Sunday, March 8
Nick and his brother tell their mom to cancel her trip. She was set to fly from Florida to BWI this week and split her time between us on the Eastern Shore and Nick’s brother’s family in DC. I think they’re being overly cautious but I get it. Nick’s stepdad back in Florida is 85, which I always forget because he retains a vintage Jack Lalanne-esque fitness regimen and still has all his hair. I feel relieved to be unburdened of the chores required to welcome a visitor, the special grocery trips, washing linens, cleaning the house. This week is Nick’s spring break (he’s a college professor) but my four-year-old’s spring break isn’t until Easter weekend in mid-April. Nick has some grading and coursework to do, but he hopes to get a lot done on the house.
All the trim in our main living area has been pried off for months, while “we” slowly resurface the walls to prepare them for paint. “We” is always Nick. He has a whole process, and it requires me ferrying the kids somewhere so he can work on it. He doesn’t want to promise me, because all promises made to me regarding work on the house are inevitably broken, but he says his goal is to get all the trim hung back up by Friday.
Someone I love is in ICU 500 miles away (not COVID-19 related) and I wait for any crumb of an update all day. I drink daytime beers in bed while staring at the ceiling. The laughter of my children in the other rooms of the house is painful to me because I don’t know how I will parent through such emotional suffocation. I wonder if it’s annoying for me to text for updates. I decide that they can ignore me if they want. I finally get on the phone with someone to discuss and I notice they don’t ever tell me not to worry when I talk about how I am so worried.
I see the value of my airline miles has surged as planes fly empty amid viral transmission fears and travel restrictions. I book a flight with award miles to see the patient in mid-April and provide some relief to their other caregivers who may be starting to burn out at that point.
Monday March 9
Harvard closes. Columbia closes. I know there’s an outbreak in Boston but the Columbia closure surprises me. Ohio State, my alma mater and one of the biggest universities in the country, suspends classes until March 30. I learn that an episcopal priest in Georgetown, DC, has tested positive for COVID-19 and potentially exposed hundreds at services on Sunday. I hear that some DC schools close in response. To me, this seems like an overreaction because I know that children do well with the virus. I do not yet know the terms “social distancing” and “flatten the curve.” University of Maryland closes.
In a distant ICU, the docs are back after the weekend and a painful biopsy is performed. I Google-image search what tools are used for this type of biopsy as some misguided attempt at solidarity.
Tuesday, March 10
Salisbury University closes, another college on the Eastern Shore. This surprises me because there are no cases on the Eastern Shore yet. I look back on this mindset now and am baffled. Nick’s school is also my employer and I start to feel anxious about the lack of communication. Students have gone out into the world for their break and will be returning to campus soon. Why is it taking so long to make a decision? I currently have more faith in the leadership of Bolt Bus than I do of my employer or the federal government.
In a distant ICU, a visitor tells a patient he missed a question on the trivia app he’s addicted to: What was the name of the skull in Hamlet? The patient, previously unable to speak due to pain, croaks, “Yorick.” The group text goes wild for this anecdote.
Wednesday, March 11
The college announces it will extend spring break for a week, rather than try to convert to distance learning with only a few days of notice for instructors. Nick is relieved for the gift of more time to reconceive his syllabus.
A friend in my mom slack asks how we’re talking about this to our children. I realize that Nick and I are just volleying new scary updates back and forth at each other en plein air as though our four-year-old doesn’t understand English. I make a note to be better. Maybe Wednesday was the day that Nick woke me up by telling me Tom Hanks had coronavirus and for half the day I thought I had dreamed it.
Another friend asks if it’s a bad idea to go to an exercise class and I tell her I plan on going to the gym that day. Campus is empty, there will hardly be anyone there. Do you see how I’m not getting it yet?
Thursday, March 12
The project I am leading at work felt cursed before, and feels especially cursed now. The time-sensitive meetings I had with staff leads and faculty members this week have been cancelled one by one as those people are overloaded with the work of taking on this unprecedented and sudden change.
In the evening after the baby goes to bed, there is an hour where it’s just Desi, Nick and me. In the winter, we usually play a board game, or do a puzzle. Sometimes we just watch TV together. Now that the sun is setting later and it’s warmer, we can actually play outside during this time. We skateboard on the driveway, racing each other each direction endlessly. We’re in the driveway when I get a notification that all Maryland public schools are closing down for the next two weeks.
I feel a sense of calm like when I miss a flight or crash my car. Anxiety means a constant state of fear. There’s a sick sense of relief when the bad thing actually happens.
Biopsy results confirm the presumed diagnosis. I do not feel a sense of calm. I would like to go back to the place of fear now, it turns out.
