Essential

How do we decide what is essential? I mean, do we go back to basics and say that food, water and shelter are the only truly essential things? I’ve been working since late May. My job would not be deemed essential if you were to use the above criteria. I do not provide anyone with food, water or shelter. Okay. So in the case of a pandemic, we need to add medical care to the list of essential items. That means that anyone who provides people with food, water, shelter and medical care is essential. I’m still not essential and yet…here I am. I cannot do my job from home. Please know that if I could, and if my place of employment would allow it, I would absolutely be at home trying to parent my daughters, wife my husband and work for my employer. Alas, that is not an option for me. The girls are scheduled to go back to school on August 19. This makes teachers essential, right? Absolutely. And the support staff that keeps a school running must be essential too. With school starting, so are sports, which…are they essential? I mean, the kids probably thing so, right? We want so badly for life to get back to normal. We want to live and thrive and do things and be with people and yet…doing this might mean that some of us won’t live through this. Sigh. Recently (and here’s where all this pontificating is going, finally) Alyssa’s voice coach messaged us. She has openings for the fall and would love to add Lyss back to her schedule. Alyssa stopped voice lessons back in March when the world skidded to a halt. Her coach, Ms. C messaged us in June (?) and offered Alyssa a spot for summer lessons. We declined, deciding that at that time, voice lessons were not essential. But now? Still probably not essential but maybe, well, necessary? Or if not necessary, perhaps a bonus? Alyssa has worked so hard all summer. She’s masked up and served up beef and cheddars with sides of cheese sticks and jamocha shakes with very few complaints. So…voice lessons? Skip them for fear of contracting a potentially deadly virus? Go for it because damn it, how much more are we all going to have to give up? I know, logically, that limiting the number of people we have contact with is smart. I also know that each person one of us (my nuclear family being the ‘us’ in this instance) has contact with is bringing with them all the people they’ve had contact with and so on into infinity. But…my heart argues with my head and says, “When does it end?” My head wants to know who has to die for us to really stop all this whining. My heart whines that the voice coach gave lessons all summer long and apparently all is well. (Can you tell that Tom is my head and Alyssa is my heart?) What do we do? How far is too far when it comes to slowing down? How much is too much to give up? But really, when it comes to people’s lives, their actual hearts beating, is anything too much to give up if it means everyone gets to, you know, live?