After the first few weeks of the stay at home order, I was sure that I knew how a ghost must feel: Stuck in an old house, wearing the same clothes day after day, roaming from room to room….
There is no foreseeable future. It’s one day at a time. Then another. A strange world we have been thrown into. Friday, March the 13th marked the last day of our “normal” for all in our household. It has been slow and fast going all at once. As I said back in March: April has been a long month and it’s not even April yet.
I may get to wear yoga pants or pajamas all day, but I sure enough am still wearing all the hats too, so to speak…I am juggling working from home, a child learning from home, and home life in a time where their boundaries have vanished. Though they all were happening simultaneously in the course of a “normal day”, now, in a “normal day”, they all happen simultaneously in the same space. And I am not doing a particularly stellar job at any of them.
My husband and I have little to complain about—both of us having jobs that allow us to work remotely, steady pay, plenty of supplies, connectivity, and all are generally in good health. It must have been providence that we were already in the midst of transforming our home office/studio into a functional space (before it was the room where things went to be unseen—a few stacks of old newspapers shy of qualifying us for Hoarders: Buried Alive). This sped up the process of painting, purging and building bookcases. We completed it the first week we were home. However, we quickly discovered having one room dedicated to office/schoolwork is no longer sufficient. I am the household nomad, moving from room to room to accommodate dueling Zoom calls and avoiding noise. My coworkers have probably seen every room of my house at this point—save the bathroom. This transient working has included hiding in the laundry room and also a failed outdoor working experiment in which I tried to use a box from the liquor store to create a sunshield for my laptop. There are times that all three of us, mother, father, and child are on a call at the same time.
For me, being able to focus on my work has been extremely difficult for so many reasons (even if my workstation did not change day to day). I have felt completely adrift. This shift in how we conduct our work has kicked the wind out of me. I was finally in a place where I had hit a good rhythm and feeling accomplished and capable. Then along came COVID. For weeks now, I have felt inept. Lost and unfocused. I have to reinvent how I do what I do. It does not feel good. I’ve taken to using one notebook for work notes, school notes, project plans and other household notes. I have lovingly called it the Chaos Notebook. It will be an interesting thing to flip through one day.
I am all Zoomed out already. Turns out we did not get to find out what meetings could have been emails. Instead we found out how much of literally EVERYTHING could be Zoomed. This is not sufficient for extroverts like me. I have come to feel that we feed off people’s energy when we are physically present. It’s not enough just seeing their faces and hearing their voices in a box on a screen. I am also sharing a Zoom account with my child, and last week realized that halfway through a business meeting I was named “Kermit with a Bat.” I won’t even try to explain that one.
A few years ago, I had a dream—no, nightmare– that I was drafted into teaching. That is right–a draft was conducted in which I was forced to be a 5th grade teacher. The terror of it all was two-fold: I would have to teach math to children who were also probably taller than me. It seemed such a ridiculous premise at the time—a teacher’s draft– but now, here I am, drafted it seems. Trying to finish out this school year remotely has its challenges, of course. It’s like homework on steroids and that is pretty ugly in my house. We have a very intelligent child who spends more time and energy fighting schoolwork than it takes for him to actually do it. Elearning hops and skips to all kinds of educational websites and platforms. It is dizzying. In addition to the work that’s done via Schoology, Study Island, IReady, Epic, Quizz, etc…my son’s teacher holds class once per day at 1pm via Zoom. It is something I never thought I would be witnessing– my son’s classroom. Sure, the lens is distorted, but the first few days I felt like the proverbial fly on the wall. It was fascinating to hear the teacher talk with her students, to hear her and see her put a math problem on the whiteboard and walk them through the steps. To see my child work the problem, be congratulated on a right answer and see the pride on his face. All this happening in our dining room. Its also amusing to watch 3rd graders interact in an arena once reserved for adult business meetings. On the second day of Zoom class, a boy blurted out the unspoken adult’s rule of video conferencing: “yeah, I am actually in my pajamas, I just put on this sweater over them for the call”. As of late, I’ve also been the student it seems, as my just-turned-nine-year-old has shown me a trick or two about Power Point.
