Let’s Roll (COVID edition)

It seems unlikely that just one month ago, we were supposed to be in San Diego. A family vacation for Spring Break. It’s been a long month, certainly, but still it’s supposedly been only 4 weeks. It seems unlikely, as well, that in the days leading up to that planned vacation, I spent considerable time debating whether we should go. And while we didn’t, it seems surprising that just a month ago, I thought there was enough wiggle room in that question to debate it at length. It’s been a hella month, for sure.

I haven’t slept well in more than a decade, and one of the unfortunate parts of that is that when there’s a pandemic, it’s hard to remember how you felt <before> when you didn’t sleep well. I have a headache and my neck hurts and I’m generally tired. Am I near-asymptomatic? Mildly symptomatic? Psychosomatic? Suffering from seasonal allergies? Just tired? Probably the latter few, but since my job has us rotating in and out of the office on a week-on, week-off rotation, I somewhat obsessively take my temperature, anyway, just to be sure. And sure of what? What was my average temperature before this? I have no idea. But so far my daily pronouncements have not been cause for alarm to my other half or my children, though they’ve ranged from 97.4 to 99.0°.

I want desperately to be the sensible yet confident, with-it, together mother who is concerned enough to keep everyone safe and informed, and yet also able to whip up baked goods, make savory, nutrious soups, teach basic algebra, use the extra family time to perhaps broach some of those awkward teenage conversations that we’ve backburnered, and of course keep wild-eyed what-if fears buried deep inside a vault of pragmatic rationality.

“You don’t have COVID, Mom,” my oldest daughter tells me as I rinse the thermometer (she’s been a voice of pragmatic rationality far before this). “Because,” she continues, “I don’t have COVID, and so you also don’t have it.” This makes sense, and yet. And yet.

“We’re super lucky,” my partner says. “We’re still working, the girls are rolling with all these changes, and if we do get it, we’re healthy to begin with, and after we recover, we can donate plasma to help other people and be part of the solution.”

This is all true. He’s completely right. But I still had a breakdown after coming back from the grocery store and getting gas last weekend. He tied on my bandana mask, gave me two pairs of gloves (one for the gas pumps, one for the grocery store), a plastic bag to put the gloves in when I took them off, and a bag of Clorox wipes, and off I went. The mask was hot. The gloves made my hands damp. Most everyone else was wearing a mask, and a lot of people were wearing gloves. And then I came home and we disinfected what we needed that day, and left the dry goods in the garage. And I was a mess. “I’ll go to the store from now on,” he said. But that’s not the sensibly confident pragmatic me I want to be. And yet.

Years ago – probably decades ago – I watched an interview after some big sports event. NBA finals, maybe? Or the Super Bowl? I don’t remember now. But I remember that the athlete being interviewed used the word surreal repeatedly. And I thought, a line from The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Surreal seems like such a dramatic word. Almost superlative somehow. And while winning a Super Bowl probably is surreal, I laughed about the interview, and even remembered it in the way of small, trivial memories. But now, it’s the only word that seems to make sense. Our lives are surreal. This epidemic is surreal. They call them 100-year and 1000-year floods. I hope with everything I have that this is a 1000-year pandemic.

During their time at home, in the midst of remote learning and without a steady stream of in-person social activities, my children have taken different tracks in their new worlds.

My oldest reads a lot, and she watches tv and movies while on the phone with her friends. Thank goodness for wi-fi calling. My youngest is producing sketches at a rapid pace. Name the first thing you think of right now, she says. And she’ll draw it, with some modifications. That bunch of black grapes? What if I draw a grape monster instead? And it’s the most amazing grape monster you’ve ever seen. And she’s learning to skateboard. She has a friend who’s helping her learn the basics, and she’s consulting the ultimate teacher, YouTube. But in the end, she’s also just putting some skin into the game, which is the most time-honored way to learn anything. Her palms are scraped, her helmet is scuffed. But she thinks she’s getting it.

She was pragmatic, as I hope to one day be.  “You just put all the energy you would have put into hitting the ground, into rolling instead.”

You put the energy you would have put into hitting the ground into rolling instead.

And there it is. Our days are both crazy dull, and also crazy strange. We have no choice but to roll. We are afraid to leave our homes but appreciate Spring’s still weak but warming sunlight more than ever. We spend more hours with the people in our households than ever before, but we are reaching out to friends and family via a dozen video platforms at unprecedented levels. We’re six-to-eight-to-ten feet apart, but our communities are standing on our front porches, waving, as police cars create a mini-parade to wish our neighborhoods’ 5-year-olds a happy birthday, and as teachers decorate their cars with balloons to wave at the students who have suddenly become a trial run for remote learning.

I’m anxious, and I’m lonesome for people I didn’t even realize were so salient to my life. I miss Sean, the barista from Starbucks who called my name when I walked in the door, before I even got out my phone app to pay. I worry about the tiny woman who must be 85 if she’s a day, who cashiers my get-out-of-the-office-for-a-few-minutes snacks at the Natural Grocer’s next to my office. I worry about the small non-skiing mountain town that we escape to on weekends, an escape that is so essential to my heart, where winter is a tricky season to begin with, and Spring is supposed to bring a much needed thaw to the weather and the economy.

We celebrated New Years with optimism about 2020, such a recognizable, round number. We planned vacations, we planned visits with friends and family. We planned concerts and every day happy hours and quick stops at the grocery store on the way home to pick up just that one forgotten thing.

And yet.

It’s surreal. But … we roll.