Category Archives: Project Posterity: The COVID Chronicles

We All Fall Down (Project Posterity: The COVID Chronicles)

Posted on by

Friends, it is a cluster.

A legit, what-the-heck-nightmare-did-I just-wake-up-in cluster.

E-learning, I mean, for those of you who have no idea what the HELL ON EARTH I’m referring to.

E-learning in, Jamie out: today, in the face of 1st grade literature and 4th grade art, I lost it.

To my credit, it was the first time I’ve lost it during the entire course of the COVID affair. I’m kind of proud it took me this long.

For about 30 minutes this morning I was just flat out angry. Angry with the kids for fighting. Angry with the dogs for barking. Angry at Google for creating a terrible classroom program. Angry at the disease that led us to this place.

We started at 9am and by 9:57, I was in tears. Not that the kids noticed, but I was.

Teachers are trying their hardest. I believe administrators are as well. But this is new to everyone, and the learning curve is steep. Do we watch the videos first or look at the messages? Why am I still getting stuff on Dojo? What’s with the 404 error—I was just there 2 seconds ago!

And I’m an over-educated, tech savvy SAHM. I can’t imagine what this mess is like for non-English speakers; people working, whether from home or not; those doing school on cell phones in parking lots to use the wifi; disabled students; special education students; and the list goes on.

This is hard.

But we’re doing it. We’re all doing it. We’re going to get it right sometimes and wrong other times, and I think that’s okay. No, I know that’s okay. Really.

But I digress.

At some point in the mess of today everything kind of clicked. I grabbed onto that moment and hung on for dear life, rushing to write down the daily schedule that I hope will work for us over the course of this Corona School adventure. I beg you—please, please, please don’t breathe on it; if you do, it will fall apart. It’s only tied by a thread.

I’m 100% sure that this is easier than it seems. Truly. But the universal “we” are overloaded and can’t get the brain power together for just One More Thing. One more is too much. It pushes us over edges we didn’t know were there until it was too late to turn around. So, we fall.

Do you remember playing Ring Around the Rosie? It was supposedly written in a time of plague, but that actually isn’t true. It was simply a game.

Today, in our own time of plague, I can’t help but think of that song. Not as a representation of us all carrying posies to ward off disease or falling to our deaths, but instead as a representation of our common plight and the support we’re scrounging deep inside our own disheveledness to find for one another.

You know the part where it says, “we all fall DOWN!” and everyone collapses into a giggling heap, thrilled with themselves and maybe slightly dizzy from holding hands and spinning around? Well, that’s us right now. All of us across America. OK, maybe not holding actual hands because, you know, coronavirus, but nonetheless holding metaphorical hands through text chains, social media, Zoom, and FaceTime. Watching the whole world spin around us, knowing that any minute we will fall, but also knowing that’s okay, because we won’t fall down alone: we will all be in that dizzy heap together. And when we’re done laughing at our collective ridiculousness, we will lift each other up, finding our feet under us once again.

Today isn’t over yet and I don’t know what the remaining hours will bring. Whatever it is, however, I may forget. Because the COVID memory I will put to words today is one of a child’s game, a playground and friends standing close, laughing, singing a song of roses and ashes that ends not when the players fall, but rather when they help one another to rise.

Things Best Not Forgotten (Project Posterity: The COVID Chronicles)

Posted on by

Today we played badminton and cursed the wind, chasing the birdies through the year’s first grass before the dogs could get them.

Today is the last day before online lessons are given for a grade, but my fourth grader finds herself wanting to do the optional ones anyway, to do work she could choose not to do. But still she wears pajamas, fights me about brushing her hair. We are, after all, at home.

We counted the days of online school to come, clocked it at only 12 though it somehow feels an infinite number before us. In counting we assumed a return date that isn’t set in stone, but rather in each other and how well Americans manage to stay at home.

I call this Day 18.

Eighteen days of togetherness in which everything has changed: How we eat, sleep, shop, parent. How we read the news, communicate, say our prayers, and breathe.

I’ve yet to sew a face mask.

I have a machine, and cloth, and thread, but lack discernable sewing talent and so I doubt I’ll be posting pictures of colorful face coverings anytime soon. But a sincere thank you to those whom God has blessed with the gift of stitching us together, weaving half measures into whole.

I just found out our neighbor is an ER doctor. I didn’t know. But now a neighborhood email has been sent and read that tells me this is true. Tomorrow we will gather outside his home as he returns from his shift at a now empty hospital, the calm before the storm that is projected to hit our state in 16 days. Which is fewer than the infinite 18 in which we’ve lived fully into our homes.

I still see neighbors walking their dogs with one another. Kids riding bikes down the empty streets. I shake my head and close the curtains with a sigh.