Everyday mundane tasks are now complicated and peppered with anxiety. They take additional thought and ritual and it is exhausting. Mail and groceries, for example. I am the designated runner for this household. My husband is healthy, but several years ago experienced a spontaneous pneumothorax twice in a matter of weeks. Simply put, his lung collapsed for no real reason. We fear what this virus might do to him.
I leave once per week for necessary supplies and I map out in the steps I must take to complete my journey with safety and economy. I have to take a mask, have gloves on standby as well as sanitizing wipes to keep the car surfaces clean. For groceries, I only place pick up orders. I have learned that the key is to set up an order a week ahead (often you can’t secure a time sooner), to pick the earliest time –say on a Thursday morning and to keep adding to my cart all week long until Wednesday at midnight. I early on formed a “coalition” with my neighbors—3 other households and we help each other when one can’t get something in their order. We are pooling our resources as best we can. If I am out on a run and I pass, say the butcher, and no one is in the lot, I will pull in and get what I need—many times meat is not available in my grocery orders. But, if there are cars, I do not go in. Its strange how a handful of cars in a parking lot of Dollar General really make me rethink if I truly need something. Once I am home with groceries, I take off my shoes outside of the front door, carry it in, I sanitize it all and take anything out of its outer packaging that I can. It’s like Christmas morning when you go through your order—who knows what you actually got! There are often substitutions and things that are out of stock. As my son’s preschool always taught, you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.
One of the toughest aspects of this whole crisis is how emotional I was for the first several weeks. I recognize that it is grief. I am skilled at compartmentalizing-it is my way of coping and has seen me through some terrible times. But this crisis is different, and I have found that I cannot always keep the lid on the box so to speak. I have these unexpected, brief, and fleeting moments of raw emotion. This situation has brought back some memories –taken me briefly to places I never thought I would “go” again. Things that I have pushed down and packed away just came up out of nowhere. The memory of the night of my mother’s death coming back in the middle of dinner—more vivid than I have ever recalled in the last 35 years. More often, however, its seemingly unremarkable things that send forth this wave of emotion. Reminders that our regular routines have vanished. One day, I was putting away leftovers and had the fleeting thought that I should put some in my son’s lunchbox. Then came the realization that there are no more third grade lunches to pack. It brought me to tears. The irony is that I have always loathed packing lunches. Go figure.
My husband checks on me many times a day by asking how I am or how I feel and I appreciate it. We have had a lot of late-night conversations and have had to lean on one another more. We have been doing a lot of home projects together and have hardly had an argument during any of it. A list of some of the things we have done together without the threat of divorce proceedings: Resurfaced kitchen countertops, Repainted and reseated dining chairs, Built two bookcases and one artist’s taboret, Renovated home office, Cleaned out closets, basement and shed, Bricked front walkway, Installed stove, Planted trees and transplanted numerous hosta and myrtle….. Fortunately for us, these projects’ supplies were on hand or could be ordered. We have spent more time together because no one is rushing home to change and rushing out again for meetings and obligations. I don’t know if I ever really want to go back to that.
Our son has fared better than expected. We have been lax in our house with no bedtimes and no real routine save for schoolwork. He mostly operates on the notion that this is an extended break—for better or worse. He has had a few breakdowns here and there–especially the days leading up to his 9th birthday which was April 14. He’s just young enough to not feel the true scope of this, but old enough to understand the gravity. Shortly after the quarantine started, he asked if this meant there would be another Great Depression followed by a war. He understands that we are and will continue to make sacrifices for the greater good. He has already been thinking of ways to make a summer stuck at home as fun as possible. As much as I have been anti-video conferencing, I will say that having kids messenger and Zoom had helped him stay connected to his friends. He and his best friend spend hours together playing games and sending silly messages. I overheard my son’s friend observe one night: “The quarantine has really been good for us.” (meaning they get to sit and play games together remotely) “But not so great for other people”.
