Everyday Life in Middletown, Entry 9
“Life under Quarantine”
April 23, 2020
I always at least make an attempt to review my last journal entry before starting a new one to see if there is any continuity or themes from the last entry to be continued or updated… and there is a bittersweet flow between today’s and that of late February. It’s more stream-of-consciousness than some of my previous entries, and it ebbs and flows just like the events and feelings of the last six weeks.
First and most positively, my friend referenced as recently hospitalized has recovered after alternately frustrating and harrowing days of hospitalization. Coming home from the hospital and getting settled in new surroundings are the first of hopefully much recovery from trying times in the month and year ahead.
Unfortunately, I have read just this afternoon that the other friend and sometime-partner in various community endeavors has succumbed to brain cancer. While the news is not unexpected, the loss of someone who sincerely tried to create a better community around himself and challenged others to the same is always sobering.
So it is with both melancholy and hope that I reflect today on Life Under Quarantine here in Magic Middletown. Even the topic is a bit of misnomer, for we aren’t really under a formal quarantine, only as restrictive a situation as most Americans have ever known. While all lament the stay-at-home directive and nearly-overnight cancellation or temporary (?) closure of familiar events and places, the break in routine has been too much for some to bear.
Let’s start with our daily routines. With two teenage children (correction to humor my eldest still in my home but still younger daughter: 18-year old Adult; and 15-year old son,) in my home and opposite ends of high school, the last six weeks represent a great shake-up. First, the last traditional school day of the year falls on Friday the 13th of March, and then teenage rites-of-passage fall like dominoes: the prom, the spring sports season, traditional final exams, and ultimately graduation pushed to summer, if at all.
I wish I could be as sympathetic as tell myself to be in light of this unprecedented change in routine. My kids aren’t into “typical” teenage dramas, pomp and circumstance, but it is a shake-up to their home lives and psyches as well: While both of their parents work in the healthcare industry, their mother works in a nursing home and rehabilitation center, which has been directly affected by the pandemic in the way it operates daily, yet fortunately not to date in illness and plague. As such, our normal routine of rotating the children every fourth day has been disrupted and they have been exclusively with me ever since that fateful last day of school. This has been done to ensure they do not take anything from me (since I am the one going out to pick up supplies and food) and then transmit to their mother or her clients, or vice-versa.
So we are hunkered down here, with a twice-weekly grocery pickup, plus the random “emergency” item from a neighbor or a corner drug store, and old TV programs streamed over dinner. “Malcolm in the Middle,” or “Dance Moms” bring their own brand of dysfunction that seems to ease tension and keep the mood light, I think. Neither of my teens is super-expressive, even when asked, and rending of emotions is often the final sign before a blowup.
I concede nearly each day that I am lucky to have the job I have with the employer I have, and though my position is probably not considered “essential” at the moment, it does allow me to work from the relative safety at home, and its continuance is safe, at least for the moment and immediate future. This fact is driven home to me on a near-daily basis in comparison with friends who have been furloughed, laid-off or have had to seek unemployment, a tenuous, stigmatized process in the best of times. In comparison with many of my friends, the temporary suspension of sporting activities and the cancellation of my beloved NCAA March Madness extravaganza may not be fun, but it sure as hell beats the loss of life or income. In a way, the entire months of March and April have seen an unwelcome-but-sorely-needed jolt of perspective.
With all of these happenings, our journal deadlines softened, and even as I told myself to set aside time to collect my thoughts, those plans fell by the wayside, situations changed day-by-day, or my thoughts simply evaporated. However, this procrastination has allowed me to include a relatively new phenomenon of the situation facing all of us in varying degrees: namely the rampant misinformation and shaming of both sides of the pandemic opinion carried out on various social media.
In just the last week, I’ve been indirectly chastised by strangers for even leaving my house to get exercise out of doors or purchase necessary household goods or supplies, and directly lectured by a casual friend for even expressing my gratitude at being able to work from home, as if I’m just electing to coast along on the “government dime.” Explaining that I’m grateful for the chance denied to others (if they got to keep their job at all) gets me ‘crickets’ in response. I completely understand and empathize with people wanting to be back at work to protect their income and/or businesses, but it often seems the people with the loudest voices are the ones just upset at being told what to do, with little consequences if they choose to ignore safety directives. It’s fodder for a thousand memes, and just seems more absurd each day.
A midday walk to clear my head is another luxury for which I’m grateful, and I get even more time for it with an irregular schedule while working from home. My iPhone seems to have a great gift with the right song to capture a moment or feeling. Mere coincidence or Big Brother at work, for me most days it seems to be speak to me rather than imply privacy creep. Jason Isbell, a somewhat popular singer-songwriter who I’ve dubbed a “Southern Springsteen,” lays down a gauntlet today:
“Your creature comforts aren’t the only things worth fighting for … We’re all carrying one big burden, sharing one fate.”
Will we be able to pull together and help one another pull through all of this, or will we turn on one another, like we gradually did after 9/11?
It remains to be seen what our “new normal” will be, and when or if we can return to it. When we will again feel comfortable in a mixed public setting without a mask, without social distancing, traveling; when we will again feel comfortable in closeness or intimacy with others we weren’t in quarantine under the same roof with, for fear of spreading some unknown. For every person thinking the return ro normal will be swift, I bet it’s longer than we think before that displaced feeling of security returns once again.