lockdown was a weird time for me bc I'm a therapist, so I was really busy trying to help support people going through the exact same thing that I was - feeling isolated, overwhelmed, worried about the future, and depressed. it also revealed some fundamental cracks in some of my closest relationships. and was also the time that I moved to a larger home and reevaluated a lot of my relationships overall. so, I felt like it was pretty traumatic in a lot of ways but I also grew a lot?
and, COVID is still here but people act as though it's over / not a big deal - to be fair, this is the message that's been sent by CDC and public health agencies in the US - so I actually feel a little more isolated now in some ways, as one of the only people I know that's still masking etc. (also I recognize that because of the trauma of lockdown, a lot of people WANT to believe that COVID is totally over and not a big deal, which is honestly quite relatable)...it's complicated!
thank you for saying that! I'm trying not to let it stop me from seeing people etc but the low grade frustration about my friends and loved ones being pretty cavalier... that does feel pretty isolating at times.
yes! and it's complicated bc I do still take some risks like going to my gym bc it's a community space for me, not just a workout- my partner and I are the last ones masking. people are not usually weird about it but the implicit social pressure is rough sometimes!! I really appreciate hearing from others, like yourself, who are also still masking. we're not alone!
I am also a therapist and it was very odd to be going through something that every single one of your clients was also experiencing! That is almost never the case. In some ways it felt good to be able to be in it together and other times it felt oppressive and I was so sick of talking about it.
Agree -- I'm too old not to mask, I feel. One of my friends got long Covid last year, and it's been a downward spiral for her. I realize there are things I will never do again, like use a sauna, or go to a crowded party in a bar. "Post" pandemic has been MUCH harder for me than the initial two years when most people in my area were taking precautions.
I'm so sorry to hear about your friend. and yeah, 2023-2024 have felt harder in some ways than 2020-2022, mostly bc even previously cautious folks are (understandably!) burnt out
The pandemic was tough. I admire those who really enjoyed all the time they had at home with loved ones. As a person who needs a lot of alone time to refuel I found it difficult to be at home every day with my significant other. I realized all my hobbies involved being out of the house. I took up doing puzzles and playing video games. Both of which can be very stressful. Lol. I felt extremely fortunate though because my wife and I were low risk, and living in Texas we had a bit more opportunity to roam. I’m an Aussie too and I found it difficult to see what family and friends were struggling with down there. I just hope we never have to go through it again, and if we do, that people can be kinder to each other.
I'm going to start using "Busy is a choice." So true! I've always known that in my own life--even when i had small children I would make sure to have a half-hour to drink my tea and relax.
Tanzanika and I were worried because New Orleans was hit hard in the early days. We watched the funerals of people we knew on Facebook live because in-person wasn't allowed. It felt especially dystopian because this is the opposite of our jazz funerals, which are raucous, crowded celebrations. But the hardest thing was the lack of information. We didn't know how dangerous the virus was, how long lockdown would last, and whether we'd ever have vaccines. I posted a dashcam video of my ride through the French Quarter, which was completely empty. That's something that doesn't happen even during hurricanes. People just keep partying (like with Hurricane Francine this week).
I realized I didn't need more than half of the clothes and shoes I have in my closet. I spent almost a year in shorts and tank tops (In Florida) I didn't go outside much thus not sweating enough to change clothes frequently. Less laundry!!
Also I realized that I love my husband because he hunkered down with me and I didn't harbor thoughts of...disposing of him. LOL! We actually got closer. We talked "deeply" often.
That I can live several months without my siblings dropping by my house uninvited.
That I enjoy solitude and silence.
I miss it now. It seems like we all have a need to make up for "lost" time. I don't. I'm enjoying time on my time,
I so appreciate this. I believe there is a lot of focus on what was lost but equally, so much was gained. We quarantined in Walnut Creek, CA, where I gained an abundance of quality time with my pre-teen, and an opportunity to watch her emerge. I gained time to bake more and to enjoy slow walks by the water. I started a sewing business I dreamed up for a decade, and watched it rise and let it fall.
I finished up a certificate program I started when my preteen was a baby. I wrote a book. We took responsible trips just to get out and ordered food for contactless pickup in quirky hotel rooms had to remain because everything was closed. We didn't mind because we enjoyed the drive.
