Documenting the Quarantine ed. 4: What I Miss

I was inspired by writer Austin Channing Brown to consider what I missed from Ordinary Time that is not Quarantine Time. In no particular order:

• Riding the subway to work and listening to a playlist that I curated in order to take my mind far, far away.

• Not being aware of how my TMJ appears to think it needs to hold up the entire North American continent with a tautness that is, frankly, admirable. (Also, if anyone has any pain relief for TMJ, I am all ears).

• Dairy Freeze. I think 65% of my grumpiness is knowing it will soon be warm and I will not be queueing with all my neighbors and their dogs in wait of a Reese’s Razzle in a waxy cup with a tall white spoon.
  

• Clear breaks from caretaking. Each and every day feels a bit like parenting babies where there is no weekend and no real guarded sanctuary of rest. There is just caretaking: for my children, my students, and my dog (who has regressed to new levels of diva infantilism). It is interrupted by moments of having to do administrative things or clean the bathroom floor or walking through the cemetery. I miss going to night class and buying myself a coffee just because. They were little totems in my week, little flags in the sand of where I staked my territory of being a human with singular interests and joys, and not merely a mom in servitude of others.
  

• Massages. Not that I got one very often, but merely the possibility of paying a stranger to kneed my back like a stubborn slab of bread dough is a huge luxury I took for granted.
  

• My students and their three-dimensional human forms and colorful ideas and incisive questions. This semester started out difficult and it persists in being really difficult but I miss the living, breathing, electric classroom experience.
  

• The library. The dining hall. The buskers in Park St. Station. The sweaty barista at the Arlington Starbucks. The hopefulness I felt about Election 2020 and which I hope I might feel again depending on whom Biden taps as a running mate (?). Concerts. Holding other people’s babies.
  
  I could write endlessly about the things I miss, but the present reality is blessed and full all the same. My house is rarely quiet, a reminder that there are people in this house laughing and FaceTiming and making friendship bracelets to deliver—delivering us indeed to a little freeze frame when we all were as tightly wound as the embroidery threads my children cross and loop and knot with conviction. We are still good friends, same as we ever were, we are just a few threads unslipped through knots for now. Ready and waiting for the chance to wrap around one another’s wrist again soon.

Documenting the Quarantine ed. 3: My students are in prison, no for real prison

I have struggled to write at all at this two weeks-in-quarantine mark. It’s as if the creativity has drained out as I wade through so much content! Digital resources! Zoom chats! There is no lack of input. The output, however, is harder to synthesize.

The liminal space we are occupying is difficult to describe. I know that I cannot have this Introvert Nirvana without our doctors and nurses and mail carriers and pizza deliverers out there risking their lives, placing themselves in the direct path of the virus. I live between coziness and the dread that continues to knock on my door. I live in the security of being able to continue to receive a paycheck while others, including my stepmom who works in event planning, have filed for unemployment. I am occupying two zip codes at once, the one of safety and the other of anxiety. I don’t think any of us can have one without the other. Because if stress is not our present reality, we know our peace is preserved by someone else’s stressful present reality. And that’s so damn unfair, as is all of this. The racism and xenophobia and lack of PPEs and the kids in New York who are living in shelters without wifi and therefore access to their education. The great underbelly of injustice in our country is being readily exposed by this virus, and it’s not all bad to call the ugly into the light. But it’s still heartbreaking.

In my own online classroom, I also am dealing with the very real ramifications having students who are in prison. Not the symbolic prison that is quarantining and social distancing. I have some students who are in pre-release programs who have limited access to video, etc. All the online learning tutorials in the world have not prepared me for reaching students who are surrounded by literal bars and the figurative bars of lacking steady wifi connection or even quiet places to read and research. These are luxuries that should not be luxuries. They have helped me to be successful in my life. I’ve spent the majority of the week sighing because I cannot be sure my students are getting anything they need. Even though good people are trying to support them. Sometimes it’s not enough. My heart beats loud for my students, now more than ever.

When I’m not walking around wringing my hands and sighing the sigh of futility, we’ve been having a pretty good time with the kids. Each day, we go somewhere to breathe the fresh air and let the spazz dog sniff the scent of God knows what. Rock quarries, beaches, cemeteries—wherever it’s not too crowded. I’ve played one mean game of Monopoly, I dominated Scrabble, and have watched the entirety of “High Fidelity” and “Atlanta” so far. And I have finished one book.

I think the best thing that merits documentation this week are these masks that my MIL sent. Pantyliners, our first defense against viral infection.

Documenting the Quarantine ed. 2: Population Control

It’s true that all elective procedures are being canceled at hospitals, but Loverpants was able to meet the snippers that would render him a father no more this week. We feel this was a necessary measure taken for the public health of all. Because if there’s anything we should be minding during a pandemic, it’s population control. ::winks and points::

His recovery has been smooth so far, thanks for asking. ;)

Speaking of population control, I’m wondering if boarding school campus will be closed for the rest of the year. I will lament if the dining hall upon which I so mightily depend won’t resume until September. I will cry fat salty tears for the dining hall staff who are the bright sun of my every day.

It’s a Vanilla Sky kind of feeling on campus and I’m super bummed for all the 11th graders who were just beginning the kind of romances where knees grazing the bare fleshy knees of another person are major electric events that the body never ever forgets. I know the Zoomers are busy zooming their lives and flirtations now on all the platforms that live in their pocket computers, but man, sharing physical space with one’s peers when they are your whole world is everything when you’re 16.

Meanwhile at homebase, Lady M. and Little Man T. are actually being all-stars and occupying selves with ease. Lady M. had her guitar lesson via Zoom and she decreed that the sound of the guitar via online software was “very wack” and this gives me hope. Hope that just because something can be facilitated online that it’s not better or even easier.

I’m working really hard to bring my classes online, one assignment at a time. I’m grateful for the very realistic people who run my institution of higher learning because if they lived on another planet where classes should march forth like business as usual, I’d be super frustrated. Some of my students, who are being thrust into caretaking roles and forced to go without pay from hourly jobs, would probably just give up. And who could blame them? I’m taking deep breaths and long walks with Dog and trying to learn as much about composting via YouTube when I’m not syllabizzling.

We did order dinner via UberEats yesterday. I did this ostensibly because Little Man T. got a great report card, but it really came down to the fact that I had a taste for wings. They came from a place called “Wings and Tings.” If there’s anything I want to remember about quarantining, that’s got to be chief among them: that using our handheld clickity lookity box, we were able to send for the fried wings of wee chickens from a place whose very name is Jamaican phonemics.