Day 81
I lost track of the days. My last post, on May 30 said Day 76, but it was really Day 78 It seems fitting, the suggestion that somehow, in documenting this time, I’ve “lost” two days. Or, lost track of them.
Today, June 2, is Day 81. That’s more than 11 weeks spent at home. Living in a way that feels contained, small, quiet even but for the sounds of bickering and rowdy lawn games in the backyard.
Today is also the eighth day of protests — growing in number of people and locations around the country — in expressions of outrage after a Black man was killed by a white police officer. Again. These are not things I have written about before. Race. Criminal justice. White privilege. Freedom of speech. These are big, big things. So much bigger than my small, quiet life. But as I’ve sat with my family this evening, watching CNN and NBC Nightly News cover the protests all over the country I have wiped tears from my eyes more than once. This afternoon, on a 5-mile walk, I spoke on the phone with my sister the entire time. We talked about the things we always talk about: the complexities of raising children to be good citizens of the world; what we are making (or not) for dinner; money; books; our shared sleeplessness; the destructive lack of leadership by our president; the current pandemic numbers. And today we also talked about our privilege. About our want to do more. About our own anger and fear and outrage and disgust at the current state of the country. About our responsibilities as non-Black people to learn, learn, learn always and again. About our hope for our children, and our expectations that they will be allies, supporters, fighters.
I don’t know if I am using the right words. I don’t know if I can ever do enough. I don’t know if my personal, 90-minute conversation with my sister — both of us white women living comfortable lives with homes and food to eat and more than we need in daily comforts and indulgences — counts as anything in a world that feels on fire, broken, dangerously vulnerable and fragile right now. But it helped. It helped me.
My intention, on these pages, was to record this time. Where the pandemic was hitting at any particular moment. What the toll of life and loss was and is. The economic devastation. All the ways that “normal” life has been disrupted. In-person school cancelled. No professional sports to watch. No lessons or activities for my kids. A home office. Zoom meetings until my eyes cross. Reading in my hammock. Having time to walk nearly 5 miles each day. That is all still happening. We have mostly adjusted to that normal. We can talk as comfortably as is possible about what it is like, as a family, to live in this moment. This pandemic moment.
But now, now the pandemic, which most certainly will bloom again in two or three weeks — a result of so many large gatherings of people protesting — is not the lead news story. Nor are the presidential primaries being held in eight states today. Today the news headlines are about eight-foot-high fences being erected in Washington, D.C., to keep protesters from getting too close to the White House. And looting in cities around the country. Protesters being injured and dying. Rubber bullets, pepper spray, curfews and freeways being closed down by people holding signs and walking together.
I read that 50 peopled died of Covid-19 in Massachusetts today. That the case totals and death totals in my state are now including presumed positives and deaths.
I started the day reading a novel.
I learned about a friend who needed help, so I reached out and offered what I could.
I reached out to another friend who I hadn’t connected with in a while.
I took a break in the middle of my work day, when I was feeling completely exhausted by everything coming at me, and I got in my bed, under my covers for 30 minutes.
I made my family quesadillas for dinner. My 14-year-old made the guacamole.
I looked at too much social media.
I sat in the passenger seat of my car while my 16-year-old drove us around the block.
I watched a lot of news.
I believe Black Lives Matter.
Stay safe, everyone.