Quarantine

In thinking over the past two weeks, all these images flash to my mind – moments that resemble something normal, but aren’t quite. They’re off. They’re distorted. They’re like glancing at some mildly dystopian version of my life.

I dress up my daughter to be flower girl in a friend’s wedding, but instead of strapping her into the car for the ride to the church, I take pictures of her in our backyard. I post them on social media, congratulating the bride in my caption.

I change my daughter back out of the dress before she can get it dirty. She wears it for maybe thirty minutes.

I drive my son to the doctor’s office for his fourth case of Strep in two months. We arrive, I pull into a special parking space, and I call the office. A few minutes later a masked, protective-gown-wearing doctor comes out to us. He opens the back door of my car, tests my son for Strep, and walks back into the building.

This is our second pandemic visit for Strep. The first time, a week into our isolation, that doctor looked scared. This time, six weeks into our isolation, this doctor seems lonely. He comes out to report the test results and stands there for a while, talking. He acts like he doesn’t want us to leave.

I go to the grocery store for the first time in five weeks. I’m worried about how different it will be inside, so I sit in the car for a while. I finally work up the courage to go in by repeatedly saying “You can do this!” out loud, to myself, alone in my car. I don’t even feel ridiculous.

Our dryer breaks and I’m not even that annoyed about it. My kids are pretty much just wearing pajamas all day anyway. It’s not the worst timing to only be able to wash as many loads as you can dry on a couple of wobbly racks.

I come across an old photo in a Facebook memory of my son asleep in a grocery cart. The kid is cute, but what I can’t take my eyes off of is the huge package of paper towels behind him. They seem decadent. It feels like a great privilege to be able to buy a honking package of paper towels without thinking anything of it.

A few days later, my husband walks in from the store with an identical package. He says he can’t believe he got so lucky.

My parents stop by to drop off some things for us. They are careful; we are careful. We give air hugs and blow kisses. We remind the kids (over and over) to give Grandma and Grandpa plenty of space. They handle it well, except for the moment when the six-year-old accidentally touches Grandpa’s shirt. The adults tense up and the boy melts down. We’ve told the kids not to touch Grandma and Grandpa so as to protect them, in case we have the coronavirus. He wants to protect Grandpa. He’s distraught to think of his mistake.

