Friday, March 27
Vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce, caramel sauce, sprinkles and whipped cream.
Every night I “preheat” my bed, that is I turn on my heating pad and lay it flat on the sheet while I get in my pajamas, brush my teeth, etc. My family teases me for this. I laugh with them. And my lower back feels soothed. But also, it’s more than pain relief, the heat. It’s ritual. It’s comfort. It’s, literally, warmth.
Tonight I made white bean burgers for dinner and served them with waffle fries. Easy to cook. Messy to clean up. After dinner the kids made ice cream sundaes. They made me one, too. It was delicious.
Today, the number of known coronavirus cases in the United States surpassed 100,000, putting us in first place against all other countries across the globe. This is a competition we do not want to win, and yet there is no going back now.
It’s Friday, which means it has been two full weeks of working from home. Time is so slippery. I feel like I can’t quite make sense of hours and days anymore. I feel like I’ve been working at this setup from the dining room table for weeks and also that I just got here. Every day I have to remind myself what day it is. As I was sitting out on the back deck tonight after my walk, I said to J, “Is it Friday?” “Yes,” he said. A simple exchange. Also, so very odd.
Everything is odd. Taking a walk with a friend where we have to be sure to stay six feet apart the whole time. Seeing other friends along the way and having a kind of triangulated conversation. Sort of talking about normal things — kids, school, jobs — but really checking in, and also asking, “How are you doing?” Really, HOW, HOW are you DOING?
How am I doing? I feel better today. Less anxious. I feel like maybe the avalanche that has been work over the past few weeks might settle a tiny bit, as we shift from crisis to a new normal. I am hopeful. I can’t keep the pace that I’ve been going at. It’s now the weekend, and what does that mean? No 8:45 a.m. Zoom meeting to start the day. Laundry to do. And that’s really it. I last went to the grocery store last Saturday, but we are still OK for a bit. We are out of seltzer, and Cocoa Puffs. Neither of these two items, I tell my children, are mandatory to their daily intake. Our water supply is not threatened. I’m pretty sure the Lucky Charms supply is sufficient.
I feel like I’m engaged in some kind of competitive non-shopping. How long can I wait? Nine days? Ten? More?
My bed is warm now. The kids are upstairs, buzzing around, laughing and teasing each other. It almost feels like a “normal” Friday night. They played wiffle ball in the back yard this afternoon. We ate dinner together in the living room, watching Jeopardy! But I also feel a kind of energy, dull and ever-present. Something is not right, it says, like Miss Clavel in the “Madeline” books. It feels like we are all waiting for something. A symptom. News. A reprieve. The last roll of toilet paper being pulled from the closet. Like we are all just barely keeping disaster at bay while also knowing that it’s not really under our control, the disaster. We can stay in, stay away from others, eat from our pantry, but we will still hear more news of people we know getting sick, and worse.
There’s no word for it, really. I keep trying to find one. But it’s just not there.
Stay safe, everyone.