Day 114
Today I walked around the park in the opposite direction from my usual route. Stopped to take a pic of the lake in all of it’s lush, summer beauty.
How will the effects of the pandemic differ for each generation? I am midlife, struggling long before the pandemic with trying to deal with all of the questions about my life choices, missed opportunities, regrets and night sweats that come with being in this stage. My partner is older, and very high risk. We cope by joking that he has nine lives. A cat among us. A cat that has had three heart attacks and other ridiculous brushes with death that shouldn’t be real or possible but are. Our children: two teens, one tween. The most incredible people I know. Each their own person. Each human and caring and stubborn at times and passionate and loving and in the early early stages of just beginning to understand all that lies ahead of them. For 114 days they have put their lives on hold.
I wrote last time about how devastation was the emotion I feel best at right now. That was one of those sentences that just came to me. I didn’t really notice it until I reread the full piece. I paused at its stark truth. Devastation. Living at the brink of tears. Living with a constant feeling of emptiness. Living in awe of my children. Of these people that J and I have allowed to become exactly who they are. How will this time change them?
it is so easy to take the devastation and let it play out through frustration and anger. The messy house (me). The boredom (the 16-year-old). It is so easy to let the difficult days go on, one after another, without anything to interrupt the momentum. The developing pattern of nothingness and despair. Today I was on the verge of this despair. It had been several days since I last walked, I realized. And now I’m at a bench in the park, listening to the river burble by. A lump in my throat. My white hair frizzy and springing from its ponytail holder. A Sunday evening ahead of me. Another Monday to wake up to. Monday the only way to gauge a normalcy. Work.
Tomorrow, for the first time since March 16, I have to go into my office. I need to look up a few things. Send a few magazines out to people. There is no plan yet for when I might go back to work on campus. The work I do can be done from home. And the school may need the building for other purposes beyond office staff. And the protocols of testing are invasive and expensive. And those are enough reasons for me to stay home. To work at my desk in the corner of a room.
It’s July 4 weekend. I keep seeing photos of gatherings. People getting together. Celebrating. In groups. With no masks. On my walk today, fewer than half the people I’ve seen have been wearing masks. This is a change. Massachusetts is one of a very few states recently said to be on track to contain the virus. And it seems, hearing that, people are letting down their guards. These are the very details that invite the devastation to set in.
I haven’t looked at the numbers today. I did laundry. Cleaned the bathrooms. Played SkipBo with the oldest. Helped him install a window shade — the near-finishing touch on some improvements to his bedroom. Watched two more episodes of ER. Cried. Realized I had better take a walk, or else I would for certain take out my discontent and fear on my family. Dinner tonight is sandwiches or pesto pasta or anything people can scrounge I’m up without cooking. It’s hot. Mom’s tired and emotional. It’s Sunday. Which means nothing to anyone except me. And that’s another thing I wonder about. How will we all continue to adjust when the only member of the family with any semblance of a schedule is me.
Stay safe, everyone.