Today is the first day of spring, so we’re having a blizzard to celebrate. When you live at the top of a mountain pass, even a smallish one, this sort of thing isn’t unusual.

What is unusual is that we didn’t have to look up school closings for this one. Because everything is already closed. Right now, even the Interstates are closed due to accidents. People are still going out and about. Most of them have to. We’re fortunate here, that we are able to work from home, that our companies are actually mandating that we work from home. So many others are not so lucky.

My 16 year old daughter is already antsy at this confinement. She wants to see her friends. To have just a few of them come over when the storm ends. We said no, and when she asked how long this would go on, we looked at her plainly and said we didn’t know. We’ve never experienced anything quite like this before. She disappeared into her room for a while after that. Not long after, I went upstairs to try to get her sister out of bed only to discover that she had slept with her window cracked open two inches all night.

In a blizzard.

Jesus wept.

The rest of the day passed in a quiet snowy work-from-home kind of way. Most of the time the view out my office window was just a white blur with a few hints of trees behind it, the wind gusting brittle splashes of snow across the glass every so often. I’ve found it hard to concentrate today. The news coming out of Italy was grim: not enough room in the morgues for all of their deceased.

Late in the afternoon, more cancellations of events for my 16 year old came through in a brief flurry of email. Schools will remain closed at least through April 17 now. More spring concerts are cancelled, including all of her band and orchestra rehearsals, and sadly, her trip to Albuquerque with Youth Symphony is off the table as well. Youth Symphony is supposed to travel to Greece and Bulgaria in June for three weeks, and so far, they haven’t officially called it off yet. But if things continue this way, I’m pretty sure that one will go too. I’m sad for my daughter. This spring had so many great things lined up, and one by one, we’re watching them slip away.

But it’s the right thing to do. We have to do our part, my husband and I told her this morning, when she badgered us once again to have just a couple friends over. Just one or two. We can’t just exempt ourselves from social distancing because we’re Pretty Sure it would be fine. We can’t. Too many lives are at stake.