Quarantine: The New Normal

 It's 2:31pm on a Friday. After showering this morning, I dressed in sweatpants, a t-shirt, a hoodie, and slippers. I put on earrings - one of the many pairs that I have made since quarantine started - and padded downstairs, coffee in hand.

Another day, similar to so many that came before it over the last seven months.

I try not to dress in sweats that often - something about "dress for success!" lessons of the 1980s apparently stuck with me. When I wear sweats, I know I've given up, and that all hope is lost of any sense of normalcy: I wouldn't teach in sweats on a regular school day - the idea wouldn't occur to me. (Not that I dress up a lot, but cotton dresses, jeans and sweaters, the occasional blouse and skirt with boots, are all regular items in my teaching wardrobe.

But I digress, as I do.

Every day bleeds into the next, a mad blur of staring at the computer and sleeping and cooking and dimly watching the news scroll past my phone, terrible idea after horrible happening after tragedy after hideous unkindnesses. The details of racial injustice, disease, missing children and/or parents at the border,death, lies fly by, one outrageous idea after the next, each one in turn both shocking and, in this strange version of reality, expected.

I watch television, look at books, my mind unfocused. I make soup, or bread, or bake. I move the broom or the lawn mower. I walk the dog (not nearly as frequently as I should). I promise myself to do yoga.

I teach pixels, not people. Most of my students appear only as dots, much less often as voices, and far less often as images.

The picnics of summer have slipped away. Paddle boarding is in the past.

Time feels flexible, dragging on endlessly, then speeding up until suddenly a month has whipped past.

***

The hardest part is not knowing when things will change. The hardest part is realizing that it's out of my control. The hardest part is feeling lonely. The hardest part is helping Tessa to manage her feelings, just about being a teenager, but also her own uncertainty in quarantine.

There are a lot of hard parts.

*** 

The good parts exist. I love my home, and I am comfortable and safe here. I have a real office, and so does Tessa, so we're not too underfoot for each other. Our pets make us laugh. There is unlimited food, books, music, movies. There are cozy clothes, warm blankets, enough tea for an army. Tessa and I sometimes laugh. Making jewelry is fun, and I'm writing again. I have many who love me, even if I can't see them face to face.

***

It is a small life, right now. 

It will be small for a while longer.

It's time to learn how to make the best of it.