Day 110: The Least I Can Do

Wednesday, July 1. Day 110 of quarantine since I started counting on March 13. I say "quarantine," knowing that the world has changed so many times over since that notion first entered our consciousness earlier this year.

What it means to us, in my little household, is that we are mostly staying home. I go out almost every day to run or walk. I don't wear a mask when I go running, because I am confident I will not be in close proximity with other humans. When I do see someone, we give each other a wide berth or cross the street. I only go on the bike path if I'm out very early in the morning; mostly I run on surface streets. I also avoid trails for the most part, but that's more because of ticks and poison ivy.

Quarantine means we are using delivery services for groceries and online ordering/curbside pick-up from Simple Gifts Farm for as much produce as possible. It means avoiding the physical world of commerce as much as possible, only entering a store when absolutely necessary, such as picking up prescriptions at CVS that cannot be mailed. It means only keeping appointments we deem truly essential, which boils down to medical things.

Pearl got his haircut yesterday and is about to be with his dad for the next few weeks. They are going away to a rented house on a peninsula on an Adirondack lake for 10 days, a place my family went when I was a baby. It's rustic and isolated. They'll be with my sister's family there, and Pearl will stay at his dad's for a full two weeks after they return before coming home to me. Quarantine means figuring stuff like this out on an ongoing basis.

We've allowed Pearl to see friends outdoors with the strict expectation that they'll maintain social distance. So far this has seemed to work out ok, and I'm very grateful he has been able to have any semblance of a social life. As a fourteen-year old, this is lifeblood.

Quarantine has meant sitting on the far side of my parents' porch for visits with them. It has meant I have not hugged anyone outside of Mani and Pearl in months. It means Aviva and I see each other at a six-foot distance, since she is currently spending a chunk of time living elsewhere. It means cancelled retreats and visits with friends that might otherwise have happened this summer.

Quarantine means Zoom. Zoom worship. Zoom coaching sessions. Zoom activism.

It has meant subletting my office a few days a week, at least for the summer. I actually listed it as available as a full-time sublet on Craigslist, though it seems unlikely anyone will be looking to rent an office full-time at the moment. The truth is, I've entered my lovely office exactly twice since March 13. Many mixed feelings about this, which can mostly be reduced to a mixture of disappointment and acceptance, along with a hefty dose of gratitude that my work was well-established virtually long before the pandemic.

I was no stranger to leading online groups and meeting virtually with clients, and thankfully working from home was something to which I was already accustomed. On top of that, my children are not small, so I am not simultaneously parenting in a super hands-on way while attempting to focus. My heart goes out to those who are navigating that.

Quarantine means living with uncertainty and working with anxiety around the unknowns. What will happen in the fall when school starts? Pearl begins high school in September; if school is in-person, will Mani and I be at a point where we are ok with him being with us half the time? She is immuno-compromised, so these questions are very, very real. I find myself not wanting to think about it, which might be just as well since we will cross that bridge when we have to, just like all of the other bridges we've crossed.

These past months have shown me that we are capable of adapting, capable to having difficult conversations, capable of making informed decisions.

None of what I'm writing just now reflects the depth of rage I feel about the administration and how avoidable this was. It does not reflect the grief about how many people have died, how many people have "recovered" but will continue to suffer from chronic health issues caused by COVID. It does not even touch directly on the very real issues of privilege at work here, and the screaming inequities this pandemic has laid bare. It does not speak to the isolation and depression many are experiencing. It does not focus on the myopic and misguided refusal to wear a mask, something we know from a grounded, scientific standpoint, could stop the spread of this virus in its tracks if universally heeded. It does not mention the toll of lost income.

In many ways, Mani's illness primed us for this quarantine life. It has been five years since we ate together at a friend's house or in a restaurant, for example. Anyone whose life has been significantly impacted by disability or chronic illness may be familiar with this, with knowing what it's like to not be able to participate in the world at large in ways many folks take for granted.

Earlier in the quarantine, I felt something like relief. Not, of course, related to the reason for it. But because for the briefest moment, no one had FOMO. There was a sense of shared experience, something I know many of us yearn for. Quickly enough, that got blasted open by the truth -- we were not having the same experience at all. We saw this as the numbers of deaths rose and the disproportionate devastation among communities of color became glaring. We saw this as the question of "essential workers" came into the picture, and there was no avoiding the truth that those with more class privilege would be considerably more insulated from potential infection. We saw it as people with second homes fled dense cities for safer settings. The pandemic turned inside out the realities that were already here, making them visible and undeniable.

As I sit here writing this -- it is 7:42am, Chalupa is snoring gently on her bed next to my chair, Mani is still asleep -- it's as peaceful a morning as any. I'm dressed in running clothes. I just received the most beautiful email from a woman who was in my very first writing group in December 2014. She wrote, "There are very few things in the world right now that help me feel grounded, but writing in your groups is always one of them. Thank you for sustaining these nurturing opportunities."

I dreamed last night I was smoking again. And telling a dear elder friend that I didn't have the motivation or imagination to make my work bigger, then realizing I was being really hard on myself and that maybe it was already "big" enough. These words from Emergent Strategy / adrienne maree brown speak to my heart: "Change is constant / Small is good / Never a failure, always a lesson / There is enough time / Move at the speed of trust."

Without trust, everything falls apart. Everything. And trust is not a thing that appears as if by magic. It is the ongoing result of time, of intention, of putting in the work. This is true of trusting yourself just as it's true of trusting each other. It's true of trusting your voice. And it also calls on me, on us, to look at where we have placed trust that has not reciprocated.

Quarantine has forced our eyes open. Where will we place our trust? What will we do to strengthen the systems that deserve our trust and to dismantle the ones that betray it, time and again? How do I use my privilege in tangible ways, in ways Ijeoma Oluo reminds us are "unsexy, boring, and tough"? Beyond social media, what will I do with this day?

I will meet with clients. I will go for a run. I will love my wife and not waste time wishing we were anywhere but here. I will feed myself. I will check in with a friend and sit in the driveway with my daughter, just a few months shy of 18 now. I will read. I will make calls to elected officials.

On this day, when headlines from the Boston Globe and the New York Times give me chills -- "Actual number of COVID-19 cases is 12 times higher than reported, with 50 percent more deaths, says MIT study" and "New Cases in U.S. Are Up 80% in Past 2 Weeks" -- I will stay in quarantine, both to protect myself and my beloved and to do my part in protecting others. It is literally the least I can do.