These homemade rainbow posters, many crafted by children, are a common site in Italy these days. The slogan in the upper right — “andra tutto bene” — translates to “it’s going to be OK.”

Disclaimer: This is a personal account during the days that the coronavirus has ransacked Italy. I’m sharing in the hopes that people can take what has happened in Italy and be proactive to do your own personal part in combatting this virus and keeping your loved ones safe during this trying time.

Today, Friday, March 27, 2020, marks Week 5 of my quarantine experience in Italy. 35 days to be precise … today marks the deaths of 969 people in 24 hours, that’s almost 1,000 people. 1,000 in just one day. Leaving Italy with a total of 9,134 people dead from COVID-19, as published by the Italian National Health Service. 51 of them were doctors. Let these grim facts sink in. Your actions today can make a difference in the lives of your community.

Week 1: Delusion

My last day of normality was Sunday, Feb. 23. I was shopping in my favorite grocery store, Aldi, in the nearby town known as Mirandola. This town, located in the region Emilia-Romagna, is a pharmaceutical industry town with many businesses linked to the USA.

Additionally, in spring 2012, like many other towns in my area, it too had become famous for being one of the epicenters of the major earthquakes that devastated my region.

I was just finishing up the last bit of shopping when my phone started blowing up with messages about school being cancelled due to COVID-19; the rumors were becoming a reality. I quickly turned my cart around and loaded up with a few more essentials to ensure that my family could make it through the crisis for about one month if things got nasty like in China. I had been keeping casual tabs about what had happened in China and with it now being on Italian soil, I was not about to fight the possible panic-buying crowds that I knew would be coming to the stores shortly. I felt grateful at this moment for two things.

One, I felt grateful that my rural, American upbringing on the Randall ranch (in Richland) had immersed me in a world of self-sufficiency and resourcefulness. I felt grateful to have taken all the stories about hardship during the pioneering days seriously, and even ironically, started thinking about one of my favorite cooperative projects of all time in Robert Crawford’s class (at Pine Eagle High School in Halfway) while reading “Lord of the Flies” – something about forming a community after the day all the adults disappeared.

Secondly, I felt grateful that I didn’t have to go into work for a week because I have to admit, I’ve never worked for a crazier school in all my life than the one I’m currently employed at.

I had just finished checking out when the masses started coming through the door. I quickly made my exit, but instead of going straight home, I swung by the local nursery and picked up some seeds, topsoil, and a few other gardening supplies. The growing season was approximately one month ahead of schedule and with our east-facing balcony, I have a perfect little greenhouse area to get my plants started — might as well have fresh access to perishables.

I then ordered extra prescriptions from the doctor and made a quick order on Amazon for a five-liter jug of isopropyl alcohol, a first aid kit, some flour, yeast, and a few other things with a long shelf life that I had forgotten at Aldi, just in case.

My husband shook his head at me, mumbling something about my Americanness. We Americans are a bit different from our European counterparts, especially with the historical concept of food storage in the home. I’ve learned that a pantry is culturally identifying and by golly, this time, I’m going to make it a reality. He wanders off, shaking his head but I don’t care, and I figured that I’d better get these things now, just in case. Not hoarding necessarily, but obtaining enough to hold my family over if things really got ugly.

Besides, all the things I got were things I would eventually need. And if you’re wondering, I picked up extra coffee and 4 rolls of extra toilet paper. Yes, you read it correctly, just 4 rolls, not 4 packages! Over here, we can’t grasp the need for that much TP. Perhaps because we have bidets. Perhaps it’s another curious quirk to American culture that I never noticed until moving here.

The first week truly felt like a joke. Families used it to have social get-togethers, as if it were spring break. Most people were still working then and I carried out my tutoring side gigs locally. Regarding school, I quickly set up a few web-quest activities for my students to do while at home, making it more of an enrichment week than anything else. I figured I would see them the following week. No biggie.

I too had some friends over so our kids could have a play-date, now that I had some free time. The only panic I was having was that my hard drive on my laptop conveniently crashed this week but overall, I simply was enjoying the extra break; working 70 hours a week, lesson planning on the weekends, raising a little girl, cleaning, and every other household responsibility was exhausting me so staying home was literally a godsend for my personal sanity and I soaked it up all week.

