My hair dryer broke a few weeks ago. In a normal world, this would be a quick stop at Target on the way home to be ready for the next day. In this world, I have done nothing about it. A week back in the office will likely necessitate some sort of action on my part. Masks eliminate earrings and lipstick for me, both signs I’ve at least tried for pulled-together professionalism, so I really shouldn’t drop blow-drying. Or is this the time to redefine everything – for the good of the next 40 years of mornings routines?
In our lives, we have rarely spent so much time with so few people. My immediate family consists of me, my other half, my 14-year-old daughter, my 12-year-old daughter, and a handsome, quirky canine. We’re all pretty witty and entertaining and interested in the world, I think. We have family dinner every night, and it’s still one of my favorite things, but when we’ve all been within shouting distance of each other all day, we’re caught up with each other before we sit down. We’ve told most of our stories, not just of the day, but also of that time I flew from London to Rome in college, and about moving across the country in a car without air conditioning and a beta fish in a bucket on the floor boards, and about seeing the cherry blossoms in Michigan in 1994. And we’ve celebrated three out of our four birthdays, so we’ve even retold all of those stories.
One day, Google stopped pushing local traffic info to me in the morning. I have no idea when it happened, but just realized one day that I hadn’t seen an alert in probably weeks. Maybe months. Maybe for as long as there hasn’t been traffic, which is something I’d be okay keeping long after this virus is mitigated.
But even without traffic, I’m frustrated by canceled plans and I’m nostalgic for the summers that were, and a little despondent when I think about the uncertainty of, well, everything. I haven’t met my one of my best friend’s 6-month old daughter. I never guessed that could happen. My college best friend and I have rescheduled a trip to see each other twice, now open-ended, and I really could use a good visit with both of these women who have been through so many years and so much life with me. Add to the uncertainty the angst. Politics, racism, mask ire. Every tv commercial is either a political ad or an injury lawyer. It’s so heavy for adults, with all of our adult experiences to draw from. My heart hurts for the children. The virus is novel. Our worlds are novel. And yet in their novelty, they’ve become awfully repetitive.
I’ve read a number of parenting-teenage-girls books. (Or I’ll be honest: I’ve started a number. I’m well-intentioned, and something is better than nothing, right?). One of those books, Untangled by Lisa Damour, uses the metaphor of a swimming pool for these teenage relationships. You’ll be the secure walls of that swimming pool, somewhere for them to sometimes push away from – a full on athletic flip-turn at times – but the place, too, where they can come to rest when they get tired of the open water. It made sense. I was prepared for some pushing. But as yet there are few parenting-teenage-girls-during-pandemics books, so I’m not sure what advice there is for when there is no where to push into. We’ve all been home, in this house, for months. Instead of a swimming pool, we’re gathered in a hot tub. A small one, at that.
And so we watch the days go by. We have occasional game nights. To mix things up, we’ve sampled our local pizza places, Thai, sushi, Indian, Cuban, Mexican. We’ve ticked through series television and movies and read books and baked things. We watched Hamilton. But the other thing that we’ve done is we’ve kept in touch. We’ve texted, we’ve called. We’ve video conferenced and sent gifts.
I have several text threads that are as reliable as the sunrise, and so do my children. My oldest has a constant dialogue with friends from whom she’s been distanced for months. My youngest talks to her grandparents and documents her daily life into video. I rely on these touchpoints.
I haven’t met my best friend’s baby, but I’ve seen her laugh. After a canceled spring vacation, I haven’t seen my parents in nearly a year, but I’ve watched a monarch butterfly open its wings in their Ohio flower beds. And the times that I’ve needed my tribe *right now*, we’ve been on a phone call within hours. We’re thousands of miles away, but not distanced. It’s a brand new world, but our tribe remains the same.
There’s a lot we don’t know about the long-term effects of this virus, 10, 20, 30 years from now, and a lot we don’t know about the long-term effects of who we’ve become as we live with it. We’re living in a footprint that even Google has given up on tracking, and our children’s childhoods will forever be a part of a COVID generation. Their remember-whens around the kitchen table with their own families will likely include these odd days. But will it be a footnote to them, after life moves on, or defining? Maybe they will become a generation of scientists because of it. If nothing else, they will know exactly how to wash their hands.
If our tribe knows all our stories, is that so bad? We will almost certainly make more, both together and those to bring back for future dinner conversations. If we are steadfast in our virtual connection while we wait to see our people in person again, then our tribe is still strong. We may miss the baby smiles, but we’ll watch the toddler wonder at her first steps and ocean waves and ice cream dripping off a summer cone. Our teenagers will figure out how to push away from the edge. And doubtless we will miss the days when we were all in the same house, day after day, all within shouting distance of each other.