My Partner Works in an Amazon Warehouse. I’m Worried — and Proud.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/parenting/coronavirus-amazon-worker-family-life.html

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“No, honey! You can’t hug Daddy yet!” I frantically tell my 5-year-old son, grabbing him just in time as he runs toward our front door to welcome his father home from work. “He has to wash the bad germs off first, OK?”

After directing my older son to occupy the 1-year-old, I slip the father of my two children and my partner of seven years a garbage bag through a crack in our front door. He removes his shoes, pants and shirt in the hallway of our building and places them in the bag before entering our 700-square-foot apartment in Brooklyn. Both children notice him before he locks himself in the bathroom to shower, prompting the 1-year-old to toddle toward him, pounding his pudgy fists on the bathroom door, while the 5-year-old repeatedly yells out his name.

This is our new afternoon routine, now that New York City has become the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. Deemed an essential worker at an Amazon fulfillment warehouse on Staten Island, where people have tested positive for Covid-19, my partner works four days a week, 10 hours a day, while I shelter in place with our children. There’s a global shortage of personal protective equipment, so there are no masks available for him to wear. They’re running out of hand sanitizer. He recently traded a co-worker a bag of chips for a box of latex gloves.

When the stay-at-home order was issued for the state, and restaurants, movie theaters, schools and other businesses closed, we both knew my partner would continue to work — allowing people to order necessary items online and from the safety of their home would play a vital role in social distancing.

We were also grateful, because unlike many people across the country, we knew his continued employment would mean we would continue to be able to pay rent, buy food and hold on to our family’s health insurance. His employer would allow him to take unlimited, unpaid time off, borrowing against future paid sick and vacation time, should he miss work because of quarantine, so as long as he remained healthy and the warehouse didn’t shut down for an extended period of time because of worker strikes, we would be OK. We could also stay together as a family in a safe environment, and thanks to the dumb luck of being born in this country, we knew we would qualify for any assistance handed down by the federal government. We were lucky. We remain lucky.

But the privilege of financial security hasn’t quelled the fear I have for my partner and my children’s health. When the first case of coronavirus was confirmed by his employer, we never questioned whether he would continue to work. He had to. He has to. His job is our family’s only steady source of income, and the ability to keep our children insured is tied directly to his employment.

So instead of contemplating whether or not he should potentially expose himself to a virus estimated to be 10 times deadlier than the seasonal flu, we put a plan in place to help minimize our kids’ risk of exposure. The idea to bag up his clothes in the hallway came from a friend whose sister is a nurse — she does the same after her grueling shifts at a hospital in Seattle.

My mother dispatched a friend to make cloth masks, then paid to have them shipped to us from Anchorage, Alaska. They’re nowhere near as effective as the N95 masks desperately needed across the country, but we’ve purchased vacuum bag filters to slip between the cotton fabric of the fitted masks once we receive them. I tell myself something is better than nothing.

We have also decided it’s safer if we no longer share the same bed, so now I fall asleep to the near-constant sound of sirens from the comfort of our living room couch.

Just two short weeks ago, I was jealous of my partner — angry at him, even. While I was learning how to facilitate at-home learning for our 5-year-old while also caring for our 1-year-old, while working from home, and maintaining the shoe-box-sized apartment we were now sequestered in, he was at least afforded the freedom to leave regularly. His routine hadn’t changed.

But jealousy has given way to guilt, and as the number of coronavirus deaths continues to rise, that guilt has morphed into a lingering sense of dread. Memories of our younger son in the pediatric I.C.U. when he was 5 weeks old, a breathing tube taped to his face as his tiny body battled respiratory syncytial virus, now come to me frequently. What if he gets sick? What if his short medical history puts him at greater risk?

What if my 5-year-old, who had already survived a high-risk pregnancy that ended the life of a fetus who would have been his twin, gets sick? What if their father gets sick and we lose the ability to keep our babies safe? What if their father gets sick and they lose him entirely? The “what ifs” are paralyzing.

But with that dread comes an immense amount of pride. My partner, a veteran of the U.S. Navy, quit his job as a contractor for the U.S. Coast Guard so we could move to New York City four years ago. We were living in Seattle when I was offered what I considered to be a dream job as an editor at an online publication, and without hesitation he agreed to move our then-family of three across the country, to a city he had never so much as visited, for the sake of my career.

A few months after we arrived, he landed a job interview for a position he was grossly overqualified for. Yet he was told he wasn’t hirable because he didn’t have a college degree. “What could you have possibly learned in the Navy that is as valuable as a higher education?” was the hiring manager’s argument. My partner left that interview deflated, questioning his ability to contribute not only to his family, but to society as a whole. He spent the following months feeling dispensable. Inferior. Nonessential.

But now my partner’s contributions, and that of all the crucial, often underpaid and undervalued workers who are continuing to hold society up during this unprecedented time, are on full display. And while my partner might not be hearing the applause of people holed up in their homes at the end of every shift, every day he comes home there are three people waiting to give him a hero’s welcome. He just has to wash the bad germs off first.

Danielle Campoamor is a freelance writer and editor. Born and raised in Eagle River, Alaska, she lives in Brooklyn with her family.