Quarantine Diaries: Four, The Soggy Middle

The days may be a blur, but even amid a global crisis, a Monday is still a Monday. When this week rolled around, it felt like the part of Groundhog Day between the confusion of what-is-happening and is-this-my-reality-now, and when he starts to gain some momentum. You know the one. The soggy middle filled with resignation at the knowledge that yes, tomorrow will look much like today, and so will the next day. Where you sort-of understand what’s going on here yet aren’t quite sure what to do about it, and you still have to wake up every morning and go through the motions of the day. Stepping out of bed and wondering, should I get dressed today if no one but me will know or care if I do, and, do I care? It’s like the analogy of when a tree falls in the woods, and there’s no one to hear it, except instead of a tree, it’s yoga pants, and instead of the woods, it’s the inside of your house. Where was I? Monday.

Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday felt very much the same. Waking up feeling far too tired for someone who has been moving far too little, to my children who possess more energy than I could ever dream of. Like two tiny nuclear reactors with a constant renewable power supply (and a high probability that they might explode into a tantrum at any moment for no discernible reason.) Spending my morning supplying them with a steady stream of fuel- I mean food, and picking up the aftermath, spending the afternoon supplying them with a steady supply of food and picking up the aftermath, spending the… well, you get the picture. All the while, in the spare moments- of which there are few, trying to attend to our basic needs as a family: making a grocery list for the week because there will be no more running out to the store for “just one thing,” making sure that I pay the bills on time, trying to send an email, remembering to text a friend on her birthday.

Oh, and pushing down the feeling of dread every time I catch myself glancing at a headline, saving up my tears for the shower so I can show up for my kids as a reassuring presence. Communicating that while everything might not be totally normal right now, it’s a new sort of normal and the mask I ordered you is your favorite color. You’re going to love it. Tiny masks for tiny faces to keep the “bad germs” out, but also obscuring joyful expressions as they scoot down the street. Tiny masks muffling tiny voices as they wonder aloud at the world, my own mask muffling my response as I clumsily try to explain things I myself don’t fully grasp.

This is the problem with our bubble. She needs more voices, more perspectives to answer her questions so that she can form her own viewpoint. Instead, she hears just mine, bobs her head, and continues to scoot. Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday went on like this, then something happened, something remarkable in how ordinary it was, yet what a profound effect it had on me. The sun came out. Yes, I know that’s a thing that happens most days, but I mean, it really came out. Warming our yard and our neighborhood, so all the neighbors came pouring out their back doors filling the air with voices and music and the scent of food grilling. Melting the fog away and flooding every room of our Victorian with light, melting away my mood in the process.

I’m not saying that I’m out of the soggy middle just yet. I get the feeling we all might be stuck in that part of the movie a little longer, but even so, I feel a bit better. I feel as though I’m getting a glimpse of what might come next, not the ending per se., where we wake up and realize we can forever be reunited with the ones we love (though I hope that day will come) the part before that. The part where we start to gain some momentum. Where we see the needle move and it clicks. Where we work towards something together, keeping our common goal in mind.