It’s Time for COVID-19 Nursery Rhymes

I live with three males, including two boys, ages 2 and 4. There’s always a mess somewhere in our home.

Before this pandemic, we were blessed to have had a housekeeper who came once a week to clean, dust, fold and help me scrub off whatever the kids had stuck to the floor. But for the past eight weeks, I’ve been the housekeeper, and I clock in daily.

I’m not complaining. It’s a privilege to have help cleaning a home, big or small. But between compulsive hand washing and incessant house cleaning, my hands resemble two sun-dried tomatoes with fingernails.

Last week, I took a break between deep-cleaning the toilet bowl and sanitizing the shower and rested on the bed for what I thought would be five minutes of well-earned repose. An hour and half later I woke up still clutching a bottle of multipurpose cleaner and a roll of paper towels, like a toddler holding her teddy bears.

Two worlds had collided: my love affair with naps and my newly acquired penchant for finding comfort in the arms of Mr. Clean.

These days, I almost always fall asleep with the threat of the coronavirus on my mind, and I yearn to soothe myself in simple, comforting ways. This led me to wonder whether, in this time of debilitating stress and anxiety, I could update some classic nursery rhymes to reflect the new reality of COVID-19, if only to help the Sandman arrive a little sooner. I’ve composed the following thus far:

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe
And lost her mind
Trying to home-school her children
On Zoom.

Three blind mice,
Three blind mice,
They’re blind because they rubbed their eyes, panicked, then took the president’s words literally and attempted to clean their eyeballs with Clorox bleach. 

Twinkle, twinkle little star,
How I wonder
when the schools and salons will open again.
My eyebrows are starting to connect back.

This little piggy went to market
And had a panic attack when someone sneezed on the avocados.
This little piggy stayed home
And saved lives, but ate his body weight in frozen burritos.
This little piggy had roast beef
With a side of Lysol-infused quinoa.
And this little piggy partied with friends, then cried “Wee, wee, wee” from his hospital bed, “I should have stayed home!”

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on her tuffet
Eating her curds and whey
Along came a police officer
And fined her for not wearing a mask
But curiously inquired where, in this time of limited grocery options, she’d managed to find curds and whey.

Humpy Dumpty sat on a wall
Sanitized with isopropyl alcohol
To keep it nice and neat
What a shame to have cleaned so much
To turn into an omelet on the street

Hey, diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle
The cow jumped high in the air to avoid close contact, once it realized the cat wasn’t about to maintain a distance of six feet. 

The itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the water spout,
Until it began to think of all the possible contagions trapped inside those rusty tubes,
Upon which the spider immediately proceeded to disinfect its legs with bleach,
And turned into an albino arachnid. 

And finally, my favorite nursery rhyme, first published in 1765:

Jack and Jill
Went up the hill
To fetch a pail of sanitizer
They drank it like beer
Till an officer came near
And pulled out the breathalyzer. 

A few years from now, I hope to reflect on this indescribable time and see that amid the pestilence and pain, many of us found ways to illuminate small pockets of our worlds, even if it meant ruining Mother Goose’s reputation, having a heart-to-heart with Mr. Clean, or stress-eating our cares away in the fine company of Aunt Jemima.

Sweet dreams.

Tabby Refael is a Los Angeles-based writer, speaker and activist.