3/19/20
Yesterday didn’t seem like a good day. I mean, collectively. Like, for society.
Besides the rising numbers of coronavirus in our country, and besides the people getting very sick and, tragically, dying. Beyond the empty cities and people losing their incomes, and businesses that will have to shut their doors forever and whatnot. All of that isn’t great either. All of that is too much to hold all at once.
What I am talking about is that among my friends and acquaintances - the people I talk to, and have been talking to even more in this period of forced isolation - yesterday was not a good day, expressed in the most mundane terms. “What a day!,” we all said. An expression we are all used to. Except that none of us are used to any of this.
It is so early in this whole thing, but yesterday seemed far enough in to express solid-yet-still-astonished opinions about this unfamiliar landscape. Yesterday everybody was kind of like, “Hold up a second. This is impossible.”
“This is impossible,” is, in fact, what I said when we were out on a walk yesterday, and we ran into a family we know from school, including a fellow kindergarten student who is one of Aidy’s best buddies. When the two of them shouted out in glee and ran towards each other - because, after all, they hadn’t seen each other since last week and the way Aidy and her friends greet each other on normal days is with 110 percent enthusiasm - me and the other child’s father had to yell out, “No! Not too close!”
We had to yell out for them not to get too close to each other. Like we were in a Stephen King novel.
Social distancing - trying to gauge at all times how many feet we are away from another person (“It’s how tall daddy is,” I told the kids, “Like, pretend you’ve stretched daddy out on the ground, then don’t go any closer than that”) - is one of the many, many new skills we are all trying to learn very suddenly. This brand new necessary skill set also includes: working and conducting meetings from home, as well as socializing over video chat, and people not knowing in the slightest how to turn on their microphone; getting our children to do math worksheets at the dining room table followed by them complaining that, “this feels too much like school,” and then us screaming back “well THIS IS SCHOOL NOW” and then slowly counting to ten so we don’t throw the math sheets in the toilet; digesting roughly 7,000 hours of can’t-miss enriching online materials that have been shared since yesterday; and trying to explain the concept of needing uninterrupted solo time to a 5-year-old.
Dealing with 24/7 uncertainty while also wondering if we have what it takes to lead the neighbors in a singalong from our open windows, mixed with routine struggles that now feel supercharged.
Yesterday, as we headed out on a late afternoon walk, Gabe couldn’t decide if he wanted to ride his bike or not and started arguing with himself about whether he should run home to get it, yelling at the rest of us that he didn’t know what he should do, and we didn’t know either, obviously, so the girls were yelling at him back, and I considered scrapping the whole idea in favor of returning to the house to make brownies and then eat all of them in one sitting or get into a bathtub of wine or something, anything, to soothe the rage that was building up inside me because deciding whether to ride your bike or walk shouldn’t result in a tantrum that ruins everything. It wouldn’t have been a big issue normally, but then it felt huge. It was just a walk. But it was crucial.
All of it, though - his waffling and mine, stuck between making “the most of this” and succumbing to the dread that this might last forever, which makes the littlest decisions much more weighty - is understandable. Because this is so very new and incomprehensible. Like a dream.
And yet, because one skill we actually have practiced is the skill of “moving on” (if reluctantly), Gabe finally decided to leave the bike, kicking his anger into the sidewalk for a few blocks before letting it go. We saw neighbors and stood six feet away and reveled in the company and the fresh air. The kids jumped over a creek and looked for paper shamrocks in people’s windows, an activity planned by wonderful neighbor (thank you, neighbor!) Then, when they were going out the door this afternoon to run around at the (not yet open, please god, let it be open this summer!) pool club across the street, I yelled to them, “Be nice and watch your sister and don’t touch other kids!” Like it was normal.
I guess what I’m feeling is that this isn’t something we can easily get used to or make the most of or excel at. We can, however, celebrate the small achievements while keeping our eyes on the bigger ones that have a real public health impact, and try to help those hurting the most in this situation.
This morning I went for a run and listened to music, including a song called “Don’t Carry it All” by The Decemberists. And as I ran in the rain, listening to the words, they seemed - as lyrics often do in emotionally charged-times - to have been written for this time. I swear I won’t start quoting songs in all of my blog posts, but here’s a verse that really got me:
“So raise a glass to turnings of the season/ And watch it as it arcs towards the sun/ And you must bear your neighbor’s burden within reason/ And your labors will be borne when all is done.”
The chorus is a timely, “Don’t carry it all, don’t carry it all.”
I listened to that song as I made my way along the main drag of our community - our community that is doing such a good job of following the rules while also taking such good care of one another - and I got kind of teary-eyed. I figured some of the people in the cars passing by were teary-eyed, too. Solidarity from afar, for as long as it takes. Don’t carry it all.