Friday, March 13
My therapist asks if I’ve been writing about all of this. I tell her that no, what I have been doing is anxiously organizing the house until 1 in the morning, then taking a Unisom, slurping hungrily on my weed pen, and doing the crossword on my phone in bed until I can’t keep my eyes open anymore.
It’s Desi’s last day of school until March 30. “We need to do everything at home that I usually did at school,” he says, my little narc. Jane’s daycare is still open for now. They email that they are “awaiting guidance from the state licensing board.” I can finally see the writing on the wall. Everything is over and cancelled and done. Why couldn’t I see before?
I Google my 93-year-old grandfather’s nursing home in Ohio. They are now closed to visitors. I feel relieved and tremendously sad.
My boss is not taking the social distancing thing seriously. My rage on this topic could fuel a rocket to the moon. Days ago I was counseling my friend to go ahead and go to a small CrossFit class and now I am a social distancing fundamentalist. I go for a run and it offgasses some of my rage. Later my Instagram Stories are flush with people at bars, in groups. It’s like the Warren campaign all over again. I go online and we’re all in agreement. Then I leave the house and no one has heard that that’s who we’re voting for.
It’s going to be at least two weeks with my kids home. Jane’s daycare hasn’t announced closure but it’s coming. I think, not fondly, of my last pseudo-quarantine. I was 39 weeks pregnant with Jane in our cramped rental house and Desi’s school was closed for two weeks for winter break. We couldn’t travel because I could go into labor at any moment, and most things locally were closed for the holidays. It was the longest 10 days of my life.
My dad tells me he won’t get COVID but doesn’t want to risk vectoring it to someone vulnerable, so he’ll take precautions. I think, with relief and exasperation, ok boomer.
In a distant ICU, the hospital has clamped down severely on visitors. The patient is only permitted a visitor because they are not in a state to advocate for themselves, and that visitor must be essentially locked onto the unit with the patient. I feel relieved and tremendously sad.
The trim is absolutely not hung, I mean, get real.
Saturday, March 14
It’s only kind of our first day of self-isolation because it’s a weekend. The real pain starts when Nick and I attempt working from home with two kids underfoot starting Monday.
We walk to a playground that’s usually empty but there are a few families there. Nick and I stay on the periphery following Jane as she toddles. The dads of the other families shake hands as they part. I wish I had an airhorn. I now hold a Ph.D. in virology.
Nick shaves off the beard that he’s had for three years, the beard I prefer him to have, without consulting me. “It was making me touch my face too much.” It’s gonna be a long quarantine. At least there’s now no risk of a COVID-19 pregnancy.
Speaking of pregnancy, I am unfortunately pregnant with COVID-19 content. I am an afterprom chocolate fountain of dad jokey commentary, bubbling over in perpetuity. These are like Jay Leno-monologue-tier observations, it feels like a personality disorder. I want to be free of them. Is there a plugin where I can force everyone on Twitter to mute me for 60 days?
We cook almost all of our meals at home usually and most nights of the week we’re home, all together, because we have small children. Sort of quarantined myself when I decided to become a parent in the first place, didn’t I?
I hate the “kids ruin your life” mindset so I’m hesitant to put it in those terms but it’s true that becoming a parent fundamentally changes the architecture of your days. You spend more time at home, full stop. When I was on maternity leave with baby Desi, I started experiencing our apartment in daytime for once. The light was delicious! Also everything was filthy, covered in dust, you could practically write “wash me” on the floors with your finger. When Desi became mobile and starting exploring our dirtbag childless couple apartment, I understood gauche suburban new-build mansions for once. What if I could hide all of this dangerous shit inside a series of otherwise useless rooms until I understood how to furnish a home for a young family?
Someone on my timeline has the gall to offer recommendations for shows to watch “in case you’ve run out of shows.” Who is running out of shows?! We just started quarantine yesterday!! I haven’t watched TV in two weeks. I feel acutely jealous of people quarantined without children. Kids ruin your life.
Sunday, March 15
We go for a hike at a nature preserve we’ve never been to before. We’ve packed a lunch but we can’t find the area with picnic tables that we spotted on the map at the trailhead. Morale is flagging. We decide to just picnic on the ground. It feels more “Hunger Games” than I’m comfortable with. I tell Nick I’m going to cancel our camping reservations for the kids’ spring break. We’d rented a yurt for a few days in a state park. I think we’ll be all set for togetherness by mid-April. Nick says, “…….yes.”
At home, the bathroom sink has begun to leak and flood the floor with standing water. Desi blacks his eye leaping from the couch to the armchair, something he is constantly told not to do. Jane has popped open the diaper rash cream and is thoughtfully sampling it like she’s at a wine tasting.
In a distant ICU, the patient drinks an entire bottle of Ensure. The group text goes ape.
yr mate,
Evie
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