I lost my alone time at home, a couple dear friends, and my partner and I split up. For a time, I lost my sense of safety walking alone in the day as a Black woman, the battlr of responsible screen time with my preteen and, I even lost in a different way with close friends deciding to move away to where I was the last one in town. As sad as that felt, there was an abundance of joy too.
For my daughter, who was unable to go to school, it wasn't until what seemed like the end did she express how lonely and depressive it felt for her to not be able to see her friends. Young children lost a lot more than we can imagine, so I wonder how they will turn out, especially as the world has so much strife and conflict as of late. My hope is that they will be okay. Cautiously optimistic for the future always feels right to me.
I was alone and terrified much of the first year of the pandemic. My younger daughter was with me every other week. I had two pugs. One died in October 2020, and the other developed separation anxiety. I did a lot of Zooms with her at my feet or on my lap. I wiped down my groceries with bleach. I baked a lot. I perfected fluffy buttermilk biscuits. One of my favorite memories is putting warm biscuits in little covered baskets with jars of jam and dropping them off on my friends' porches and front doors. My short story collection came out at this time (September 2020), and it was surreal. I had so much to be happy and thankful for, but alongside the joy was always this bit of terror and sadness.
We were in Chattanooga for the lockdown and the hoarder part of me took to it like wildfire. I still have dried beans waiting to be soaked and cooked. That part of it I enjoyed. And the time spent with my husband who was let go from his job just as the first wave hit, I savored. We, like most of our friends, stayed put. We wore our masks. We cleaned. We listened. All around us in the deep red territory of Tennessee we watched things falling apart. Something fundamental shifted, I fear forever. I know a family forever separated because of vaccination. I know people who died, likely because of vaccination misinformation. We were diligent and got our shots and then, in last fall's wave, we got Covid anyhow. We are really just now coming out and life, we find, is not the same. Maybe because all of our friends are as cautious as us, maybe because we aged so much during the pandemic, I mean I was in my mid-fifties. Now I'm almost sixty. In a flash. Like the Covid time wasn't really time at all, it was a bubble we stepped into. I sometimes miss the bubble. And I wonder if I'm actually on the outside of it. And I just got Covid, again.
Our son was in kindergarten when the schools closed, and so he had a bit of routine under his belt but he was also at an age where hanging out with his parents every day was fun. Still, there was a lot of anxiety and grief (I work in theatre as well as political writing). We tried to find some form of ritual or routine to keep us going. I read comic books to my son and my wife and I made tater tots every Friday. (We had Tater Tot Friday on the calendar so we would remember what day it was.)
"It is not accidental that all phenomena of human life are dominated by the search for daily bread." --Ivan Pavlov
How does the clicking sound of a non-working stove burner come to signify the trauma of a pandemic? I suppose it could have been anything. Maybe your family or your body associates the pandemic with something else, like long white tubes or swabs or discarded masks atop the floor mat of your passenger side. I suppose the actual object says more about the context of one’s life inside the pandemic than it does about the actual pandemic itself. Regardless, at some point during 2020 multiple burners on our stove stopped working, and the ones that did work often made a non-stop clicking sound whenever ignited. This would have been a particularly annoying situation in the best of times. Yet here we were, as a family of 7 (sometimes 8 depending on if the college student was home), almost every single day, eating 3 meals, inside our 4 walls. That last sentence may appear mathematical, but I assure you, it was an auditory, not numeric, kind of trigger.
I wonder exactly, the precise moment, when Pavlov’s metronome went from being a neutral to conditioned stimulus. How many rounds of clicks until the dogs lost their proverbial spit?
There was no salivating in our pack of queer carnivores, ages 40, 39, 27, 18, 8, 6, and 1. When the clicking sound set in, we’d experience a creeping sensation in our necks and start twitching, like our whole bodies were being flooded by anxiety. In the beginning family members would endure the clicking, do the suggested tricks of lowering and heightening heat on various burners until you hit the sweet spot. The “sweet spot” brought about silence for 2 minutes before the clicking started again. It’s amazing how many times inside of those 2 minute sets of silence we’d convince ourselves that this time it’d be different, that this pattern somehow fixed itself out of thin air. Just when we’d let the hope of suckers set in, click click click. Then we’d smack our teeth, heavily breathe aloud, almost as if to signal: it’s happening again; someone come help me! But we knew there was no helping this situation, so the breath just floated into the air, awkward, untoward.