A few minutes later, we say our goodbyes and watch them pull out of our driveway. I hate that I can’t hug my parents. I hate that my son was upset by something so simple as touching his grandpa’s shirt.

~~~

I’m finding my emotional capacity to be very thin these days. It takes so little to throw me off. A week ago, I was concerned that a dear friend might have Covid19 and a cloud came over me. Everything was grayer, darker, more scary and worrisome. News reports took on more weight; social media interactions became more strained.

But then she tested negative for the virus and the world brightened.

Other, smaller anxieties weigh on me too, almost unacknowledged. Then they’re relieved and suddenly I realize they’ve colored my whole day.

In the past two weeks I’ve had a few really hard days and a couple of good ones. Last Thursday was a good day. It was cool, dark, and rainy, which I sometimes find to be the weather that heals me best. I like the quiet and calm.

Schoolwork went well that day. Two children had Google class meetings, three napped, and three built forts in the family room. Dinner was warm and fattening and satisfying. I served it to the kids picnic-style, in front of a movie. I made a blackberry tart for dessert.

In the Kindergarten Google meeting, one boy showed off his new kitten. One girl hugged her stuffed horse. Another announced that, “My tadpoles are growing lots of legs!” A week earlier, my Kindergartener had attended his Google meeting as Batman.

Outside these walls, the world sure seems scary. Not just because of the coronavirus: because of the economy and the unrest its decline seems to be generating. Because of division, deepening every day. Because of others’ fears, driving them to blame and cast aspersions and seek solace in storylines that confirm their beliefs. Because of my own fears, my own tendency to blame and cast aspersions (in my mind, if not out loud), my own drive to seek solace in my preferred storylines.

Inside these walls, life can be overwhelming. It can be loud and busy and messy and just too much for me some days. But it is also so, so good. These kids are creative and resilient and all-around amazing. I am enjoying having them all around, all the time, more than I could have predicted. I am learning to better love my home. I am paying attention to how my husband loves us – working his day job, doing the shopping, building the kids a playset.

As much as I mourn what’s been visited on this world of ours, I am so grateful for the small, plain gifts this time of isolation has given us. They are consolations for my mild dystopia.

That is an “air hug.” Social-distancing norms were respected.

I don’t know what to tell you about the past two weeks – weeks Three and Four of our coronavirus isolation.

I was going to tell you about my Lenten sacrifice, the one where I gave up wasting time and indulging in escapism. How I gave up escapism just before the world turned upside down and the schools closed and grocery shelves emptied and suddenly all I wanted to do was escape.

How I felt like God had rounded up all my weaknesses and insecurities and thrust them in my face.

I could tell you about my quickly-trashed “homeschooling” schedule and the fifteen million computer programs my kids are supposed to use to do their schoolwork. How I’ve only very slowly progressed from a “This is never going to work” mindset to a “If we work really hard, maybe we can do the bare minimum” mindset.

And how I truly mean the “we” in that sentence, because for Kindergarteners, second-graders, and fourth-graders, remote learning requires great, big, heaping helpings of parental involvement. Which is hard to fit in when you’re cooking three meals a day and running the dishwasher twice a day and changing five diapers a day and trying to keep laundry moving so you don’t drown in it.

And how I don’t know how teleworking parents are managing it. Except I imagine that most of them have fewer than five kids, and maybe it’s easier to telework and oversee remote learning when you’re not doing it with five kids.

And how, when I stop to think about that, I experience a brief, wistful daydream of an easier, more peaceful, one- or two-child quarantine. For about five seconds, at which point I remember that I have never been more thankful for our large family than I am now, during this pandemic.

You should see these kids, rolling around the house and yard like a pack of laughing, half-drunk rugby players. They are enjoying each other so much. They are loving each other so much, growing in kindness and consideration for each other even as they howl about somebody knocking over somebody else’s Legos.

I feel like I’m getting a glimpse at how much they’ll enjoy each other as goofball teenagers (and hopefully adults?) and I am so very grateful for it.

I could tell you about the playset Brennan is building for the kids or the bunkbed he just finished or how he keeps having to detach and reattach the sink in the powder room because plumbing is horrible. (This weekend I literally heard him say, “Die, sink!” to the thing. That’s how bad this has gotten.)

I could tell you about our low-key but lovely commemorations of Holy Thursday and Good Friday, the latter of which happened to be my birthday. (Good Friday during a pandemic! Probably the least cheerful day for a birthday, but blessedly quiet and pleasant nonetheless.)

I could tell you about our unexpectedly sweet Easter, and how much more relaxing a holiday can be when you’re not allowed to go anywhere.

I could tell you how we seem to not be the sort who can pull off liturgically-themed crafts or foods or activities, but we do ask a lot of questions and talk a lot of things through, and I’m beginning to see the fruits of that in my kids’ religious devotions. And how amazingly hopeful that makes me feel.

I could tell you about the things that are not making me hopeful right now, all coronavirus related. The continued inadequacy of testing, the upswing in grocery workers falling ill with the virus, the dearth of solid plans for reopening the economy. (Plans, not dates. There seem to be plenty of dates, but few plans for making them workable.)

I could tell you about any number of these things.

I could write for hours and not be done telling you all I have to say. But these days, from the moment I wake until the moment everyone else falls asleep, my time seems to belong to someone other than me.

So here I sit, in the still, sweet, quiet of Past Everybody Else’s Bedtime, and I try to just say something.

Happy Easter, friends. He is risen! He has defeated death, and we have hope.

These Walls

Sharing stories from within the walls of my home; encouraging discourse on the wider world outside them.

My Mild Dystopia (Isolation: Weeks 6 and 7)

Past Everybody Else’s Bedtime (Isolation: Weeks 3 and 4)