One event we will always recall from this crisis is the 9th birthday that never really was. We had had big plans prior to COVID, and so we tried to shift gears as quickly as possible. The biggest hurdle ended up being the cake. On Good Friday, the oven died in a blaze of glory—the heating element having MELTED and producing flame. The stove was done. I ordered a new one online with apprehension, but what to do? I wasn’t setting foot in Lowes. And, of course, my luck…new stove would be arriving the day after the birthday. Thankfully, my neighbor was able to let me bake the cake in her oven. She propped all the doors in the house open, and I carried my unbaked cake over along with any oven mitts, etc. to handle it once baked. She stood about 12 feet away in her dining room in a mask, while I baked a cake in her kitchen.
The morning of his birthday, we wrote messages in sidewalk chalk where it could be seen from our son’s bedroom window and I put 9 giant birthday candles in the yard (made from pool noodles). We passed out presents all through the day. At noon, one of his best friend’s family came over and stood on the street, while we stood up on our porch. They held up signs and sang happy birthday while his friend played an accordion. The little boy tossed a gift up onto the yard before leaving. We held a Zoom (of course!) party later that night—had technical difficulties but got it going. A Zoom party is as chaotic as any regular in person children’s party only there is no mess to clean up. Then, he had a virtual sleepover via messenger with his two besties.
I am fortunate to have friends that have created social events online and I try to participate regularly. One teaches yoga, and other drawing classes and we still attend political gatherings via Facebook Live and play Dungeons & Dragons on Sundays via WebEx. I have a friend that DJs an art video/music livestream every Friday called Party in Place (via Twitch). Part of the performance includes a window in the corner of the screen that you can see her jamming out with her DJ equipment and disco lights going. I know how magical this is, as I know, that this same hopping DJ booth has a day job. It is also the home office of my coworker, who is married to said DJ. So, one side is all business and the other is all party.
One positive is seeing my garden grow daily. We have an English cottage garden in the front of our house and it is refreshing to be able to step out at any time of the working day to take a short stroll and admire the beautiful creeping phlox, grape hyacinth, tulips, violets periwinkle that are now starting to bloom. Soon they’ll be in full force with the cherry trees. The promise of summer’s show are all quickly growing, too. I have never been so observant of these changes as I am now. We spend a lot of time out in our yard and have observed that most passersby are more friendly than in the past. We all crave some connection. Many strangers have stopped to comment on the flowers and on the work we were doing on the front steps. At a distance.
As far as our outlook, we plan on continuing practicing distancing even if things ease up. In our home, we embrace reason and science and so we have not fooled ourselves into believing that notion of “when things get back to normal.” Instead we are bracing ourselves for the inevitable shift in how we live our lives. It does not feel good, but we must adapt and overcome and live our lives just as well as before.
I wonder what this crisis means for how we weigh risk. There are so many pushing to get back to normal, when normal is what will certainly kill more folks if we don’t hold the line right now and for as long as we need to, I think we will see a surge much more deadly in the fall if we continue to see people pushing for ease ups on the stay at home orders. A few weeks ago, a friend’s relative had found letters from their great grandparents from 1918-19 that talked about the Spanish Flu and the resurgence that followed the rush to get back to everyday life. She sent transcripts to me. Fascinating and timely, to say the least.
I see my work shifting to more work from home because its so cost effective for an organization like the one I work for. We have little actual need for an M-F office and to be honest, I am nervous about being back in that groove as much as I crave it. I see my son’s generation more lenient than ever on technology, and I worry. I worry how the isolation and fear of infection might do to his future relationships and mental health. On a positive note, I wonder, too, if this will teach our children that we all can have a huge impact on our communities and even world when we do our part to be helpers. That small sacrifices do make a difference. Perhaps this will also lead society to seek out innovation in ways we never imagined from alternatives to door handles and the way we navigate through a retail store. I find that the more I wear my mask, the less weird it has become.
It’s April 20, 2020, and I am still haunting this house. Better to be a temporary ghost than the alternative.