When did we start judging people for how close they stand to one another as they amble in togetherness? And when will this judging stop? I wonder.

The day so far is beautiful, despite the wind. My three children are enjoying the sun together, dodging dogs and their messes, laughing as the wind carries a birdie ten feet away one minute, then backwards the next. My youngest has worn the same clothes five days now; he wants to set a record. I told him he already has, but he just laughed and kept them on: Florescent green shorts and a maroon Razorbacks shirt handed down from a cousin whose sister just cut his hair because all the salons are closed. I was impressed with how well she did.

My mom has a mask. One mask. She uses it for Kilz and sawdust and the other noxious fumes and particles of construction. “Should I ask Collin if he wants to wear it when he goes out for us?” she asked me this morning. Collin is in his 20s and likely the best suited of us to risk exposure.

“I don’t know,” I said. Because I don’t.

There’s so little I know these days, other than a schedule really helps, but so does pretending it’s not a schedule at all; else the kids might revolt. I’ve learned if the house isn’t tidy I can’t do this thing we’re all doing together separately. I’ve learned to hit refresh on Prime Now to snag a delivery spot as soon as one opens, and how to wipe down a box of cereal to make sure it doesn’t kill my mom. I’ve learned we’re all amazingly resilient, but I also wonder how that day will feel when it finally comes. The day the kids return to school. The husband to traveling for work. The house as empty as it ever is, which is to say it’s down to 2 adults and their barking dogs. That moment, when it comes, will be strange, I think. Happy but a little sad, a celebratory moment of peace, but also a moment of loss, as I send my kids away.

For now, I’m keeping them in check with prizes. They draw post-its from a once-red bowl, now orange from time and washing. These post-its hold their next task, whether fun or work, and they earn points upon the task’s completion. At the end of the day, or perhaps two, they are rewarded prizes for how well and nicely they performed their tasks. So far the rewards have been gifts purchased for birthday parties never held: the virus has halted even the earth’s movement around the sun.

Andy and I agreed last night that it will be a shame when we go back to how things were. Moments of rushing and shushing to get where we’re supposed to be. To hurried bedtimes that happen right after tired dinners that happen right after Andy gets home. To times when I can’t—or think I can’t—sit in the shade of a beautiful day, watching my three laugh over failed serves, fighting against the sun dots dancing before their eyes.

It is wonderful. And quiet. And joyful. It’s all the things parenting should be. Perhaps that’s why I’m writing this so early in the day when there are still so many hours left to come: This is a moment to hold on to, to reread in coming years. There is much to remember about these crazy days, but the sun and wind and laughter are the ones I hope to remember most.

badminton

In Which I Am Tired but the Dogs Don’t Care (Project Posterity: The COVID Chronicles)

Posted on by

The kids and dogs are outside.

The house is quiet and not a little boring.

It occurs to me that instead of scrolling Facebook and reading dire, apocalyptic articles that don’t tell me anything I don’t already know, I should probably Do Something.

I don’t feel well enough today to do anything that takes physical energy or that even requires me to take multiple steps (i.e., pay a bill that I have to look up on the computer and then set up bill pay with my bank. That’s TWO WHOLE STEPS), so I decide I should start a COVID-19 journal. I’m sure all the cool kids are doing it, and you know, that’s what I do: I write.

I’m always complaining there’s not enough time or mental energy in the day to put words to page, but here it is: a golden opportunity. So okay. I’ll do it.

April 2, 2020,

 The emotional toll of this pandemic is not at all like 9/11, or —

Wait—is that the backdoor? Yes, that was definitely the backdoor. I hear paws on wood, and then footsteps.

Collin comes through the living room, typing furiously on his phone. Without looking up, he says, “Uh oh, Mom. Muddy paws. VERY muddy paws.”

Well, shit.

(There’s something about this pandemic that makes me curse. I have no idea why.)

I assess the damage and it’s worse than I thought.

Both dogs, looking rather pleased with themselves, are covered in mud. Their paws, their bellies, their shaggy rear-ends. And, to make matters even worse, I just gave them their monthly bath TWO days ago. AND cleaned out the giant whirlpool tub I bathed them in. This takes effort, folks. Lots and lots of effort. If I remember correctly, the doggy bath two days ago resulted in my being covered in water from neck to knee, and cleaning the tub involved me kneeling inside the tub in a bathing suit and holding a bottle of bleach. I cannot do this again a mere two days later. This is not okay.

I try a towel on their paws, which involves illegal WWF moves and lots of “come back here you mangy dog” from me. The dogs were not impressed.

So, I will save my first journal entry regarding this historical pandemic for another day.

Because I refuse to consider that this—this muddy moment of atrocity—is day one of such an important recordation for posterity.

Happy dog.
Minus his ear and left eye, Bear is an ALL WHITE DOG.