Change

All of the ways we've been talking about the coronavirus involve changes: changing strain with new variants, changing reproduction number R-naught, changing rules of the game.

We'd all been shellshocked. We worry. We panic.

But then, I try to remind myself to get prepared for changes. Today, one has fun at school or on school bus. The next day, there is in-person school suspension. Pretty soon many parents - including me - hear about the news of a teacher being quarantined and their children thus declared as close contact.

How should we make sure nothing bad happens? Try this. Open our eyes to the new opportunities. That's what my daughter showed me when school closure was announced without warning. She had come up with many pen-and-paper games when she spent time with classmates on school bus. She then switched to teach me her self-made game. First, write a list of categories: name of celebrity, villain character of any book, city, song, body parts, elements in periodic table. Next, think of an alphabet. We then have to race to complete the list by giving one example for each category, using that alphabet as the first letter of the example.

As it happened, we ended up having a non-stop-laughing night when we kept competing, and changing the categories for fun.