Desi in Florida, 2017
It shouldn’t be possible to have FOMO during forced social isolation! And yet I find myself aggrieved that instead of learning a language or trying to find the end of Netflix, I am instead cornered by financial precarity into being the most rigidly scheduled and un-free I’ve ever been in my life. Last night around 10 p.m., Nick was working furiously into the night to get his courses all set for the beginning of distance-learning. I thought about firing up the TV, which has only broadcast children’s programming for weeks. What could Evie watch as a treat?!!
However, getting sucked into a show would only punish future-me, who needed to wake up and begin another impossible week of full-time work and full-time childcare. I went to bed by 11 (should be earlier really) and did the crossword on my phone and enjoyed some THC-enhanced sleep. That nightly ritual is the light of my days. I’m sure I’m not the only parent who used to experience a kind of reverse Sunday Scaries sensation, a feeling of calm on Sunday night as I anticipated the break from the grind of caring for young children. We just completed our second weekend of isolation with kids and weekends are now the break.
Because instead of the pressure to be productive and maintain a soupçon of synchronous communication availability, we are “just” doing the work of childcare. And there are two of us instead of necessarily one of us. That’s not to say we didn’t have to do work this weekend! We did, arranged it with each other in the morning, but it felt like stolen time. There wouldn’t be emails coming in, no Zoom meetings with a million Brady Bunch squares of coworkers in hoodies peeking at my bedroom walls. Just 45 minutes here or there to chip away at the avalanche of shit I’m piled under at work.
Nick has a more conservative expectation than me of how long this will go on. I still find myself thinking in more optimistic terms and then getting whiplash when weeks later, I’m wrong again.
My coworker told me weeks ago that Japan was closing the schools for months. I mean, Japan is in Asia, much closer to the site of the outbreak, plus Japan is way more collectivist as a culture. That’s not something I’m worried about happening here…
A friend mentioned last week that maybe we don’t need to worry about signing our kids up for summer camps because we could still be in isolation then. Summer? No way….
Last night, I heard Desi ask Nick if we were still going to have Halloween. Nick said, “Yeah!” Then, “I think so..” Of course there’s going to be Halloween.
I should really start doubting my doubts.
Here are some fantasies about the future:
A dramatic hair change. I’m thinking a bob and I dye it a soft creamsicle orange. YES my skin has yellow undertones NO this won’t stop me.
More tattoos.
Laser resurfacing of my face. Sizzle off those acne scars.
Microblading???
NB Cost does not factor into these fantasies.
More fantasies:
Sitting at an outdoor patio and I can smell the wood picnic benches being heated by the sun. Some kind of floral, pale beer. The faintest detection of cigarette smoke from an adjoining alley. My shoulders are getting warm and I press a thumbprint into them to see if they are getting pink.
Nick and I, by ourselves, in Umbria. Exhausted walking up dramatically pitched streets. Our hearts are pounding, we feel so out of shape! A pigeon shits too close to our al fresco dinner table. I am having lots of wine but not getting anxiety from alcohol. We talk about what our kids would be doing if they were with us but we do not miss them. They are enjoying quality time with their grandparents, who are alive because the Governor of Ohio finally forbid them from making leisure trips to Kroger out of boredom, goddammit!! Nick is so tan and we talk about how all of our kids inherited my shitty skin instead, ghostly white and reactive to everything, mottled with eczema. Again, we do not miss our beautiful pale children at all.
I walk my child to his classroom and leave him there with his wonderful teacher.
yr mate,
Evie
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