We're still here

Today marks three months since we were sent home to "shelter in place."

In some ways it has been a roller coaster, albeit a very quiet and slow-moving one. To embrace that analogy completely, this roller coaster has its moments of just gliding smoothly along in our little car of four, followed by plummets into the unknown where sheer panic overcomes me and I struggle to control my breathing so I don't have to huff into a paper bag.

So many times in the week I remind myself of how fortunate we are. We both have jobs where we can continue to work and be paid from home. We have health coverage. We have the technology and the wifi to allow us to work at home, as well as plenty of space to set up two home offices. Make that FOUR home offices as the girls school from home. We are healthy, our families and friends are mostly healthy and continue to work. We do not suffer the effects of racism or dangerously ineffective political leadership. Medical advice comes from rational, trustworthy, scientific sources. Our home, while it doesn't belong to us, is a beautiful, spacious and comfortable place to shelter. Our yard has never looked so good as we have lots of time to spend taking care of it. The flowers bloom, the birds sing. Our cats comfort us and make us laugh. 

I am not bragging here. I do this to remind myself of how much we have, to reframe the stress and weirdness that I feel some days.

Everything that happens has a ripple effect, and while we do everything we can to make life as normal and safe as possible for our daughters, there are times when I am sad to think of the long-term effects of stress and worry and loss on them. The loss of regular routine, time with friends, dance classes, school trips, our eldest's first year of high school, first high school musical she was to star in, dance in, laugh and live in. Our youngest's first big trip on her own this summer to an international Guiding event she had saved for, planned for, worked hard for. Normality. It is just all gone.

At first when we were at home, the kids grieved all of those lost joys. The teenager railed against not being able to see her friends, having to do her dance classes by zoom, being stuck at home with us all the damn time. The almost teen quietly went about her business, doing remote school like clockwork every day, filling her time with school work and projects. We worked, got out for walks, played games, watched movies, cooked, tried to have creative outlets. Then Dan started to make sourdough. Oh god, the bread.

Time marches on, and four months later it starts to ease a little bit. The "curve" as they say is flattening. Some businesses start to open up, and we all have a mask we can wear when we need it. The crippling fear of going to the grocery store is starting to let up for me. The idea that I could go to get groceries and bring home a potentially fatal disease to my entire family was seriously paralyzing.

But we have all CHANGED. I am afraid of people getting too close to me. The girls are quite content to stay home. Even they find going to a store, a previously mundane task, to be fraught with invisible peril. It is just. So. Strange. Kids forget how to interact with each other.Heck, I forget how to interact with people except over zoom. It's like society has had this big, super bizarre reset button pressed, and now we have been plopped back out into the world which looks the same on the surface but definitely is not.

I know it is not reasonable but I grieve the fact my kid feels like she needs to wear a mask to go out in public. The mask is smothering. And who is it for? For us? For seniors? For the person who refuses to obey the (new) rules of personal space?
Perhaps the most welcome thing out of all of this twilight zone quarter of a year has been that we all still quite like each other. We are probably less annoyed with each other now than when we were tearing around trying to get to school and work on time, running out the door with a bowl of pasta to eat on the way to climbing class or whatever long-ago far-away out of the house thing we were doing. We try to give each other space when we need it, and even though YES there are times when I want to throw something (admittedly something soft like a pillow) at my partner, mostly we are civilized.

We cook Indian food and bake sourdough and watch Downton Abbey. My teenager gardens with me. She learns embroidery and steals my clothes (who knew my mom style would become a style?). The just-turned-a-teenager agonizes over the fact that her older sister also now sews and plays piano and nothing is JUST HERS anymore. I suggest she takes up being an amateur naturalist and so she does. Now she can identify wild ginger in the woods, as well as what plants in the yard are edible.

I hold this time tightly. No one knows what "new normal" will be or where this rollercoaster will stop and let us off. Our daughters become tall and beautiful and opinionated. Eventually they will leave the garden and the baking behind for the temptations of peer relationships, social life (whatever that will look like next year), young adulthood, life outside our little loving bubble. 

Hold on tight. The ride is not quite over yet.





Comments

  1. For those of us with economic and physical security, this time is a really strange mix, isn't it? Some parts are wonderful, but the terrible all around--so close--is disorienting. The lack of control isn't necessarily a threat, but it feels like one. Like you, I have felt that I need to hold tightly to what is right now. It's not great in many ways, but some of it is, and who knows what's coming? For us here in the States, it feels like nothing good. I am trying to squeak every drop of good I can out of this summer, bracing as I am for a hard fall and winter. Take care--

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Grand Manan

I resolve never to make resolutions

Blending in is overrated