Editor’s note: This is a continuation of Jen Cowart’s series regarding her family’s experience during the two-week self-quarantine period for the Cranston High School West community.

March 28-April 3

Saturday, March 28 marked the first official day out of quarantine for our daughters who attend Cranston High School West.

Our girls played basketball outside in the driveway that afternoon and even went hunting for sidewalk chalk in the garage, enjoying the nice weather that day. We took another socially distanced walk around the neighborhood, marking the first time I’d ever gotten five out of five days in a row of exercise on my FitBit since I got it for Mother’s Day last year – which was good, since we were doing plenty of cooking, baking and eating while we were home.

We were trying to take our walks at night in order to encounter as few people as possible along the way. We would look up at the night sky, check out the stars or the occasional planet and talk about the events of the day or what we thought our summer would look like. We wondered if we’d get to use our new camper and new seasonal campsite at all this summer.

We had decided to make Friday nights our take-out night, and we made sure to support two of our Cranston restaurants with our order, but early Saturday morning Don and I ventured to the grocery store to stock up on things we needed to make the last of our current list of meals complete. The grocery store was brightly lit and great music was playing as we took a sanitizing wipe to wipe down our cart at the door and tried to stay far enough away from the few people we saw in the store while we shopped.

There was plenty of food and we got everything on our food list. It seemed like it could be a normal day, aside from the fact that there was hardly anyone out and about. There was no one in line ahead of us but the one woman behind us stood several feet away while we put our items on the belt. The scene was the polar opposite of my March 13 shopping day just two weeks before, which still remains in my mind as a scene of just total pandemonium. So much had changed in such a short time. It seemed as if at least a month had passed rather than just 15 days.

At 1 o’clock that afternoon, Gov. Gina Raimondo came on for her daily press conference – an event that our entire family now watched every day, listening to her every word. She announced the first two deaths for our state and our number of confirmed cases was now in the 200s, whereas on March 13 there had been just nine cases. Of course, by April 3, there would be more than 700 cases.

Raimondo also issued our state’s first official stay-at-home order and lowered the number of people allowed to be gathered together at one time down to just five. We joked a little bit, thankful that our family was one of just five and no more, but really nothing was funny about the seriousness of this situation.

We had been keeping to the rules of no one coming in or going out unless for essentials, and it was hard, especially for the kids who were missing their friends. But this new order, along with these first deaths in our state, doubled down on the importance of following the guidelines.

The governor was frustrated with those who, for whatever reason, were just not listening or adhering to the rules, putting all of us at risk in the process. Her now well-known tagline, “Knock it off,” was one she would say daily; the “mom” voice in her was coming out, and it was one I recognized well, as I’ve had to pull that voice out so often in my years as a parent. When a T-shirt came out sporting that phrase, I placed my order. She estimated that only about 50 percent of our Rhode Islanders were following the rules. We needed everyone to do better as we braced for the surge in numbers and cases that we all know is coming.

As I read different articles, estimates and projections that came in that week, I felt a sense of panic, knowing that even if the predictions are not exact, that they are going to be close and that the cases are going to come closer, too. Even though our family is somewhat protected in our bubble of safety at home, I worried about the virus coming in by other ways as I read about it living on shoes and surfaces and traveling in the air.

I worried about the cases coming closer to those we know. I worried about my grandmothers in their nursing homes as I heard over the weekend of two cases, then five and later 15, all in nursing home facilities in our state. I tried to keep that panic at bay as we continued along our days, but I know that it’s ever more important to stay in as much as possible and to keep everyone safe as best we can.

I sent another letter to my grandmothers, frustrated that even though we are all sitting here we can’t go see them, but obviously understanding why. I ordered more allergy-friendly chocolate chips on Amazon – a case of six (desperate times) – instead of going into another store to restock, since we had used up most of our four bag supply in two weeks already.

On Sunday morning, Don and I tuned in to see our pastor at St. David’s on-the-Hill do a complete service, minus the distribution of communion, as a Facebook Live event. It was just the pastor in the church, with her husband doing the readings and two of our choir members, who are married, doing the music from their living room at home, which they pre-recorded the day before and edited into the live stream as it went along.

I was happy to see our pastor, her husband and our two friends from the choir “in person” and to hear their voices now that so much is done online and we hear less and less of people actually speaking. I was happy to see and hear the familiar rhythms of our weekly service, some semblance of normalcy in all of this.

