I hope it's OK that I share a story about the other worst Pandemic in the history of the ( modern) world.
I think there are things to learn from this, and maybe there will be SOMETHING we each can bring forward into 2021.
It seems NY has a COVID variant that's possibly resistant to our vaccines- but I ALWAYS knew this would happen around the time I was fully vaccinated against the first strain. It's a gift from God, but sometimes, it feels like a curse in this world of ours.
So, in the year of late 1918 when babies tend to get sick with winter croup and the news was SO dire about the " Spanish Influenza" in Europe, and coming to the US, a family of 4, two parents and two children, decided they lived too close into their town to be able to isolate well. The parents were progressive, and extremely intelligent, the father a doctor.
They lived in a part of a state which has huge limestone caves hidden from sight, but if you lived there, you might have found one, long abandoned by Native Americans and played and explored in it, as the father had done in his youth.
He remembered the caves one day while trying to come up with a relatively safe and isolated place to keep and raise his precious children and keep his wife safe.
Together, they loaded up their wagons with all the non-perishables, warm and cooler clothing ( this was in the area of North Alabama) and books and homemade games for the children. Dr. Hatcher and his wife knew they were going from comfort to absolute poverty of living to try to live and keep their two little girls alive, but it was ALL they had.
They bought 5 or so acres of land just outside the mostly hidden cave face, and on this land, they built a sturdy fence in two parts, one to keep the few cattle and a couple of horses in, and one to grow fresh vegetables in. Dr. Hatcher was fairly sure he and his wife were resilient and resourceful enough to make their children safe and keep them healthy.
Every day for almost one solid year, they lived in their own isolation, with the parents making trips to the livestock and to the gardens. Inside the cave, the children were loved, and taught and the family sang songs of praise and faith, and prayed for the whole world.
One of the things created while they were in the cave was a quilt, or maybe more than one quilt. When a child's dress couldn't be let out any more at the seams, it wasn't discarded. It went into the creation of a new quilt for snuggly warmth in the cave, which was around 68 degrees year round, I am told.
They might have been bored, but they were never hungry, without milk or fresh rainwater, or dirty. This was a family that believed a bowl and pitcher was a fine way to bathe when that was the style of the day, anyway.
Dr. Hatcher was smart enough to watch the river traffic down below. Were the fishermen returning yet? Were the pole bargemen taking the local cotton to a large cotton gin yet? From their high vantage point, the parents could see if people were moving around, or still ill.
They waited it out. Month after month, the mother sewed for her girls with the fabric she'd brought, and added more squares to the quilt from the little one's outgrown clothing.
I didn't know this story, which IS true, until I was pretty much grown ( I was a sheltered child, too , but in a different way) and my beloved Nanny ( my mother's mother) sat me down one day and started weaving one of her wonderful stories based on her life. She and my mother had saved and framed squares of the very old and precious quilt, for it was the ONLY thing created in the year which was created, not used up.
My dear grandmother had been one of the little girls in the cave, as she and her sibling were " late in life" babies still at home when the Influenza Pandemic hit, and she taught me many things about survival that her parents taught her while she was growing up , some of which I used during the horrific power outages we had here last month in -7 degree weather.
I hope we all practice independent thinking as best as we can, never giving up to find wellness, even when the personal hardship becomes really grueling in the isolation and the just plain loneliness and sadness. We'd be abnormal if we didn't feel some isolation and loneliness. At least we don't have to live in a real cave and be homeschooled until the sun went down at the mouth of the cave every evening. I think the experience did make my grandmother very empathetic, gentle, kind, and smart in the ways of her parents. She was my one true confidant and dear love until she left this world for another, loving me enough to speak of me with her last breath, I'm told.
The mother in the story was, then, my great-grandmother, and I am SO honored to have her first and middle names, and her very special wedding rings from Dr. Hatcher, my great-grandfather, who delivered all 13 of his children safely, and raised them all to healthy adulthood so very long ago.
We can learn from history while making our own.
I wish they'd kept a journal, maybe they did, and my grandmother wasn't aware, IDK.
But two beautiful squares from the Pandemic Quilt, with velvet, and bright colors, ( probably the clothing they went in to the cave with as they were people of means) still remain in my family. We won't ever forget the lengths a family can go to in order to be safe.
Thank you for letting me share. I had no idea where this belonged, and if it needs to be moved, I am totally fine with that, and apologize for putting it in the wrong place.
