2 with us and I know that DD#1 will be well taken care of by her future in-laws.

Would I like this situation to be different? Yes. I’d like all of 2020 to be different, actually, but we play the hand we are dealt. After dinner, the husband responded to a medical call down the road for a very sick, very small child with what sounded like the flu. The husband is an EMT. He is going to respond to dangerous situations, be they structure fires, car wrecks, or medical calls. I accept that risk; I’ve accepted it for 25 years and that isn’t going to change now. Just before he got back, our neighbor—who is a flight medic on the helicopter service and works in the ER at the hospital—texted me to tell me that we now have two confirmed cases of COVID-19 here in Flathead County.

I look forward to the day when we are on the other side of this and people are writing stories about it for future generations. In the meantime, we do what we can. And what we have to.