One year
/As communities around the world reach the one year mark of the Covid-19 pandemic, I'm remembering my early days and weeks struggling to make sense of it at work and at home.
February
We shared articles about the people in Wuhan, photos of people playing music and talking to each other from their rooftops. I started to get a little spooked. One day at work I wondered out loud how bad it might get, whether things would shut down here. To be safe, I asked my colleague to order some extra hand sanitizer. She couldn't find it at any of our usual suppliers. I went to Target and couldn't find any there, but was able to buy a few extra bottles of hand soap and Chlorox wipes for our office.
One of the first known coronavirus cases in the U.S. was detected in a patient at the hospital where my best friend works. At that time, the news was filled with horrific images and stories about young, healthy doctors dying from the virus in China, in Europe. I couldn't stop reading the news and I couldn't stop mumbling over and over a desperate prayer to keep my best friend safe.
The virus still felt far away, but it was getting closer.
March
I kept busy at work and at home, trying to keep my mind off of the growing dread all around us. I sent texts for Elizabeth Warren's campaign, anxiously awaited returns on Super Tuesday and mourned her exit from the race. I met my friend for a glass of wine on March 3, the last time I would eat or drink inside a restaurant. On March 6, my organization hosted a volunteer event. They were installing insulation and wearing N-95 masks, foreshadowing the months of masking to come. On March 8, we took Clark to see a puppet show of The Pout Pout Fish.
On March 10, my team welcomed nine AmeriCorps volunteers from around the country to Albany to live and build with us for six weeks. The World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic on March 11. The next day, on the morning of March 12, I agreed that we should suspend all on-site volunteers except the AmeriCorps group.
By lunch time on Friday, March 13 I had cancelled my meetings for the day and quickly made plans to close our office to the public. We posted our first official outbreak response on our website and I directed staff to work from home the next week, beginning Monday, March 16. I posted a sign on our office doors before I left, telling two of my colleagues, "Well, I'll see ya soon? I guess?" as we walked out. I drove to my son's school and picked him up for what would be his last day for more than six months.
The state had first asked businesses to voluntarily shift to remote work, then ordered 25% of non-essential employees to work from home, then 50% and within four days 100% of non-essential workers were ordered to stay home. The roads were quiet. Schools were closed. Panic was settling in.
On Monday, we closed our organization’s retail store. We furloughed eight staff members. The nine young AmeriCorps volunteers were recalled back home. I brought them burritos and Easter candy on their last night in Albany.
I did not sleep. I could not unwring my hands or steady my heart. I'd work myself into a coughing fit, unable to stop the spasms. I tiptoed downstairs and stood in our kitchen, reading books and sipping a strong hot toddy until I could breathe.
The first week at home was the shuffling, the scrambling, the balancing, the fear, the heartbrokenness. Documenting decisions, writing up official letters, calculating how long my organization could afford to stay closed. Wondering when Clark would go back to school. Dreading the worst yet to come.
Week two was the same. Long but patchworked days, returning again to my laptop after Clark was asleep, trying to make it all make sense. Trying to hold off the pain, the damage, the heartache. Figuring out the details, understanding what it meant to work from home with a pre-schooler at home, holding our first Zoom board meeting. Feeling out of body.
By week three, there was less to do. An emptiness. A slowing down. The three of us roamed the Albany Pine Bush, binged PBS Kids, sat outside with our faces to the sun just to feel something good.
From my Instagram:
April
From my journal:
Some days I am filled with such rage. I don't know where it's coming from or who to direct it at, but of course Chris and Clark bear the brunt of it and I’m overcome with shame and remorse. Yesterday I scratched my arms raw and screamed into my pillow and sobbed in the bathroom. I'm mad at everyone who doesn't get it, who doesn't take it seriously, who thinks we'll return to the same normal as before, everyone who is willing to let people die in the name of greed and hubris. I think 60,000 people have died in the U.S. so far. So many of them in New York.
Every decision carries a moral weight. Was that grocery store trip unnecessary? Should we order out dinner? Is it ok to shop online and have it shipped to us? Who am I putting at risk? It's overwhelming and paralyzing. How much longer can we even do this?
I spent much of April trying to figure out how to get more money for Habitat to keep building, sewing ill-fitting cloth masks, working from a messy guest room and reverently watching our magnolia tree in bloom.
Today
My organization survived, kept building, kept serving, kept advocating. We stayed afloat with a PPP loan, renegotiated leases and obligations, generosity. Our furloughed workers returned, our retail store reopened as a scaled-down pandemic version of itself, our office is still too empty, our work is still too urgent.
My son is a year older, we are all a thousand years older. For six months Clark was with Chris or I every moment of every day. Now he’s several inches taller, doesn’t nap anymore, wears a mask like it’s the most normal thing in the world, started pre-k at our neighborhood public school (without any tears, he just put on his red backpack and walked right in on his first day, stopping only to wave goodbye), he can’t wait to see his friends when “people aren’t sick anymore”, says he and his new school buddy are going to the museum soon to see dinosaurs, suggested we put out a bunch of food and blankets and masks and invite our neighbors over to our backyard, thinks he is a superhero, is a superhero.
I can’t stand to think too much about this year and Clark and how isolated we’ve been, how little time anyone besides us got to spend with him, how no one else was there to watch him grow from a little kid into a bigger kid, the subtle and big changes in who he is and how he moves through the world, the way he knows so much about this virus and thankfully not too much, the way he tells me to have a good day when I drop him off at school, how after many months he’s mostly stopped asking to do the things we could do before the pandemic and how that makes my heart seize up and I have to sneak away to catch my breath. Thankful for so much, mourning so much and so many.
Please keep staying safe, wearing masks and loving each other.
Also:
An early pandemic poem about empty streets.
A late pandemic poem about loss.
