Projecting My Fear onto My Daughter in the Time of a Pandemic

By Jennifer Kuhel

Within the days earlier than Ohio confronted a stay-at-home order, my 13-year-old daughter revisited a dialog that we started practically two months earlier.

“Mother, bear in mind whenever you advised me that coronavirus was a narrative the media was blowing out of proportion simply so individuals would learn it?”

I winced. “Yeah, I bear in mind.”

Early within the afternoon of January 26, she and I have been headed east by way of Indiana’s dormant farmland alongside Interstate 70, driving again house to Cleveland from a weekend swim meet in Indianapolis.

As I drove, she swiped by way of Snapchat, catching up on the information.

“Hey Mother, what do you concentrate on what’s occurring with this coronavirus?” she requested.

Her query conjured up recollections of one in all my pre-teen irrational fears: thunderstorms, particularly the sturdy, southwestern Ohio selection.

Within the mid-Nineteen Eighties, my household was among the many first in our suburban Cincinnati neighborhood to put in cable tv service, so my older sister and I spent chunks of our unsupervised summer time days sitting cross-legged in entrance of the Sony console. I took a selected curiosity in The Climate Channel.

Climate forecasts have been one thing that usually got here as soon as a day within the newspaper or on the 5 o’clock night information, however because of The Climate Channel, I might get an up to date forecast each hour. There have been days the place the prospect of thunderstorms all through the day went from 20 p.c to 50 p.c to 80 p.c. I used to be terrified by the rising risk of spectacular lightning crashes, deafening thunder, and worse, damaging tornadoes.

I used to be glued to The Climate Channel on wet days, my anxiousness crescendoing, as I tracked the colours on the radar: first inexperienced, adopted by yellow, then pink bands of storms inching nearer to our dot on the Ohio map. Climate was unstoppable and past my management. It was coming for me, rain or shine. I can nonetheless recall sunny days the place I stood by the window, watching patches of grey clouds roll by and refusing to go outdoors to play.

I apprehensive whether or not my daughter had any comparable simmering anxiousness concerning the pandemic. The information from Wuhan was more and more dangerous. And the virus, like these bands of storms, was slowly inching its means nearer every day. Was she scared? Did she additionally worry the issues she couldn’t management? Did she sense the inevitability? I didn’t know.

So I didn’t give her a straight reply. “Oh, I don’t know concerning the coronavirus stuff,” I stated, eyes on the highway. “The media loves tales like this. It’s important to watch out about how a lot inventory you wish to put in what you learn.”

She nodded, nonetheless taking a look at her cellphone.

I regretted my response.

She was mature sufficient to listen to an trustworthy reply and I didn’t give her one. Greatest case, she noticed proper by way of my pathetic non-answer that smacked of denial. Worst case, she would turn into skeptical of what led her to ask the query within the first place: fact-based, science-based reporting.

Earlier than I might make clear, she swiped to a different story. “Mother, Kobe Bryant simply died.” We didn’t speak about coronavirus the remainder of the drive house.

However within the days and weeks that adopted, our daughter continued to examine coronavirus. Most nights at dinner she shared with us no matter information she’d learn on it that day. After which lastly, she gave me the prospect to present her the reply I ought to have shared two months earlier.

I admitted that I apprehensive she would have gotten anxious if I had given her a unique reply, an trustworthy one. I advised her that I understood if she was fearful of issues she was powerless to manage.

She shrugged, pulled her head again, and furrowed her forehead in teenage disbelief. “Oh, I’m not scared. I do know that if I get sick, I’ll nonetheless most likely be okay.”

I used to be glad for her, for her willingness to learn the info and type her personal perspective. “That’s good, Kiddo,” I stated, patting her arm.

And with that, she turned and walked out of the room, leaving me and the storms I feared behind.