Suburban Turmoil: Pan(dem)ic in the streets

On the border of Guadalupe County in Texas, where the first U.S. cases of swine flu were reported, mom Heather Andrus is facing a major test of endurance.

“Our schools are closed ‘til the 11th,” she wrote to me recently, “No parks are open, no library, no kids museum, no church services today.”

From Texas to Tennessee, swine flu has made folks more paranoid than a Bellevue driver broken down in East Nashville. And no one’s suffering more than the moms.

Take the mothers of Harding Academy and Montgomery Bell Academy here in Nashville. Their kids have been out of school now for a whole week. When I think of all the country club lunches, tennis lessons and manicures that must have been canceled as a result, my heart bleeds for those poor women.

For every mom who’s enduring a surprise swine flu vacation right now, Heather has some advice.

“What's left to do with stir-crazy kids?” she asks. “Drink!”

With that in mind, she and her friends have been getting together several times a week. While the kids get regular squirts of hand sanitizer, the moms rely on the alcohol in their margaritas to kill stray germs. It’s a solution that’s perfect for mothers like the one I saw wearing Mickey Mouse ears at the Nashville airport the other day.

“The weather in Orlando was really terrific,” she was saying to an attentive stranger a few chairs down. “And we just loved having breakfast with Chip and Dale. It was so worth the…” As her gaze fell on her 5-year-old daughter beside her, she stopped and gasped loudly.

“Amelia Marie Dunbar, are you putting your MOUTH on that CHAIR?!” she asked her young daughter incredulously.

“Yes,” the girl said, lifting her lips from the armrest.

“What did I TELL you about the PIG FLU?!” she sputtered, grabbing her bag and frantically searching through it until she found some baby wipes. After plucking a few from the case, she scrubbed her daughter’s face, arms, hands and chair with all the nervous energy of Nancy Van Camp during a tornado watch. The stranger beside her frowned, forgotten.

“When I tell you not to touch anything, I mean it!” the mother said, her mouse ears askew. “Now, don’t you disobey me again!” Just then, her husband returned from the baggage carousel with a stroller. She straightened up and put her hands on her hips.

“Leroy, Amelia Marie put her MOUTH on this CHAIR,” she said. The man turned pale.

“Why don’t we put her in the stroller now that we have it?” he asked. “That way she can’t touch anything else.” He looked around the baggage claim area as if it were covered in cockroaches and feces.

“Do I need to wipe that stroller down first?” the mom asked. “No,” she remembered. “They put it in a plastic bag when we checked it, didn’t they. Okay, Amelia Marie. Get in the stroller.” She smiled broadly. “You can touch anything on it you want!” The little girl climbed on her stroller and began caressing it lovingly.

Yes, I think a margarita or three in this case could have worked wonders.

Mouse Ears Mom is hardly alone in her pig flu panic. Suburban Turmoil readers across the country have written in with similar reactions.

“My husband thinks I'm insane, my co-workers give me grief constantly,” wrote Anne. “I work at a pharmacy, so I'm always in contact with sick people. Every bottle of hand sanitizer is gone off of our shelves so CLEARLY I'm not the only one freaking out.”

“If it gets bad I have a plan to create giant bubbles for my family to use when we need to leave home,” added Kathy.

“I disinfected my groceries yesterday because the cashier informed me that her son's school is closed due to flu AFTER she handled all of my food,” reader Michelle wrote. “I feel much better now.”

Here at home, we’re trying to stay calm, but it’s not easy when every news channel is issuing dire warnings accompanied by video of frightened-looking people in facemasks. We did make one swine flu concession, agreeing before I left town over the weekend that my husband would keep the kids out of the YMCA nursery. The next day, I texted him to see how he was doing.

“I’m bored out of my mind,” he texted back. “I really want to go to the Y.” I sighed, weighing swine flu against an unhappy husband. The choice was obvious.

“Okay fine,” I texted back. “Just wash their hands before and after.”

A few days later, Hubs picked me up from the airport. “We had a great weekend,” he announced cheerily. “Things really got a lot better after we decided to ignore the swine flu.”

And that’s pretty much what we’ve been doing ever since. With two small kids, I’m already as addicted to hand sanitizer as Kenny Rogers is to plastic surgery. Short of putting my children in hazmat suits when we go out, I’m not sure there’s much more I can do.

Besides continuing to drink preventative swine flu margaritas, I mean. I do want to be on the safe side.