Some might be wondering why we didn’t just get the stove fixed. Turns out it’s a high-maintenance brand with very few replacement parts and even fewer laborers willing to play nice with that manufacturer and those parts. Pre-pandemic we would’ve gotten a new stove, easy peasy. Here’s the rub. Pre-pandemic I had 3 jobs. In the midst of the pandemic I had 1 job that was barely cutting it. We simply couldn’t afford to get the stove replaced. So we kept making due. We went from 4 burners to 2, to 1.
Our menu options started to change when the heat capacity got minimized. It’s hard to boil noodles, saute vegetables and simmer marinara sauce with one burner. So you either take twice (or triple) the time preparing meals or you begin making dishes that only require one burner. I had no idea how much the quality of my family’s dietary life depended on accessing multiple sources of workable fire until I no longer had access. We underestimate our dependence on the elements to our peril.
The last month of the stove’s life, it did that thing humans sometimes do when they’re about to die. It’s called Terminal Lucidity. All of a sudden there was no clicking and 2 of the 4 burners started working again! You should have seen the praise and worship sessions that erupted in those days of kitchen appliance hospice. But then the clicking returned, the single burner wouldn’t go above medium heat, and to add insult to injury, the oven died.
When the oven stopped working, I looked around the room for a baseball bat. Instead I found a rolling pin left on the floor by my busy-body toddler and it took everything in me not to pick it up and smash every surface, dish, and glass in my kitchen. It wasn’t just the rhubarb crisp I couldn’t make for dessert now or even those expensive bone-in chicken thighs I’d just spent 15 minutes covering in all the right seasons and spices. No. It was everything: the threat of contagion everywhere, death hovering constantly, being at home too much, being broke too long, being without adequate child-care, trying to home-school without any educational training, isolated from familial, social and resource support, being stressed every single second of every single day. Fear. Grief. Isolation. Overwhelm. Rage. Exhaustion. On loop. The clicks of my stove and the cool air in my all-the-way-turned-up oven were about all of that...and all of that was because of Covid-19.
For about two weeks we ate a lot of sandwiches, cereal, and air-fryer foods. Then my angelic parents decided they couldn’t stand our suffering any longer. They generously offered to go in halfsies with us on a used stove that could get us through until we were “back on our feet.” Confession: I don’t know if we will ever recover from this time, economically, and otherwise. And their gift enabled us a reprieve. We’d been down and out long enough to take it with every bell and whistle of gratitude at our (still working) disposal.
The working class, heavily tattooed dudes that came to take the old stove out and deliver the new one probably didn’t understand why I was looking at them as if they were saving my life. Every time I opened my mouth to say “thank you” I just cried. My handy dyke wife and father-in-law installed the 32” chrome GE appliance that afternoon (which just happened to serendipitously be my birthday) and as they hunched over together with wire in hand, I couldn’t help but notice that our family’s nightmare ended in the hands of our most strident, foul-mouthed agnostics--literal answer to my prayers.
I can’t stop caring about the people who don’t have angelic parents or handy relatives in this economy where the cost of living comes at the cost of our collective well-being. I can’t stop caring about the thousands who don’t need stoves or a working oven because they’re no longer with us, which puts all kinds of things in grief-laden perspective. I can’t stop thinking/caring about how hard this has been, how we all still twitch and never want to hear another burner click for the rest of our entire effing lives, and how grateful I am to be making my grandma’s cinnamon coffee cake today which is something I couldn’t do last week.
Mostly I hope I retain the lesson--without an ongoing triggering stimulus/response, neutral, conditioned or otherwise--that we suffer together and we come through together.
I had a three year old and an 8 month old when everything started, and so it was an insanely busy time. I'd be on twitter daily for the report on the day's numbers; somehow that was what I needed to see to feel like I had any handle on the situation In the morning, my husband would be home with the baby, and I'd get my older kid outside for a while although the playgrounds were closed, so we had to get creative about where to go and how to play. Get back in for lunch, get the older kid down for nap (thankfully he napped) and then took on baby care while my husband attempted to do some work. There was a 45 minute point in the day when both kids napped, so we'd have tea and coffee and some kind of baked pastry. At first, we were buying those locally but as the expenses mounted, I started baking cinnamon rolls and scones. Then kids are up, we gave up any notion of restricting screen time so the older kid watched endless Paw Patrol. Made dinner, tidyed the kitchen, we'd get both kids down for the night, husband would attempt to get in some work, my brain was far too fried to write, numbed myself on Netflix, stayed up too late revenge procrastinating and then the next morning it would be all the same all over again.
