Back to the (Sur)Real World

We received notification quite suddenly yesterday that there would be Mass this morning at our church. There were, of course, rules regarding how many people could be in the church--in our small church, that's 33 people--and everyone over the age of three was required to wear masks.

I must admit that my initial reaction was, "No way. How am I gonna keep four little kids in masks for an hour?"

I can barely manage to get them to stay quiet in the pew on a regular basis, much less expect them to stay in the pew, stay quiet, and keep their noses and mouths covered the whole time.

However.

When I suggested that maybe I should stay home with the younger ones, Jack immediately said that he wanted to go, and of course Poppy wasn't going to be left behind. So we had to come up with masks for all of us.

We have one fabric mask our neighbor made and gave to us, two hospital-grade N-95 masks that A. bought about a year ago to have on hand for sanding projects and so on, and a lot of large cloth napkins.

The professional masks are actually pretty hard to breathe through (props to the medical professionals who wear those every day), and we weren't expecting to be in close proximity to anyone, so I decided not to use those.

Charlie wore the one fabric mask, and the rest of us wore the cloth napkins, tied bandito-style around our faces.

Not technically required to wear a mask, but not about to go without one if her brothers had one.

We had a really fun few minutes before leaving for church when we were trying to figure out who would wear what, and the children complained that the (clean) cloth napkins smelled funny, so we tried rubbing them with lime, and then I put a tiny bit of the perfume I never wear on them.

Chanel Number 5-scented bandito masks are the latest word in luxury.

I found my napkin-mask extremely hard to tie because of all my hair that kept getting tied up in it, and I also found it very hard to keep up because it stretched out just a teeny bit. The kids did really well, actually, although they did all escape with me halfway through the 35-minute service when Poppy announced she needed to pee*.

There's no bathroom in our church, so I had to bring her outside to the village's public bathroom. The three boys all came with me, and as soon as we got out the door, ripped off their masks and started gasping theatrically.

But they did keep them on the whole time with minimal complaining, although with a lot of slipping and readjusting. We need to get real masks with elastic to go around the ears, because I guess this is the new normal.

* She also informed me, at full voice in a quiet church, that she needed to poop. Two-year-olds are not known for discretion.