Tuesday, April 7

I started to write here so that I could remember. The details. The timeline. The normalcy and the lost normalcy. More than three weeks in now, I am so glad I did. Sarah and I were talking today, about the earliest, the first days of staying home. Of what we didn’t really know was ahead. It seems like we’ve been doing this for ages, and yet so much has changed in just three weeks. And all information seems to point to several more weeks staying at home and a very uncertain future after that.

I can’t remember the last time I stayed home for three weeks, with only occasional trips to the grocery store. If I have ever done this before it was likely during maternity leave, probably the first time. Me and a newborn, navigating our way with nowhere to be. It seems like a lifetime ago, and also I can remember such details. Standing at the front window at the end of the day, feeling stir crazy and waiting for J to get home from work so we could all go for a walk. Now here I am, at the end of my work day, feeling much the same and heading out the door for a stroll alone.

Right now, I am sitting in my bed, blocking out the sounds of my family with a soundtrack of rainy nights. I’m eating a warm blondie baked by the 11-year-old and drinking an ice cold glass of water. Someone is in the shower. The TV is on in the other room. (The rain doesn’t block out everything!) There are a few lights on in the house, probably more than need to be. The moon is supposed to be a pink moon tonight and will shine directly into our bedroom window when I’m trying to sleep. We took the curtain down a while ago. I can’t remember why. And we never put it back up.

Things I want to remember for the details:

• The video the high school teachers and administrators made for students and shared out on YouTube and that has been viewed more than 2,000 times. Good thing I was wearing my sunglasses when my son showed me. Tears welled.

• The feeling of walking through the neighborhoods and feeling so conspicuous, just to be outside. Of anticipating the routes of other people, how quickly they would get too close, how I could change my route — cross the street, walk onto someone’s lawn to move off of the sidewalk, slow down/speed up to increase distance between me and another person.

• All of the line and bar graphs that are an integral part of every news story now. The sophistication of the data analysis. And also the feeling that the data is incomplete.

• The backyard olympics that the kids created, complete with play-ins, brackets, and double-elimination rounds. Activities include: bocce, croquet, corn hole, horse, and knockout.

• The utter anxiety that I feel when I know I need to plan for a trip to the grocery store. The fact that I will need to wear a mask while doing the shopping. The list on the fridge that includes the usual items: butter, eggs, milk and also some others: strawberry ice cream, candy.

The numbers are rising so fast now. We are close to 1.5 million cases worldwide and nearly 13,000 deaths in the U.S., almost 2,000 more than yesterday.

I am home and safe and well fed and healthy. I am grateful.

Stay safe, everyone.