Week 2: Awakening Awareness

Sunday night, we got the obvious, yet last-minute notice that schools would be shut down again. Businesses would still be open and people only slowed down their activity a bit. Despite knowing what was happening in China, most of us simply thought that it was just a bad case of influenza, nothing too serious, nothing we haven’t seen before. We simply accepted the fact that we needed to help protect the older generations by keeping kids out of school. This flu just affects older people (or so we thought).

Even the small school I work at looked for loopholes to continue earning money by holding “homework” sessions in the pizzeria of one of my students, an action that led me to giving them my three-month notice; I was definitely not going to be involved in going against the government decree of keeping school kids from grouping up in an attempt to protect society, and I absolutely was not going to defy that order as a foreigner. Besides, I have asthma and when the flu goes around, more often than not, it turns into bronchitis so I’d rather not up my exposure any more than usual.

Reports of the casualties coming from the Lombardy area, with the cities of Milan and Bergamo in particular, were serious. We started realizing the importance of social distancing. But the virus was mostly contained over there — it wasn’t in our area. They were on lockdown but we weren’t. It was all going to be OK. I put everyone to work in my household. A good routine, busy hands, and light work keeps a mind and body sane, I kept preaching to my family. One could see just how sarcastically thrilled they all were but we got the plum tree pruned, my garden planted, and some essential honey-do work done that had kept getting put off. Now I could crack the whip!

I kept my small-group tutoring sessions going as long as my students were in good health; if they felt fine, they weren’t sick, right? I also quickly jumped on to using IXL and Reading A-Z (RAZ-Plus and Headsprout) online platforms because I started realizing that school might be closed for the month of March and I didn’t want my kids to fall behind; how nice it was to take advantage of the free trials!

Meanwhile, I’m mumbling to myself because work has announced that it may not be able to pay me in time and felt grateful for my side gigs — wouldn’t be the first time they didn’t pay me on time — but whatever, my last day would be June 8 and I could fly home to see my family soon after! I planned on spending the whole summer in the USA with my daughter, Lamia.

Week 3: The Game Changer

The government announced school closures until April 3 and started issuing police checkpoints in my area. The death toll is simply rising too fast in the hardest hit areas and now it’s spreading to my region, Emilia-Romagna.

The new moderate lockdown halted regular passenger trains from leaving our area. Consequently the last train transports out of Northern Italy were full of Southern Italians desperate to return home to be with loved ones. The TV showed people running to the trains with whatever they could carry. I wonder what the COVID-19 numbers will look like in the South in two weeks.

The police checkpoints are making it too risky to go tutor my students in the nearby town of Carpi (not to be confused with Capri on the Amalfi coast), 15 minutes away from where I live; I simply cannot afford to pay for a ticket. I still haven’t been paid …

Rumors of my area also requiring self-declaration papers that validate reasons for being away from the home started circulating. By Wednesday, March 11, those papers became a reality and I passed them on to a few other English-speaking foreigners who might not have received the message. People have been ordered to stay at home and all non-essential businesses are to be shut down. In Italy, coffee is a cultural essential and even they got shut down. Up until this point, businesses had been doing everything they could to stay afloat. Additionally, it has been declared that my Italian family’s business (jewelry and watchsmithery) is nonessential.

Enrico and I devised a plan to get our last-minute groceries at the bigger store near his business since our local store was already having difficulty keeping its shelves stocked. Might as well stock up one more time. I would take him to work (something forbidden as there only needs to be one person in a car at a time and only one person is needed to do the shopping).

Enrico would stretch the truth on his injury by taking his crutches along and acting as if he still couldn’t drive (he had hurt his leg in a skiing accident in February). This way, he could securely lock up his store while I did the last-minute shopping. By this time, the reality that we might be in this for the long haul finally hit. We didn’t have any medical masks but I grabbed a mask that I used for spray painting and a few latex gloves I had lying around the house. The streets were absolutely and eerily bare!

