I don’t know whether reading about everyone else’s experience is reassuring or depressing. It’s probably both, but in comparison to reading the daily news, checking three (three!) different COVID dashboards to gauge the degree of local community spread, and looking at my incomplete projects, well… this is a genuine relief.
I started writing below, and it got too long. I’ve hidden it away so it’s easier to scroll past.
Too much!
I’ve been stuck at home with two small kids (3 & 7) since March, and while I did volunteer for stay-at-home parent duty, the 24/7 experience is a beast. We have the luxury of a house big enough to spread out (not that the kids understand this - they need to be on top of each other at all times, a powder keg ready to blow at the slightest disturbance) and a large yard so they can play outside without being remotely near anyone. Their lack of perspective also means that this all seems perfectly ordinary. Their mom and I worry about the long-term effects of the lack of social contact with kids their age, but our options aren’t great. The little one has been back in part-time daycare for three weeks now, wearing a mask almost all day, but playing with the friends that have been deeply missed. I’m not permitted inside the building; we knock on the group room’s side door for a temperature check before entering; I call from the parking lot at pickup time and they deliver kids outside.
In June, both kids’ best friends had birthdays. For JV, the older kid, we were able to have a pool party playdate, in addition to two other outdoor visits of some sort this summer. Then hunker down and double down on the isolation for a while; the friends’ dad has some higher-risk concerns and so this is a close as we got to a “pod.” For NS, the little one, I had to take photos of kid and card, hunt down the friend’s dad’s email (who works at the university where my wife teaches), and cold-email birthday wishes to a 3-year-old.
Public schools start up this week. It’s been a three-week delay since the intended start, following a COVID outbreak at the prison just outside of town. (So much about that to make the blood boil.) JV will get the joy ping-ponging between in-person, masked, distanced second grade and awkward remote learning when our county’s positive test rate creeps too high. COVID has only arrived here in earnest in the last month or so, and we have several populations you could describe as “culturally resistant to taking reasonable precautions.” The home version of first grade was such an exhausting experience, though… and no practical way to separate the kids means that NS will pester JV to play all day long, and how can school assignments possibly hold attention against that?
I realize that some of this is my fault, but I had my reasons. Before kids, I was (still am) adamant that bedrooms are a toy-free zone. Bed, clothes, books only. The ground floor of the house has a mostly-open plan and no privacy, which forces us to engage with each other and learn to manage with interruptions. Toys are for sharing; play requires compromise. If you need a private space, you go read a book in your room. It all falls apart when I have to coordinate school assignments all day while distracting the little one and still managing to cook meals, bake bread, keep the garden from collapsing, and handle all of the cleaning/laundry/dishes/etc.
On top of this, my wife had to figure out how to maintain an engaging and effective teaching method from our bedroom. All of those important things I access in there - clean clothes, the shower, the notebook and pen I sometimes leave on the dresser - might as well be on the moon during the meeting- and class-heavy workday. We managed the spring semester with no more than three kiddo videobombs, which I consider a rousing success. Now she’s teaching a hybrid of in-person and remote students, some living not two miles from our house, some trying to manage from countries that’d be hard-pressed to get any further from here. Fingers crossed the university remains solvent through all of this. Fortunately they’ve been testing everyone on campus regularly, and have yet to find more than a handful of cases. Other schools in the region haven’t been so lucky.
I live in a blur of tedium, which sometimes feels like the depression of my 20s but isn’t. Grocery shopping, on the weeks it’s necessary: 7am Thursdays, when the store opens. We get local milk in glass bottles from our pharmacy, and they do curbside delivery. Wednesday morning farmers’ market if I can. Friday afternoon one for sure. CSA pickup Thursdays. Weekly library pickup for the kids. Laundry. Cooking. Dishes. Prep the sourdough starter. Walk the dog. Sweep again. If I’m lucky, I can get a short run a few mornings a week to keep my brain and body refreshed.
Our only social connections anymore are via webcams. A “game night” every other Saturday that usually consists of a round or two of Codenames or something like it, followed by conversation. D&D every Friday, which has become an anchor for the six of us. The creative effort that DM work entails is fantastic, even if the occasional 8pm-to-2am session after NS woke up at 6am leaves me wrecked for Saturday. At least I can scrawl maps and notes about magical serial killers and political corruption while playing with the kids. It’s “art time” again!
The rest just seems like a series of false summits in the search for peak 2020. No COVID cases among family or friends (that I know of), but a bumper crop of deaths. No funerals, of course, which has taught me the power of closure they bring. A close-family medical emergency in July that really highlighted the challenge of balancing family help against pandemic isolation. I’m increasingly convinced that every possible decision I can make is wrong in some way, so it’s a game of minimizing risk and harm.
It’s only recently that I’ve managed to crawl free of the disaster that was March. Do you all have an event that fills out the “Where were you when…” question? Growing up, I knew my parents had that with JFK’s assassination and the Apollo 11 moon landing. For me, the first was the Challenger disaster. Then September 11th. Both are etched in deep. And so is that Wednesday in March, spring break for the university, both kids in school, when my wife and I went out to stock up the house with a month’s worth of supplies. We’d been casually loading the pantry and freezer for two week, seeing the writing on the wall. Lunch out at a favorite cafe, knowing we might not be there again for a little while, now indefinite. Emails started lighting up our phones - first was for a conference, cancelled - and by Friday we were locked down. Kids at home for time unknown. University students told not to come back.
And then on that Saturday, I got attacked by a neighbor’s dog. Blood everywhere. A face full of stitches. Followed by two separate video calls - one for a best friend’s distanced birthday drinks, the other for our inaugural remote game night - that got briefly derailed by the guy who was remarkably cheery considering the impossible-to-ignore injury. Because after I got home from the hospital, I made the mistake of checking SU&SD for a distraction and found the news about Justin. You know that old scene from the Simpsons where the doctor describes Mr. Burns’ immune system like a door where all of the germs have wedged themselves together, unable to get in? My day (and week) were like that for a dumpster fire of surprises. Took a long time to get my sea legs back after being unmoored, but I’ve been feeling like 100% myself again for a month or so.
tl;dr: It’s been a long few months. For everyone else struggling through, I’m glad to hear you’re still going.
