In a week of fear and kindness in CNY, we are all quarantined in this together

Dara Kibby is a mom of two in Jamesville. She voices the anxiety of many over the coronavirus

Dara Kibby is a mother of two in Jamesville. She voices the anxiety of many right now. She’s a nurse who does shift work. Her husband is a physician assistant at a local hospital. She’s worried about the risk of coronavirus. (Dennis Nett | dnett@syracuse.com)

East Syracuse, N.Y. — The center of the building is calm. The light is low. Every office has a sliding glass door but most are cracked open.

The workers wear headsets and talk in calm voices, but shreds of the grief, anxiety and loss that is piled so high right now slide out.

The other end of those lines are people struggling across Central New York and beyond. The callers need everything from food and baby formula to a gentle voice and basic information. An elderly caller wanted to know if it was safe to go to the laundromat. Another caller had lost a job and couldn’t pay rent.

The call center at Contact Community Services answers 13 hotlines, including a suicide prevention hotline and 211, a spot for non-emergency crisis calls. On a usual day, they get 250 calls. Between midnight Wednesday and midnight Thursday, that total was 989.

Cheryl Giarrusso has worked at the call and crisis intervention center for 17 years. She has never seen anything like it.

That’s because there’s never been anything like it.

Our lives have been upended in a way that’s unfathomable. As soon as we think we can understand, another stack of dominoes cascades down. Every cough is a threat. The hugs that calm us are the very thing that could make us sick. Churches, synagogues and mosques where we might find refuge are shuttered and shifted online.

Going out to get groceries or medical care can feel like a life or death decision.

The gyms where we’d sweat it out, the bars where we’d talk it out and the sporting events that would distract us are all gone, too.

But there is great kindness as we dream up new ways to comfort each other, to build community that can hold without touching. Teachers are doing this en masse. Regular people and business owners are giving without thinking — from the last carton of eggs to a truckload of food.

We are isolated in our homes but together in this pandemic like nothing else in history.

“What I wouldn’t give for a hug”

Dara Kibby feels like her husband is a soldier in a war. He’s a physician assistant, but every day he’s off to the frontlines, working at different hospitals in Syracuse. There, he can help. But he can also get infected.

Then, he would bring it home to Kibby and the two kids. Kids generally do not get sick from COVID-19, but Kibby’s parents, both cancer survivors, are at high risk of becoming dangerously ill if they contract the virus.

So Kibby’s world shrank to a fraction of what it used to be last week. The Jamesville woman is a registered nurse who did shift work. Her parents would watch her kids when she worked.

Now, that’s out. So Kibby has stopped working. But her parents and sister were also her support, her comfort. She hasn’t seen any of them since last week and isn’t sure when she will again.

“It’s terrifying to know that just keeping my kids inside won’t keep us safe,” Kibby said.

She took time off from her new job homeschooling the kids Wednesday to prepare the guest room for her husband. That’s where he’ll serve out a quarantine if he’s exposed or becomes sick.

Kibby hoped someone will make mental health counseling available to medical workers and their families.

As her fear grows, she works to hide it from her kids. She’s doesn’t want to make them worry.

“What I wouldn’t give for a hug,” Kibby said.

Cancer or coronavirus

It’s hard to know what risks to take.

Delores Czado survived breast cancer once. But the 98-year-old found out Monday the cancer is back.

Her daughter, Kathleen Czado, worries about her own health. She is diabetic and in her 60s.

“Cancer or coronavirus. That’s what I said to my mother. Do you want to die of cancer or coronavirus,” Czado said.

She said after finding out the cancer had reappeared Monday, Upstate University Hospital has hustled like she’s never seen to get the treatment process moving. “They’re trying to push everyone through the system before it gets slammed,” Czado said.

Other than the medical appointments, she said they’ll stay home. But she’s worried her mother will become too sick and hospice will be overwhelmed. Or what if Czado get the coronavirus and dies, leaving her mother behind.

“Then there is no one,” she said.

Later this day, they will go to the cancer center to find out what’s next.

But first, Delores Czado sat outside in the fresh air of their Westvale yard with her dog Rosie on her lap.

Delores Czado, 98, holds her dog, Rosie, outside her Westvale home on Thursday, March 19, 2020. Delores found out Monday that she has breast cancer, for the second time. Her daughter, Kathleen, is hustling to get her into treatment before hospitals are overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, but she’s worried about her mother getting the coronavirus if she gets treated. "I just don't want to die," Delores said. (Katrina Tulloch | ktulloch@syracuse.com)Katrina Tulloch | ktulloch@syrac

#howyoupray

After the 9/11 attacks, people went to church, synagogues and mosques in droves. They held hands. They lit candles. They prayed with one voice.

As the world seems to shut down and fall apart, most houses of worship are shut tight. Many have online services. But as Jess Walsh prayed Wednesday, she wondered about the people who may want to pray but don’t know how. Or who want someone to pray with, but have no one. They can’t show up at a church now.

She went onto a new Facebook page that’s sprung up to help people help each other, Onondaga County Neighbors Helping Neighbors, and made an offer: Anyone who wants someone to pray with them can message her and she pass their name and number along to a missionary who will call and pray with them.

Walsh also offered a virtual place where everyone can pray together safely — a new hashtag. “I invite everyone of all faiths to share #howyoupray. Share from your heart and hashtag #howyoupray to help others learn what to do during this difficult time,” she wrote.

Timeless lessons in a crazy time

Aaron Jaeger is still trying to find the right way and time to reach his masses. They are high school kids, mostly seniors. Jaeger is their social studies teacher at Nottingham High School in the Syracuse City School District.

But he’s also the guy who tosses them a tennis ball in the hallway. Who fist bumps them. Who hugs them. Who knows them, even if they’re not in his class. He tells them how he is. They do the same.

A big part of his teaching load is Active Citizenship. That’s a complicated lesson right now.

The last lesson they had in the classroom was him telling the kids to scroll through their phones and see how many photos and videos were of themselves. This is the time, he told them, that you need to see, notice and take care of the people around you.

He didn’t want that message to stop when the kids walked out of the school the last time. So Jaeger, 31, started talking to the kids on Facebook live every day.

Aaron Jaeger, Nottingham teacher

Aaron Jaeger, a social studies teacher at Nottingham High school, has been doing Facebook live lectures to keep his students connected.

The kids may not be logging on to see him at the same time, but more than 600 have watched Wednesday’s lecture. Even if you’ve been out of school for decades, he offers timeless lessons in a crazy time.

Ali Cridge, whose son Odin is in Jaeger’s class, said he’s a stellar teacher during normal times. But right now, in these times, he’s a hero as he works to keep kids connected.

Earlier this week, Jaeger waits for kids to file into his online class. He greets them as they show up in the cue. The Roots play while he checks people off. That fist-bump is now a call out, sometimes with a playful jab.

“It is so important to stay connected. It would be so easy to run home and shut the door and hide,” Jaeger tells the kids in his online lecture. We have to find the right balance of living while protecting the people who are at risk.

It’s not about us, right now, he tells them.

Then he looks into the camera, out at the kids he cannot hug, and offers a hand: “We need to make sure we all get through this.”

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Marnie Eisenstadt is a reporter who writes about people and public affairs in Central New York. Have an idea or question? Contact her anytime: email | twitter| Facebook | 315-470-2246

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