Month: May 2020

Day 75

This week I am coming to terms with the fact that Phase 2 is coming and it’s going to last a long time. There is no single marker, no binary switch to flip, no way to know for sure if we’re in or out of one phase or another. All I know is this: for the past 10 weeks our household has been quarantined, making trips to the grocery store less than once a week and interacting with no one outside the three of us beyond a couple of shouted conversations with neighbors at a distance. We are not in a pod with any other families, we have not allowed anyone in our home nor gone into any other homes. We do go out to shop; we don’t get delivery or takeout of any kind. I put the packages in a detox zone (aka the top of the basement stairs) and wipe down the groceries, because that is what I feel comfortable with.

We will continue to do all of those things for the duration of this pandemic. I don’t need to engage in debates about how we conduct ourselves inside our homes, what’s necessary or not. I have decided that I prefer to wipe down the groceries and let the mail air overnight, so that is what I will continue to do until there is a vaccine. There is no reason for me to change that practice; it takes nothing from anyone and lets me feel like what is happening in my home is consistent, without having to assess its value or necessity. In that sense, the cleaning and physical distancing of objects, Phase 2 will be functionally similar.

The big question we are facing as summer looms is, basically: how much contact can we allow our child to have with their friends without triggering a panic attack in one of us? One of us is really me: my partner is comfortable with low risk high cost scenarios to the point that I may have once or twice accused him of being cavalier with my life, and my child is comfortable if we are comfortable. So that’s the question: am I comfortable?

This weekend we organized playdates for the first time, with families observing a similar level of isolation and disinfection protocols. None of our children are the type to be part of a massive horde of friends, so they have all been missing the close connections they’ve forged with each other. After accidentally biking together last week, we noted that everyone felt fine about it and decided to do it again on purpose. The kids cycled and then sat 10 feet apart on the sidewalk, laughing like loons and being ridiculous, until their rears got sore and they called it. Another day, we set up distanced blankets in the backyard so that our child could have lunch with a different friend; they are serious kids who observed the protocols perfectly, but it made my heart ache to see them craning toward each other, knees at the very closest edges of their respective blankets to each other.

How did it go? I don’t know. It was strange. It was good. I simultaneously felt like we were taking unnecessary risks and also that maybe we could do this all the time every day, it’s fine it’s fine it’s fine. I don’t do well in the middle, with gray areas. I don’t do well, mentally, with weighing risks and making choices. I really don’t do well when there is no good choice, no bad choice, no clear answer, just things to do or not do. If it goes well, I struggle with not knowing which of too many factors was the thing I assessed correctly; if it goes badly, I blame myself for probably missing something obvious, acting rashly, being a sucker, not weighing the right things in the right way, on and on and on. I become paralyzed and inactive.

All of this is why I’ve done so well at Phase 1, in terms of the smooth running of our household and my comfort with it. We chose the most conservative path for dealing with the risks of the situation, and we followed it. We have the ability to do so, so we did. Easy peasy, done. On some level, I could comfortably do this forever. On another level, it’s time to figure out the path for the next stage, the stage where we wear masks and interact with people from a distance and manage our contacts outside our homes until it’s safe to hug our friends again. We’re all craving it, we’re just not all willing to risk the same things to get it.

If I were the only one in charge of our plan, I would skip Phase 2 entirely. I would stay isolated in Phase 1 until I could go straight into Phase 3, “normal with vaccine plus extra more conscientious cleaning.” But the plan is not just for me, and what is probably fine for a 45 year old who has been through a lot of shit is not ideal for a 9 year old whom we’re trying to protect from lasting trauma. This is a grievously hard event that is going to last years and engender a series of painful losses. So far, we have not lost loved ones, although people I care about have and I grieve for them. So far, we have lost only school, connections with friends, and the place where we spend our summers. It has been so difficult to help our serious sensitive child focus on what is still good, on all the great things that happened in the half of the school year they did have and will happen in the new version of the summer we make for ourselves.

For at least the next six months, I will have to make choices about engaging with people who are also making choices about engaging with people. I will have to assess my assessments of whom I can trust, whom I can rely on to be telling me the truth about their safety practices, whom I care enough about seeing to risk it. I hate all that. You know, trusting my own judgment. (Knowing what my own judgment even is.)

Despite feeling like a walking 12-step platitude–one day at a time! focus on yourself!–I remain determined to get through this as intact as is possible, mentally, physically, and emotionally. I wish the same for all of you.

Getting jumped in to summer

Our pool is not opening on time this year, possibly not at all. For the past 10 years, the community pool has been our family’s summer plan. We’ve gone light on summer camps, paying the membership for the pool and heading there as many days a week as we can physically stand it. As our child has grown, our schedule has shifted from mornings (swim lessons and lunch before naps), to afternoons (lunch and hanging with friends after camp), and finally to evenings (swim practice, dinners with friends, karaoke and band nights).