Thankful for living in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, I had learned about UHT (ultra-high temperature processing, which gives the product a longer shelf life) milk and stocked up on it so I could use it for cooking instead of using the fresh milk or at least have some milk for cereal if we were in a pinch. I loaded up on essential carbs — pasta, beans, rice, flour — scored a couple hard-to-find- jars of peanut butter (hey, I’m American and that’s essential), loaded up on some fresh veggies and milk, extra tomato sauce, extra cat food, a few more packages of various meats, beer (if I’m staying cooped up with my in-laws, this is essential right?), and Coca-Cola. We’d be eating well for the rest of the month for sure.

Italians looked at me strangely as I wheeled away my overloaded cart. They aren’t used to seeing such things as a daily trip to the store is a social norm here. I wonder what they would have thought had they seen my mother and Nanny’s shopping carts while doing their once-a-month shopping in Baker! The memory formed a wry smile on my face as I walked out of the store.

I learned not to be a finicky eater and by golly, my Italian husband will learn that you can go a long way on beans, especially when accompanied with the Tillamook cheddar I loaded up on from my last visit to the USA!

Back at the house, I try to keep my mind occupied with planning ahead, doing activities with my daughter, work, gardening, teaching, picking up my trumpet, and maintaining a routine. Again, a routine reduces stress and depression caused by obsession, especially when armed with cellphones and a frequent onslaught of depressing Facebook updates.

But in the back of my mind, the mathematics topic I’ve taught every year about exponential growth festers.

Past lessons edge their way through my never-ending thoughts, lessons relating to microbiology, stories of the Black Death, Ebola, the Spanish flu and typhus, the knowledge of how fast this virus is spreading and how everyone’s nearest and dearest are literally “walking petri dishes,” unknowingly spreading COVID-19 wherever they may go. The curve is scary but I push the thoughts away. I have a family to care for.

Week 4: Reality Check

My whole family and I have been at home for practically two weeks. The death numbers are rising, averaging 500 per day, give or take. We aren’t even close to peaking and the South of Italy still isn’t showing very many results. Those involved in the mass exodus still are asymptomatic petri dishes. They are the silence before the storm.

I’m actually really busy with tutoring kids via SKYPE and uploading math, science, and 1:1 Guided Reading tutorials for my dual language learning first-graders. I also have to admit that I’m so grateful for the space we have, both indoors and outdoors. Tensions are high as my Italian family wonder whether they will be able to pay the bills. My father-in-law’s social security check is now on hold. People are starting to get on each other’s nerves. However, we can hide from each other when necessary and I frequently have to take an English language refuge because even after eight years, my brain simply refuses to hear another word in Italian!

My friends who live in apartments are not so lucky. Some can’t even go outside in their small little courtyard. Nobody has access to the parks. I can only imagine the families in apartments with kids as only adults get to run errands outside of the home. My friend’s dog started peeing all over the house in protest of being locked inside. Nobody is allowed to walk farther than 200 meters from their house without a self-declaration pass proclaiming official business (of which, by the way, has changed format three times since the first version) and fines have surged and include a penal offense. Definitely not worth the risk and no, I still haven’t been paid. I touch base with Kendra Hoover in Spain, their lockdown restrictions are even stricter than mine. I continue to feel grateful for my space.

I think of how the rules changed frequently for the Jews during the first few years leading up to World War II. There are some similarities, but then I shame myself for making such a drastic comparison. They were persecuted. We are just forced to stay at home, in the comforts of our First World abodes, laden with luxurious internet speeds and endless Netflix.

However, my culturally ingrained lack of trust in the government still makes me uneasy as restrictions continue to tighten. It’s as if it is an Orwell nightmare. My mind drifts to Anne Frank and the countless other stories I have read about the Holocaust. I think about how they had to hide in apartments smaller than my friends’ with no access to the outside world. I try to imagine the stress weighing on their hearts and how hard it must’ve been to share such small spaces for such a long time in silence, without internet, and even more drastic but true, while being hunted. Yes, I’m ever so thankful for the space in my yard, garden and big house. I’m thankful that this is a peaceful battle against a germ, rather than between other nations. I will do my best not to take any of this for granted. As long as people can continue to be civil, we can ride this out.

Story Miller’s account of her experiences in Italy will continue in the Saturday, April 11, issue.