I’m not actually sure I’ve got the day count correct, but if not, it’s certainly been about 20 days since my region issued its first official shelter-in-place order. A second one with tighter restrictions and a timeline extension came out a few days ago. I guess we all knew April 7th probably wasn’t the end of it, and it’s hard to imagine May 3rd could be, either. Still, those dates offered almost a glimmer of hope. Then I see Georgia’s governor reopening beaches and insisting that he’s just now learned asymptomatic people can carry and transmit COVID-19, and I wonder how hopeful any of us can realistically be for the next few months.
The last three weeks at home have been a challenge. Two parents working full time, at home, while watching their child at home, full time. No playdates, no playgrounds, no small errands to break up the day. Lots of tears, lots of frustration, lots of Zoom meetings.
Globally, we’re all experiencing a collective grief with many stages, and unlike anything else we’ve imagined. Maybe you’ve already read the HBR op-ed “That Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief.”
Over the first three weeks, that grief manifested in anxiety and fear for me, cyclically fed by constant scrolling on my phone, looking at news I dread but simultaneously feel compelled to consume from morning till night. I do turn my phone completely off each evening, which helps, but I recognize I need more boundaries.
The confinement and isolation made me often irritated, usually stressed, and sometimes just plain angry. A slow internet connection could spark rage that I’d have gladly dealt with by kicking holes in the wall, throwing my computer out the window, screaming at the top of my lungs, or literally pulling my hair out. (I didn’t do any of those things, it’s simply an admission of the animal impulses I suspect I’m not alone in fighting from time to time.)
Then another stage of grief washed over. I started to feel really tired, and sad. Definitely a sadness about the entire situation, the loss of both livelihoods and lives in every community across the earth. Also a personal sadness, as I grieve things in my life that were going so well and feel ripped out from under me. To have struggled so much with trying to be a stay at home mom, finally admitting it wasn’t working, getting a job, and finding I was good at my job and my child was great at daycare. The last few months were a revelation for me in getting traction, in finding forward movement in my life. The disruption and likely reversal of those gains, well, it sucks. I know there’s bigger fish to fry as we all navigate life with this novel coronavirus, and my worries pale in comparison to those others are grappling with. Regardless, I get to grieve. It cannot be avoided or reasoned away.
Because not all news is bad news all the time, here’s a few things that have been happy over the last few days. My daughter is developing more language. She has recently added to her vocabulary: shoes, bubble, boo-boo, be-bo (belly button), don’t, and no. It’s exciting to watch her learn to communicate with us beyond crying and signing “more.” Her comprehension always astounds me; what she can point to or do in response to something I say, or what she clearly recognizes in a book. Perhaps I can take it as a lovely reminder that human beings are often capable of much more than they seem.