It’s hard to imagine our summer without the pool; anyone’s summer in DC without any pool, if I’m being honest. How will we cool off? How will I survive the drone of the window a/c units? How will we all not kill each other in the heat? We have purchased an inflatable pool for the backyard, which we’ll rely on for cooling off and being outside without expiring. We have a grill, which we’ll use for the veritable parade of hot dogs that my child will consume. We will hope that viral loads will diminish, restrictions will ease, and friends will be able to join us–carefully, at a distance–for both of these things in our backyard in the later weeks of summer. For now, it’s just us and the house that is starting to feel like a one-room homestead in the long winter after ten full weeks here together.

Despite all of this, I could not allow the arrival of summer to go unmarked. Every Saturday before Memorial Day for the past decade, members of my family have jumped into the pool at 11am, rain or shine. Only once has the annual jump-in been delayed: two years ago the air temperature was too cold to legally allow the pool to open on time. Even then, the minute the thermometer read 65 degrees, they were in (and nearly immediately back out again).

This morning, I told my family to plan to gather in the front yard in their swim suits for the annual jump-in. Indeed, at 10:45am, I roused them from their spots watching cartoons by saying, “Okay, let’s go, it’s time to get jumped in to summer 2020,” a verbal slip my partner found delightfully apropos. And then, dear reader, I hosed them down in the front yard while yelling WELCOME TO SUMMER 2020 and laughing maniacally. It was joyful and hilarious and just what we needed to get us all in the mindset to enjoy this season, which has been so good to us over the years, despite all of the challenges we’re still facing. I have been banned from sharing the video of it online, as “it’s embarrassing,” but I encourage you to go ahead and jump your own household in to summer 2020.

We’ve made it this far. Week after week, we will continue to survive this. As many of us as can, as well as we can. It’s okay to laugh a little while we do.

Bicycle Race

We have acquired a bicycle. Another bicycle, I should say. The sprout’s first bicycle is much loved and will live on as a yard bike, but it became undeniable that the legs had outgrown the space. Biking with your knees around your ears is entertaining for a block or so, but once the warm weather hit a new bike was clearly needed.

Having waited until peak bicycle purchasing season and not having access to a store, acquiring this bicycle was harder than last time, when we entered a store, chose a bike, and purchased it. We wanted a purple hybrid: not available anywhere on these internets. We wanted another color of hybrid: nope. In the end, we went to the website of our local bike store and chose from among the options there, landing on a lovely charcoal black model evocative of the wide-tired bikes our favorite vigilante. I decided not to worry about how soon we were going to have to replace this bicycle with an even taller one and focus on the success of procuring any acceptable bicycle at all.

A condition of this new bike purchase is that my partner is now going to ride along on explorations, rather than trot behind on foot. Limitation one: he doesn’t have a bike. I have a bike that I can’t ride anymore due to my joints, and I’ve been trying for a couple of years to convince my partner to accept the use of my bike on permanent loan. The bike is much beloved, named Pearl, is covered in stickers, and has traveled to North Carolina and back to DC in an AIDS Ride. You can see why he might be reluctant to accept responsibility for her well-being. Bikes don’t like languishing in basements, though, so I convinced him to take her out on the road after determining that everything is in working order following the tune-up I got a couple of years ago when I was still pretending I might ride her again. (A recumbent bicycle is in my future, just not my very near future since I think you have to be over 67 to qualify for one, based on whom I see riding them around.)

Which brings us to limitation two: my partner suffered a very bad bicycle accident as a teen and has avoided biking since then. Since he’s an exceptional parent in addition to being a generally laudable human being, he adjusted the seat, slapped on the helmet we bought for last year’s trip to the shore, and off they went. Tonight’s ride was only a few blocks up the road, around and back, just for them to test the waters and get the feeling of the new taller, heavier bike. We need a little more comfort with the changed weight of the bike when slowing down on hills before I set the sprout loose on the whole town, but I foresee many longer bike rides in their future. If we can figure out the least populated times of day, we might even use the bike rack to travel over to the wider and more scenic Anacostia river path.

Watching my partner head out with the sprout was bittersweet. I loved seeing him conquer his fears and I also wished it were me on the road with them. Maybe I’ll get that grandpa bike soon after all.

I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike.
I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride it where I like.

Day 60

As bizarre as this has been for us, we are starting to feel settled in our new routine. I hesitate to say normal, as there is the ever present mental tug toward the old, toward comparing our new reality with what we have known up until now. I resist that tug as much as I can, but resisting takes energy and contributes to the pervasive low-grade fatigue through which we move. I say we feel settled, though, as the initially pervasive mental resistance to our new situation seems to have eased.

We know that our child won’t be returning to their school building this year and we have accepted that. We see they have genuinely accepted it in the way that they express the eagerness for the school year to be over that we’ve seen every May. It’s a relief to see such a typical display of emotion, and the fact that said display moves me almost to tears is an immediate countersign that we are still swimming in uncharted waters. We, the adults, have accepted that there will be no summer camps, no barbecues, and no swim team this year; very likely no community pool at all.

