Stay at Home Part 8
Phew, words are few and far between. Even creativity feels heavy. I haven’t taken many photos this week. I should make myself. Except it all feels so difficult. Such a strange feeling. Because technically everything is fine. We’re home. I mean, isn’t that the opposite of scary?
In the future, this time will have bookends. History books can say the pandemic began on this date and officially ended on another date. There will be a sense of progress.
We don’t have that insight here. We have this strange limbo that refuses to accept timelines. Experts say that the virus controls the timeline. Other folks may demand that they can direct the timeline via various openings on various dates. And we stay at home listening to it all while trying to wrestling with different outcomes.
I remember my tidy food stockpile. It felt so significant at the time. And now it feels like it was hopelessly small. Back then, 2-3 weeks was the timeline. Then it became April. Maybe May. Now? June 1 may be ambitious. Which is so many weeks! We’ve been home for 5 weeks so far. When I see time unspooling in ever-shifting horizons, frustration and exhaustion overwhelm me.
In what happened this week, the high school sent instructions on Monday that there would be expected times for each class to meet online. Except it didn’t say how or where (Zoom? Google classroom?) these classes would meet. The teens tried wrapping their heads around four hours a day, potentially, of watching online classes. Along with the usual homework and assignments… which earned a freakout. Because they’re already busy working through assignments.
(Spoiler: it didn’t stay as daily video classes which was a relief)
Then, two days later, a notice arrived that classes would be pass/fail. No grades for the current semester. The teens here are going to keep working on their work. They see the value in building understanding for when they enroll in the next level of classes. The shift towards pass/fail was another change with understanding how this world is forming all around us. And another “How will that work, exactly?” without solid answers.
While whispers started circulating online that schools should be considering how they’re going to manage classes in the fall. Oh, goodness.
We live in a rural area where many students do not have access to high speed internet (or internet at all). Those families picking up paper packets once a week outside the school. Or checking schoolwork while sitting in the school parking lot for wifi. It’s not sustainable.
None of this is sustainable.
My middle schooler, meanwhile, is given to more emotional melt-downs. He and I struggle to complete his work. Which I understand, because my own thoughts tend to feel like smoke and spiderwebs.
I read more about relaxing our expectations of our productivity. And ourselves. To let the moment be as overwhelming and emotional as it feels in a given moment. We feel out of control because we are out of control (in many ways).
And I hit walls because the plans released from the federal government really put my well-being low on the “return to normal” path. So they have numerous benchmarks and ways that society will reopen. And, in all of them, vulnerable should continue to self-isolate or practice careful social distancing. Even after schools reopen in phase 2. How am I supposed to send my kids to school when I’m self-isolating? It’s so weird! https://www.whitehouse.gov/openingamerica/ It’s like they don’t consider how many ways vulnerable people overlap with families, how intertwined we are in everyday activities.
Sigh. I’ll consider those options when we get there. Because another way that the future will be able to assess these times is that they will know how decisions actually happened. While, for us, plans seem to form and then be abandoned within days or hours. Such as the big Easter-Opening which was quickly recast as ‘aspirational’ but still earned hours of discussions and “What would that look like?”
And this week another big news story is that some people in some communities have started officially protesting the current Shelter at Home orders. Some people are congregating outside capital buildings. I keep saying ‘some’ because the vast majority support community health guidelines. Still, the protests make me want to scream. Because they say they can avoid being sick because they’re smart and they’ll wash their hands. But they’re resetting the timeline for all of us. When the virus regains a foothold and spreads in communities again, the only way we can get ahead of it is to stay at home. We all want to be among friends. We want to work. Go places. Road trips and restaurants and movies and street festivals and all the ways we casually gathered without feeling a bit fatalistic. All those things call with siren songs that we long to sing along.
I’ve noticed that, as people, we tend to be great at short term/acute care support. But the long term is an entirely different skill set. We have less experience with showing up and making sacrifices for long stretches of time. Especially when we can’t “see” the crises around us. And news has photos of hospitals and obituaries, but it’s easy to distance those as “somewhere else”. Another community. Another part of the country or the world.
The protests are small against the vast numbers of us making 1009864 civic-minded decisions a day. It’s just hard to see. And feel so powerless against.
Struggles. And life has it’s own challenges. This past week I hit a massive pitfall in insurance working with my neurologist. It’s not connected to Covid-19 at all, but it was hours on the phone with various representatives in search of a long-shot solution. It’s not fixed, but, hopefully, it’s on the way to being fixed…
I did have to go to the pharmacy for a refill this week. Where I saw the first signs about masks being required. And plexiglass panels separating the cashiers from the public. The world is changing fast.
We’re just holding on one day at a time. And we’re fine. So fine. While not fine at all.
Another Wednesday, or, as I saw in a tweet this morning, Blursday :)
I hope this post finds you healthy and finding silver linings.
