Originally published April 15, 2020
In trying to account for my days during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, I’ve lost track of myself. Each day begins with a hopeful plan to read, write, pray, cook and exercise. Yet each day has devolved into almost nothing, and at the end of the day I find myself lying prostrate on the green leather sofa that has no arms, prohibiting even the ability to prop up my head to watch the next installment of yet another endless BBC murder mystery, with subtitles on to make sure I understand the regional vernacular. At least, I manage to think, I can tune my ear to the sedative lilt of the British language, but then I find myself drifting off into a momentary nap, lulled by the United Kingdom’s ability to stay calm and carry on.
In British television shows they seldom become hysterical about anything. For starters, they don’t carry guns, and, in the countryside, which most of England is, the one-lane roads that in modern times manage two cars veritably prohibit screeching, lengthy car chases. They’re in no hurry to find the bad guy, and so they wait patiently, discussing the case at the pub, finding inspiration and clues in a golden pint of beer, or in offering the latest victim a cuppa. Beer and tea solve a lot of problems in the UK. The best BBC crime shows are so slow that they take an entire season to solve just one crime, while still, somehow, keeping me riveted to the telly, awaiting what one clue the detective inspector will discover in the next episode. The slow plot movement allows graciously for these naps I’ve been snatching in the midst of the drama; I can’t lose the plot in a 15-minute hiatus.
At the beginning of the day, though, I had so much hope for the day, these days of the Corona Virus, during which, as a country, we’ve been asked to stay at home. I’ve been waiting all my life for an order to stay at home, to not be busy, to not go to the gym, to not go to church, to not drive in traffic, to not run errands in an endless effort to keep a home and family running. I have imagined all of the things I could do – or not do – if I didn’t have all of those things to do. I could read, I could write, I could bake bread and pies and cakes and cookies, I could plant herbs, tend a garden, polish silver.
Isn’t this the panacea we’ve been waiting for since the 90s, when we began to drive ourselves into an overscheduled and overworked society that has to be managed by a daily regimen of pills to put us to sleep, wake us up, and to keep us focused on all the activities we’ve overscheduled for us and our families each day? I don’t know why that happened, why we became afraid of the outside and free time and time together as a family, why athletic training started at age 5 or you were behind, why soccer tournaments were scheduled for Sunday mornings and why weekend-long cheerleading competitions were held separate from sporting events.
Then, sometime after that, televisions got so big they took over the family room – where we used to play boardgames on Sunday night, and actually interacted with each other because there were only three channels and there wasn’t always a really good show on and the news was only on at 6 – tvs big so that we can feel like we’re there, at the college football game or NBA playoff we can’t afford the $1000 ticket to see in person. If we weren’t watching our kid play a sport, we had to be watching someone else’s kid play one on television. In between seasons that don’t bleed into one another, we now have a choice of hundreds of television networks, on which there is still nothing good.
So I lay, at the end of each corona virus day, on the couch, trying to account for my day, what I produced, what I accomplished in this time of nothing. The day goes by quickly, each day of nothing, of bits and bobbles, of small tasks here and there in our 1200-square-foot parsonage, a small house provided by the church Michael works for. There are no home improvement projects to embark upon, not even a yard to maintain, as the church sexton takes gracious care of that. We have no small children to manage or homeschool – two of them are homeschooling themselves, in college and graduate school, able to adult two states away, and the other two are managing jobs and life precariously but well enough. I let go the 10-year commitment to a business I disliked last summer, so there are no business goals to reach or tasks to hand out.
I’ve been given a state-sponsored summer in which to do nothing and go nowhere. As an adult, shouldn’t that be a dream come true?
Yet, I am overburdened by the burden of this nothingness. Of the requirement by our state and federal government to do literally nothing. As it turns out, it’s really hard to do nothing.
I’m not bored, really, but rather perplexed at where my day goes, why I’m so tired, why I’m sleeping so much, and how the day can come to an end and I’m not really sure what I did.
A usual day:
6:30 alarm; hit snooze twice. Michael gets up at 7:20 to make coffee. Breakfast, poop, dishes. Reading devotional by 8:20. Write a prayer. At 9:15 at computer, writing something in between surfing Facebook and Instagram, trying to make sense of what I’m doing, or not, and what everyone else is doing. Phone rings usually, 10ish, it’s Isabel, complaining about her lack of internet availability on the mountain, whining for me to do something, which is not the thing that I can do to solve her problem, discussing groceries. Check Facebook again, watch a 15-minute John Kryzinski video (Some Good News) that makes me cry. I manage to write a bit, then it’s noon, time for me to exercise to my computer. An hour of boxing at air-conditioned air is somewhat satisfying, if not a little claustrophobic in my small extra bedroom. There are plants to be tended inside and out, so I water a bit at home, then maybe walk over to church to tend to more holy plants, outside in the courtyard, already baking in Florida’s April sun, which is kinda of like July’s sun for the rest of the country. I head home for a banana and a LaCroix, resting to Ina Garten, watching her make Gazpacho and swordfish. 3 p.m., Michael comes home for the day, from a bereavement visit held out-of-doors and a videotaping devotional for release after Easter, the new pastoral care. I decide on a shower, then settle into read until dinner.
I can’t watch the constant stream of news that repeatedly verifies the situation and tabulates the death toll. I can’t listen to hysterical experts being interviewed from their home offices, eyes wide and heads shaking as they define the situation again, in uncertain terms, each differently from the other. How many experts could there possibly be on a virus we just discovered three months ago?