We have framed the summer as a unit of time through which we will move with a certain understanding, when we will not have the structure or obligations of school but will create our own rhythms of work, play, and rest at home. If any portion of this time period–which I personally conceptualize as the entirety of calendar year 2020 because that is the only way I can adjust my expectations in a manageable way–could be said to be agreeable, it will be the summer. The loss of access to our community pool will definitely be felt keenly and deeply, as it is our family’s budget-conscious summer camp alternative and has been the place where we eat, relax, and socialize for the past decade. We will also miss the library. We miss it now; our biggest unexpected cost of this situation has been books for our child to read. (I have dozens of unread books on hand, and my partner has lost his appetite for pleasure reading after days spent interfacing with coworkers via machines.)

However, those losses will require only fairly minor changes of plans after the dramatic upheaval of going home from school and work one day and never returning. We are fortunate to have a grill, an income, and the space for a ridiculous inflatable pool that seemed a necessary investment as refuge from the incessant drone of our window a/c units once summer really gets going. Our child had already asserted they didn’t want to go to summer camp, they wanted to lounge around reading and watching TV. I had already agreed to that plan with the additions of working around the house and in the yard; I myself planned to make art and organize the basement and attic, two activities that my child was eager to add to their roster. Yes, we will miss our friends, but we hope that as the weather warms, DC truly does move over the peak, and we start to have access to antibodies tests, we will be better equipped to selectively engage with our closest friends in distanced and controlled ways.

Am I trying to brightside a global pandemic that the US continues to exacerbate into a stunning clusterfuck at all turns? Absolutely not. I am only trying to apply what I’ve been taught, to look for the ways–moments, spaces, parts of my body–in which I am okay and breathe into those. The past two weekends, we have worked on clearing weeds in the garden, dividing and moving plants, pruning and staking trees, and generally caring for the patch of earth we are privileged to occupy. I have turned my attention, however momentarily, from worry and powerlessness to identifying concrete tasks such as reseeding the bare patches in the lawn with beneficial clover and relocating the crowded shrubs so that they receive the light they need to thrive. I have allowed myself to breathe in the spring and hope for all of us to receive more of what we so desperately need this summer.

Day 49

Seven weeks. A square of a prime.

May Day. International Workers’ Day. Our wedding anniversary. The birthday of one of my oldest friends. The beginning of the last month of school, the time when the garden starts to sprout in every which direction. Volunteers, old friends, and weeds; our time outside becomes an exercise in plant identification and management.

These past two weeks have been up and down, some of it a blur, other parts crystal clear. I got overwhelmed and lost my shit constantly for a couple of days; on the third day, I woke up with a blinding headache and realized that I had not (necessarily) arrived at the end of my rope, all of that flying off the handle was the irritable pre-phase of a migraine. When I learned several years ago about the week-long cycle of a migraine, of which the headache phase is only the briefest middle part, I was unspeakably relieved to realize that so much of my flares of irritability and outbursts of rage were part of this illness. Less frequent migraines have led to less frequent flares, which have led to me shifting my understanding of my core personality from irritable and unpredictable to susceptible to inflammatory headaches.

So, migraine. Rain. Many (many!) fox sightings in our yard, which appears to be a favored hunting ground of the mother raising four kits in the yards at the corner of our block. Yesterday, my child spotted both a rabbit hopping its way under the gate and then a blurred fox zooming up and over after it, all during their morning class meeting. On Monday, we were all enthralled and entertained watching the fox mosey around the yard, nosing its way under and around plants, only to gravely inspect my child’s newly dug hole under the holly tree, turn to look straight at us through the kitchen window, and pee into it. My partner deadpanned, “I guess that’s why the yard smells that way.” (“That way” being fairly skunkish.)

We keep on with the cooking. (Do we have any other choice?) Our experiment with almond flour brownies was successful, which is good because I over-purchased almond flour when the rice flour became unavailable. Beef stew with mushrooms, peas, and rosemary from our neighbor’s herb garden (with permission) has become a staple of the crockpot. (That’s it, that’s the recipe. Add a bit of dried thyme plus salt and pepper.) We keep eating, we keep cooking. The fresh produce in the fridge dwindles and that’s how I know it’s time to start preparing for another trip to the store. If not for vegetables and dairy, we could go longer on the rice and meat we have stored in the house; my breakfast yogurt and the child’s bedtime apples are the limiting factors.

Last week, the child’s class did a social studies unit on “life skills.” They had to choose something from a long list that they knew how to do well enough to record a video explaining it to their classmates. This list contained lots of the typical things you’d expect, like laundry, taking out the trash, and washing dishes. Also things that not every household might use, like feeding a pet and addressing an envelope (the one we chose). This week, we’ve been identifying a lot of life skills, and–since we’re getting fairly bored and stir crazy–calling out “LIFE SKILLS!” when they appear in our day. For example, we’ve designated “packing additional food into the already full freezer” and “finding something specific in said freezer” as LIFE SKILLS! Eating a snack while also watching TV, streaming music, and knitting? LIFE SKILLS!

There are other things I specifically want to write about that deserve their own posts. Our family foray into classic hip hop, through the convergence of a PE assignment and an old internet friend’s nightly stream. The ways in which the fifteen years I’ve spent working to accept “you can’t go back” and “there is no normal” are standing me in good stead now. How even with all of what has happened, all of what is going on now, and all that is certainly coming next, I am still full of gratitude to be alive. Here, now. Peace, peace, peace.