How Long Will It Take

I’m parked in the pediatric dentist’s parking lot, my youngest asleep behind me, my two oldest already up getting their teeth cleaned because my youngest’s appointment is not for another thirty minutes and she never naps and she fell asleep right before we got here and we can’t go up there anyway because that will make the office have too many people in it. But I am proud of her sisters for not waking her up while getting out of the car, although it is a little easier because we now have a three row car instead of a two row car and everyone has a little more space than before when they were forced to sit shoulder to shoulder, my oldest in the middle because that was the only way a car seat and a booster seat could fit in one row and my oldest was not old enough to sit in the front seat yet, and we really should have gotten a new car earlier because of all the jostling and poking and yelling and singing over each other all off key to the radio until it broke and accidentally waking up the sister in the car seat by getting unbuckled, but there was no real pressing need to get a new car until the rain storm and the leaking windshield and then the broken radio because of the leaking windshield and then the defective passenger side air bag, again because, you know. Safety. Not comfort, not less fighting, not less yelling for people to keep their hands and their feet to themselves, but safety, safety over my sanity is what finally won out.

I am a little bit nervous about the girls being up there in the dental office in the little pediatric dentist chairs by themselves even though they have been there before and have gone back to the little pediatric dental chairs by themselves before. But I am nervous because that was all before masks and social distancing and actually counting how many people can be in such a small space to limit air exchange, because now it matters, and why shouldn’t it have also mattered just as much before? Like a fire code or a health code or something. But it definitely matters now, and that’s why I’m nervous. Just like how safety pushed me to get the only three row car on the lot that was safe enough, there weren’t even any two row cars that were safe enough, and if that one three rower wasn’t there, I would still be driving around with a leaky windshield and no functioning front air bag which is the most un-safe of all the choices, but really, what kind of choice do I have?

So I’m two floors down and outside waiting for the last possible minute to wake my youngest up. And if you think about it, I am still as far away from my two oldest daughters as if I was sitting in the waiting room, as far as safety and emergencies go. If something bad were to happen to one of the girls, it would not matter if I was up there or down here because an emergency happens regardless of my location.

And even if I am wrong about the now lower risk of them getting anything from being in the pediatric dental chairs than the risk of an asymptomatic infected hole in a tooth because no one has been complaining about tooth pain, I still need my children’s teeth to be examined and cleaned and x-rayed and all that, and the dentist still has to pay his bills and pay his staff and pay himself, and I still want him to be in business when this is all over. He speaks in a duck voice to my youngest daughter when she doesn’t want to open her mouth, pretending to look for all the ducks she’s hiding in there.

Does everyone live one disaster to the next or is it just me?

All day is a disaster, all day, without any relief. When will my husband get sick from one of his patients. When will we get sick. How long can I hold off my in-laws from coming to visit. I don’t want to kill them. What do I do when someone coughs. Or has an earache or a sore throat. Do we have it now. We definitely have it now. What if the test is negative. It’s negative. But we are still coughing. When will it be ok to think that a cough is just a cough? I hate that disasters make me live in questions.

And the worst part is that people cross the road when they see us coming. When did children start being looked at with distain? My youngest mutters in her sleep; her lips make soft oh shapes. How can anyone despise this face? Is it because of the masks? Because I still make them wear masks when we walk outside hoping that will make people feel better about staying on our side of the street. We aren’t coughing or anything. The only reason we have masks on is because we want others to feel ok with being close to us. We want others to be safe. But I think it makes people have the exact opposite reaction. That we are not safe.

Be safe.

I have never hated two words as much as those. When will I stop having to say that, think that?
And how long until we can again look at children with wonderment and joy?

 

Krista Puttler has lived in the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii, Japan, and a stateroom on an aircraft carrier. Her writing has appeared in Under the Gum Tree, Cagibi, and Cleaver Magazine, among others. She lives outside Naples, Italy with her husband and three daughters.