Days 40 & 41

It’s getting more difficult to write each day. There is little to report that I haven’t already touched on. And I find myself weighing what I’m comfortable writing. Vulnerability has always been a challenge for me. And I am very aware, in this public space, of what it means to write myself bare.

I’ve been a writer for a long time. The most challenging hurdle to overcome, one that I have faced over and over again, is how much to write about. How much to expose of myself. How honest to be on the page.

Living during a pandemic is living through raw emotions. There is no comparable experience to measure emotions by. I have not lived through anything like this. Most of us have not. What is the baseline? What is a normal reaction to something?

In my heart, I think all of it is normal. Anything any of us are feeling now is normal. I keep coming back to this.

And I keep coming back to the hurdle I am facing.

I can continue to plod through here, record the tolls of cases and deaths. Give a gentle run through of a day’s events. What it looks like, safely, to live through this time.

But, what I want to write, what more and more, I feel I must write, is more about how it feels to be here, with the computer on my lap, facing an uncertain tomorrow, next week, or month, or year.

Last night, as I had finished brushing my teeth and turned my attention to the kids, playing basketball in one of their bedrooms, it was after 9:30. I yelled goodnight. I said, “Be nice to each other and don’t forget to go to bed.”

I’m less concerned now about them not getting enough sleep, a general back-of-my-mind detail that during normal school schedules I worry a tiny bit about. Now, I just want their pre-bedtime rowdy play to not dissolve into arguments. Not because they won’t just resolve their own issues by eventually retreating to their own rooms. But because by the end of the day my nerves are raw. Because I want a smooth bedtime. Because I don’t want to have to go back up to their bedrooms after I’ve come downstairs to my own.

The fact is, I am trying to hold it together for them. And my ability to do that, by the end of the day, has, frankly, run its course. If they need a reminder that they need to settle down and finally go to sleep at 11:00, and if they giggle and push back and roll their eyes at me, I am more likely to get impatient and snap at them. No one needs that right now. Least of all me. And I don’t want them to see that. I don’t want them to see me upset.

Yes, I know it’s OK for my kids to see me upset. They do. They have. I am not trying to be inhuman or unreasonable. We talk about how unusual, difficult, scary, frustrating, sad this all is. But not before bedtime.

Several times each day, I have noticed, that when I go to wash my hands, there are soap bubbles in the sink. Someone else has recently washed their hands. The bubbles tell that story. So much soap. So much hand washing. Tonight, before I called everyone to dinner, I asked loudly, “Has everyone washed their hands recently?” Everyone had. One child answered, “Of course, Mother.” I laughed. Of course. It is an unnecessary question in our house. And yet, for 15 years or so it’s been the way I call them to dinner. Aren’t we lucky to be so accustomed to this now-more-than-ever life-saving behavior?

And doesn’t it just suck?

Today my daughter joined a drive-by birthday parade for one of her friends. My son is watching the NFL draft. I had a Zoom call with members of the nonprofit board I sit on. All of these things leave me choked up. No birthday parties. Young athletes at home with their families, watching themselves on a screen within a screen on our TV screen, awaiting their futures. No actual board meeting. No active work or business for our currently shuttered nonprofit.

All of it leaves me empty and uncertain and feeling dramatic that I describe how I feel as empty and uncertain. I struggle with feeling fortunate to still have my job and devastated by our current reality, and the unknown future that lies ahead.

Really, haven’t I written all of this before?

I will try to be more vulnerable. To get to the raw truths. To reach some height or depth that always eludes me when I read my own words. But still, I must record the numbers:

• Total cases to date: 2.7 million worldwide

• Total worldwide deaths: 190,000

• U.S. cases: Nearly 880,000

• U.S. deaths: Nearly 50,000

• Massachusetts cases: More than 46,000. New York and New Jersey are the only states that have more cases than Massachusetts

• Massachusetts deaths: More than 2,300

• Cases in my county: 367

Tomorrow is Friday. In my body I know that is supposed to feel a certain way. But, really, it doesn’t much feel like anything at all.

Stay safe, everyone.