Michael and I have had many discussions about the veracity of the reports on CNN and MSNBC and FOX and the endless news conferences that Donald Trump hosts each afternoon. I don’t necessarily believe this is happening. People are still rollerblading, biking, walking dogs and driving past our in-town house at a regular clip. I go to the grocery store where there are oddly empty shelves, and my grocery bill is slightly higher than it used to be, but I still cook beautiful, protein/carbohydrate balanced meals at home. I want to go to Lowes to get some soil and more plants, to plant the calla lily that’s ready to go in the ground and replace the thyme I keep killing. (You see what I did there?) But Michael cautions me, and asks me not to go, to limit exposure, to limit the possibility of contracting, or sharing the virus, to flatten out the bell-curve of death. I hesitate, and decide to do my part to affect the curve.
Michael looks at it, as he does most things, from a birds-eye view, where he puts it in global perspective and on a six- or nine-month timeline. His thyme is different from mine. (Again, with the horticultural metaphors. I've not much better to do.) He is vigilant about it, maybe not admittedly nervous, but viscerally aware of the potential across the globe. He does what he can, preaching about suffering to an empty church, reviewing the comments section on Facebook later. He has also returned to conference calls, regaining the familiarity he had with them during 10 years of selling across the country while never leaving his basement office chair. He even pronounced last rites via Zoom, to a family and friends located across the country.
Part of my days of nothing are taken up with exercise, which the experts tell me produces endorphins, but to which my body and my soul declare exasperation.
After a 10-year hiatus from gym membership (10 years prior I went to a gym five days a week, and even taught aerobics for some time), we had just committed to a gym, to a monthly fee, to actually going several days a week. Class, weights, basketball, tennis, pool, sauna, we were going to do it all. I was just figuring out my schedule, calendaring the classes I would attend, justifying the time spent there instead of at my computer, writing a novel, or an essay about writing a novel. Shut out of the facility, I committed to exercising in my office, kickboxing to the computer, pushing up to the techno beat pumped out by the Kiwis encouraging me to punch harder. I roll up my rug, put on my tennis shoes and athletic bra, and actually break a sweat while I exercise to my laptop. It feels a bit ridiculous, but it is less embarrassing than standing in a class, punching and kicking the wrong way to long forgotten choreography that I once taught. Feeling the addition of 15 years is humbling, and my aerobic ego is mildly thankful that I’m starting this journey again at home. In Tampa, you’re either very fit or very old, and I’m stuck in the middle of those two demographics, not quite situated in this new paradigm, moving closer to the old than the fit, and I’d like to reverse that trend, as any good American capitalist huckster would tell me is possible.
If you have to be sequestered, Tampa's as good a place as any.
But outside is so beautiful here, with little rain and, right now, mild temperatures. Spring has come and gone, and it’s only mid-April. Outside will eventually become unbearable, so we must go outside now. Living on the Bay, which is wrapped by a sidewalk and flanked by early 20th century restored homes and 100-year-old oaks dripping with old-South Spanish moss makes for a place you can’t not walk in. There are no hills to struggle up, and thirst is quenched by the corner coffee shop, which, if you walk just one more block, you’ll run in to, and there you can get an iced coffee or a fresh-pressed juice to-go, for which we will over tip because we are thankful they’re open and still at work and we feel sorry for the service people who aren’t working. Along the Bay we’ll see dolphins and stingrays, and turning into the neighborhood brings floods of bright red bougainvillea in bloom. There’s never nothing beautiful to see.
Yet I walk with heavy limbs, and pant through squats not because my legs are out of shape, but because my soul is heavy, carrying the burden of this virus that I can’t see and don’t have but that is bringing our economy, and our world to a halt.
There are reports of groups gathering, young people who can’t not see each other, who can’t not gather. I feel for them, for their loss of togetherness, though isn’t that the cohort that is supposed to be the most technologically connected? Maybe they’re finding that being connected online isn’t really enough, that they need to see each other, and touch, and hug and laugh together, not just about a meme, but with each other. Maybe we should let them gather, if they’ve discovered that it is important, and life-giving to be with one another, and not just with their phone.
On the way to the grocery store last week, Isabel, my daughter who is living by herself on a mountain in rural Tennessee near her mostly-abandoned university, almost stopped at the farmer’s co-op to get a baby duck, because she just wanted something warm and furry to hold. She is near friends who are staying at school because of extenuating circumstances, but can’t be with them all of the time, because six feet. Isabel is attached to her phone, as is any Gen Z/Millennial/human, but she is missing human connection, best achieved today by video call to her mom and friends several times a day. Opting out of the duck scenario, she has opted in to plants, purchased on a facemask-covered trip to Lowe's, so she can feel some connection to something alive.
I feel heavy for those who are missing proms, which aren’t even all that great. In my experience, prom and New Year’s Eve are totally overrated, but I still think they are things people should experience, especially teenagers. Graduation, too. All that work, you should walk across a stage, wear a funny hat and have people cheer for you; if you don’t, then did you even graduate?
I feel heavy for those losing jobs, anxious about how they’re going to pay rent, mortgages, utilities and grocery bills, none of which are getting cheaper. I don’t know what to do, though, because I can’t see them. We’re sequestered to our homes, advised not to go out into the great big scary world. I just pray every day and ask for direction, waiting patiently like a BBC detective for instruction.
I am lightened, though, by the humor that is beginning to come through, the creativity spawned by complete and total boredom of being trapped in a house with only immediate family. It gives me hope that good will triumph over evil, in a broader sense. That dads will cherish strolling babies, as I’ve seen in our neighborhood, and that families will remember fondly this time of nightly bike rides and frustrating math homework, because who can really do math?
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