We stayed on the live stream and watched to the end, and I was so glad that we did. I give our pastor, Andrea, a lot of credit for preaching to an empty church other than her husband, even as she knew many of us were there watching from home. It was odd yet comforting to be watching church in my pajamas and slippers with my dog next to me, my ever-present morning coffee in hand.

We began to talk to our kids about what the upcoming Easter holiday would look like, knowing that it would be a quiet day and church would still be experienced from the comfort of our couch. The girls begged us to be sure to make it the same – the same foods we always have for breakfast that day, the same favorite brunch menu we’d normally do if we had guests, and the same coloring of eggs and backyard egg hunts they’d done since they were little. We’d proudly shared all of these things last year with our oldest daughter’s college friends who had never celebrated Easter before. It showed how important it was for them, even at this age, that we maintain whatever routines we could, and it showed how much we were all struggling with the many changes in place and the things that were already canceling all around us – weddings, proms, school ceremonies and school itself. We had to keep and hold onto whatever else we could as this went on.

On Sunday night, we all watched Elton John as he hosted a living room concert on TV – a dozen or so musicians and musical groups singing “together” from their homes all over the world since they could not physically join together for fear of getting sick. It was again amazing, yet odd to be watching something like this being done via today’s technology. It was also strongly reminiscent of other very serious times in our recent history when celebrities brought people together in a time of crisis – Live Aid, for example, or after 9/11.

About 90 percent of me could enjoy it, but it made me 10 percent sad, too, knowing what this really was and why it was really being done. I was much more than 10 percent sad and thought I might cry as I watched the scenes on television being shown throughout of those working in hospitals, truly on the frontlines of this war on the coronavirus, putting themselves and their families at risk as they do so. It reminded me so much of the days following 9/11.

That night I had my first dream in which the coronavirus was a part of it. It wasn’t a bad dream, but the virus was in the background of whatever was happening in the dream. When I woke up I marveled at the fact that something which had never existed before was now just part of our everyday lives, even when I slept.

Monday afternoon, Raimondo made her latest announcement about school in Rhode Island. We had been telling our own kids all along that neither of us could see school reopening any time soon. We had all watched and listened to the recent press conferences as the numbers of people allowed to be in close proximity to each other dwindled and as it was made clear that the very last things to open at some point in the future would be any sort of large venues where many people would be near to each other.

That did not bode well for the reopening of in-person schooling any time soon. We wanted them to know that an extension of remote learning could be coming, but when it did that Monday afternoon, it was still another dose of reality for all of us. School would continue to be virtual for another month, until at least May 1 – and at that time, another update would be given, very likely continuing the virtual learning for another month, given the estimated peak of the virus and the time needed to get beyond that peak in order to see a decline in cases in Rhode Island.

The schooling was really going fine for us. They actually like the schedule and the self-pacing opportunity, and other than missing the daily social interaction, the girls truly didn’t mind this news that much. But it further emphasized the seriousness of the current situation.

On Thursday, the governor did a special press conference with the hour devoted to questions submitted just by kids statewide. As she answered, we all watched, waiting for the one question we knew was coming – what about proms and graduations and upcoming milestone spring ceremonies like that?

Sure enough, the question was asked, with students wanting a final, real answer. I’m sure the governor knew the question would come also – and as a mother herself, and the top-ranking official in our state, I knew that this was not an answer she looked forward to giving.

No one blames her for this virus or for the answer she had to give, and I gave her a lot of credit for her honesty and her bluntness, and saying it like it is. She always says in her daily press conferences that she won’t sugarcoat things for Rhode Islanders, and she didn’t sugarcoat it for our students either. They asked and she gave them an honest answer – these events were not likely to happen, at least not in a traditional way. She knows it’s awful and she wishes it weren’t.

I pictured my daughter’s beautiful prom dress hanging on a hanger right where we’d left it, and I was sad, but my daughter is a junior, not a senior, and I knew that at least she would have another chance to wear it and to go to a prom next year. I pictured the April and May events she was looking forward to that now would not happen – an internship she had been waiting for in the rotation of three different internships, the National Honor Society induction ceremony date that she had worked hard for, and, of course, the prom.

My heart broke for the seniors and their own realities. The mood again was somber after that answer as we watched and listened, and when it was over, we had no other choice other than to continue on about our day.

Jen Cowart is a regular contributor to the Cranston Herald and communications specialist for Cranston Public Schools.