This is a time of learning how to stand solid with tremors under our feet. It is a time for talking ourselves and each other through fear, a time for staying patient, a time for battling nerves and staying calm. And on the good days, finding ways to jostle loose the pit in our collective stomach with laughter.
Recently I began a daily journaling exercise I have come to call The COVID Diaries. It is an effort to mark this moment in time, an attempt at a living record, a snapshot of how the days are spent. It serves, I hope, as an exercise in self-care as well as a glimpse into a unique moment in history. I find myself checking in with friends and family a bit more than usual, asking how they’re doing amidst the swirling chaos that has become our everyday reality.
We have an older neighbor we've been checking in on by phone. She does not accept our offers of groceries delivered to her doorstep, but she does express deep gratitude for the offer and seems to enjoy visiting over the phone. I’m so glad you called, she says.
The stress and worry are real. It seems that in times like these, stress piles upon stress, overloading systems that are already not functioning optimally. Not too long after my husband Zach died I had an abnormal breast exam, revealing a “something” that required further examination. I laid still and terrified in a hospital johnny as a tiny needle was inserted into the lump. Then I plowed straight into preparing paperwork and making plans for my soon to be orphaned child before the results of the needle biopsy were even back. It was a benign cyst. Not too long after that I had a couple of abnormal pap smears, prompting more fatalistic thoughts and preparations for my —again, I became convinced — soon to be orphaned child. The body manifests stress in visible and invisible ways.
It’s good if you can become an expert at unloading. Running my ass off seems to help, but March in Vermont is a month-long transition from skiing-is-ending to running-is-starting, so my trail miles are few. Our annual mind fuck of a March storm dumps 7 inches of snow and sends many of us scurrying to the hills to make fresh tracks so we can forget about the pandemic for awhile.
I work in a school, so, like the rest of the country, we are transitioning to remote learning. Things have not slowed down much. In fact, they’ve sped up a great deal. I find myself (and gratefully so) helping deliver meals to families via school bus in the morning, followed by many a virtual meeting with my co-workers peppered with conducting email triage for the rest of most of every day. We are working behind the scenes, trying to smooth out the bumps, trying to find our way through this uncharted chop. My 8 hour work day, well-defined by a time clock on each end, is kind of a distant memory at this point. The days are long and the work never ends. But I feel lucky to be involved in the helping part of things. At night I read The Good Neighbor, by Maxwell King. It is the biography of Fred Rogers and gives me great comfort to end the day with words and stories about a good man doing good work in the world.
I'm impressed with our community. The collective response to this pandemic has been to bravely lean into it in a how can I help? kind of way. Teachers and staff work tirelessly to set up systems for remote learning in a place with such varied needs and varied realities. Simultaneously we attempt to reassure parents that they are not expected to become expert homeschoolers overnight. I admit to losing sleep over some of the kiddos who I know are living in super stressed households right now.
I know that we are some of the fortunate ones. So far, we have relatively stable ground under our feet. Many have not survived, many more will die, and statistics point to the reality that someone we know will come down with this virus. It is likely that people we know will die. This is a large lump to swallow, and yet we can hold it at arm’s length for now. As yet, the fractures opening up and splintering out have not swallowed us, but the calm from that feels tenuous. For now I can breathe and notice the seedlings pushing through the soil in my window trays and take solace in being positioned to help. And I pet my dog more than usual during the day. We are directly experiencing the power of technology to facilitate staying connected with others. Right now, we have the time, space, and resources to leave freshly baked bread on a neighbor’s doorstep, waving through the window from several feet away.
In the evening, we greet our neighbors at the top of our adjoining driveways and check in. We are a wide, safely distanced circle, working loose the tension of today and uncertainty of tomorrow. And in the last waking hours of the day, I read The Good Neighbor and Fred Rogers helps. He says, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”