I love Columbo!! Currently watching them all again with my husband right now. There is so much great about it- the great guest stars in every episode, the 70s clothes, the slowness and quiet of scenes, the way the criminals always completely give up when Columbo figures it out (why do they not continue to deny it or say get me my lawyer??!??), and of course the great Peter Falk who is an American treasure. If anyone needs a show, try Columbo!
I found the pandemic very stressful at times because I had a then 3 year old who could no longer go to daycare. And also just the general fear of not knowing what was going to happen, the grief of watching so many people die but also then feeling so lucky that it's not you or your family. But I also got a lot of joy out of it too- I spent so much time with my family, got to start working from home which has been something I continue to do and made my life so much easier, and got to slow down in so many ways. I used to worry so much that things would never be "normal" again, but then here we are 4 years later and it's like we are back to "normal" in so many ways. It's so weird.
I had my daughter at the end of 2019, and was still deep in postpartum everything when the first lockdown occurred. I felt nothing and everything; I was a raw nerve and yet simultaneously I somehow managed to dull my senses enough to not succumb to fear It wasn't a choice, my brain did that as a survival instinct, I'm sure. I couldn't fully absorb the gravity of COVID, but I had extreme anxiety around my daughter being kidnapped out of her 2nd-story bedroom window.
I have a short story brewing about this time. I'd like to collect lockdown stories from other mothers, particularly those who were mothers of young children or first-time moms.
Loving TRPHGA. It's not really "about" COVID, though. We live in a society where isolation from one another is common, where loneliness is rampant. COVID exaggerated that. My single sister, who suffers from the effects of traumatic brain injury, nearly killed herself. I was her Monty, I guess. I'm proud of her now--she is an excellent vegan cook and met a man online during the fading bad years of the epidemic.
My question: Who will play the characters in TRPHGA in the movie or maybe a limited television series? The novel is SO cinematic with so many plot twists and turns. Who will play Ruby? Theo? The great minor characters such as Roland, Detective Ramirez, Greer, etc.?
Complicated is definitely the way to describe pandemic and post pandemic times. I was pregnant with my second child and so it felt sweet and luxurious to get to work from home as a teacher and nest and be with my family all the time.
It was also hard taking care of a toddler who couldn't go to preK or daycare and our playgrounds were wrapped in police tape and the basketball hoops taken down to deter gathering, very apocalyptic!
The slower pace of life and realizations that the the pandemic allowed for felt revolutionary, but now I feel like we learned nothing/held onto none of the knowledge we gained about our problematic pace of life and need for better or different systems. I have complicated and frustrating feelings about this.
lockdown was a weird time for me bc I'm a therapist, so I was really busy trying to help support people going through the exact same thing that I was - feeling isolated, overwhelmed, worried about the future, and depressed. it also revealed some fundamental cracks in some of my closest relationships. and was also the time that I moved to a larger home and reevaluated a lot of my relationships overall. so, I felt like it was pretty traumatic in a lot of ways but I also grew a lot?
and, COVID is still here but people act as though it's over / not a big deal - to be fair, this is the message that's been sent by CDC and public health agencies in the US - so I actually feel a little more isolated now in some ways, as one of the only people I know that's still masking etc. (also I recognize that because of the trauma of lockdown, a lot of people WANT to believe that COVID is totally over and not a big deal, which is honestly quite relatable)...it's complicated!
I feel you. I still mask too, and it can be very isolating.
Solidarity with you both. I'm also still masking, and it is indeed isolating. Really appreciate you both sharing this here.
thank you for saying that! I'm trying not to let it stop me from seeing people etc but the low grade frustration about my friends and loved ones being pretty cavalier... that does feel pretty isolating at times.
yes! and it's complicated bc I do still take some risks like going to my gym bc it's a community space for me, not just a workout- my partner and I are the last ones masking. people are not usually weird about it but the implicit social pressure is rough sometimes!! I really appreciate hearing from others, like yourself, who are also still masking. we're not alone!
