Member-only story
Anxiety Levels Mount
Just one family’s story
My family is a bit unusual — my husband has always been a prepper, but not as much as he aged. My daughter, his stepdaughter, has always been rational and not ready to believe in the worse.
But recently the two seemed to have merged.
Heather and I were talking after Morgan had gone to bed. She’s not a Social Media butterfly but is on twitter for her university friends and coworkers. She looked at her phone and then looked up at me. “I’m beginning to get concerned about not having toilet paper,” she said.
I wanted to say, “Who are you and what have you done with my daughter?” But I didn’t. For once I was silent to let her continue.
“There’s just so many posts about people buying it and empty shelves. I think I should go to the store.”
Now several things: Heather does our grocery shopping, meal planning, and most of the cooking. It seems to be her escape from her PhD program. And it was almost 9 PM.
I took her remark seriously — after all, it was my very bright, very reasonable daughter.
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“Sure.” was the very quick answer.
So we were two of the people scanning grocery shelves that night — the store was not busy at all but, as…