I am also a therapist and it was very odd to be going through something that every single one of your clients was also experiencing! That is almost never the case. In some ways it felt good to be able to be in it together and other times it felt oppressive and I was so sick of talking about it.
💯 to all of this! i felt like I was just constantly repeating the same phrases and stuff because not much was changing for most people either. whew.
Agree -- I'm too old not to mask, I feel. One of my friends got long Covid last year, and it's been a downward spiral for her. I realize there are things I will never do again, like use a sauna, or go to a crowded party in a bar. "Post" pandemic has been MUCH harder for me than the initial two years when most people in my area were taking precautions.
I'm so sorry to hear about your friend. and yeah, 2023-2024 have felt harder in some ways than 2020-2022, mostly bc even previously cautious folks are (understandably!) burnt out
The pandemic was tough. I admire those who really enjoyed all the time they had at home with loved ones. As a person who needs a lot of alone time to refuel I found it difficult to be at home every day with my significant other. I realized all my hobbies involved being out of the house. I took up doing puzzles and playing video games. Both of which can be very stressful. Lol. I felt extremely fortunate though because my wife and I were low risk, and living in Texas we had a bit more opportunity to roam. I’m an Aussie too and I found it difficult to see what family and friends were struggling with down there. I just hope we never have to go through it again, and if we do, that people can be kinder to each other.
I'm going to start using "Busy is a choice." So true! I've always known that in my own life--even when i had small children I would make sure to have a half-hour to drink my tea and relax.
Tanzanika and I were worried because New Orleans was hit hard in the early days. We watched the funerals of people we knew on Facebook live because in-person wasn't allowed. It felt especially dystopian because this is the opposite of our jazz funerals, which are raucous, crowded celebrations. But the hardest thing was the lack of information. We didn't know how dangerous the virus was, how long lockdown would last, and whether we'd ever have vaccines. I posted a dashcam video of my ride through the French Quarter, which was completely empty. That's something that doesn't happen even during hurricanes. People just keep partying (like with Hurricane Francine this week).
I realized I didn't need more than half of the clothes and shoes I have in my closet. I spent almost a year in shorts and tank tops (In Florida) I didn't go outside much thus not sweating enough to change clothes frequently. Less laundry!!
Also I realized that I love my husband because he hunkered down with me and I didn't harbor thoughts of...disposing of him. LOL! We actually got closer. We talked "deeply" often.
That I can live several months without my siblings dropping by my house uninvited.
That I enjoy solitude and silence.
I miss it now. It seems like we all have a need to make up for "lost" time. I don't. I'm enjoying time on my time,
I so appreciate this. I believe there is a lot of focus on what was lost but equally, so much was gained. We quarantined in Walnut Creek, CA, where I gained an abundance of quality time with my pre-teen, and an opportunity to watch her emerge. I gained time to bake more and to enjoy slow walks by the water. I started a sewing business I dreamed up for a decade, and watched it rise and let it fall.
I finished up a certificate program I started when my preteen was a baby. I wrote a book. We took responsible trips just to get out and ordered food for contactless pickup in quirky hotel rooms had to remain because everything was closed. We didn't mind because we enjoyed the drive.
I lost my alone time at home, a couple dear friends, and my partner and I split up. For a time, I lost my sense of safety walking alone in the day as a Black woman, the battlr of responsible screen time with my preteen and, I even lost in a different way with close friends deciding to move away to where I was the last one in town. As sad as that felt, there was an abundance of joy too.
For my daughter, who was unable to go to school, it wasn't until what seemed like the end did she express how lonely and depressive it felt for her to not be able to see her friends. Young children lost a lot more than we can imagine, so I wonder how they will turn out, especially as the world has so much strife and conflict as of late. My hope is that they will be okay. Cautiously optimistic for the future always feels right to me.
Busy is absolutely a choice! Love this.
I was alone and terrified much of the first year of the pandemic. My younger daughter was with me every other week. I had two pugs. One died in October 2020, and the other developed separation anxiety. I did a lot of Zooms with her at my feet or on my lap. I wiped down my groceries with bleach. I baked a lot. I perfected fluffy buttermilk biscuits. One of my favorite memories is putting warm biscuits in little covered baskets with jars of jam and dropping them off on my friends' porches and front doors. My short story collection came out at this time (September 2020), and it was surreal. I had so much to be happy and thankful for, but alongside the joy was always this bit of terror and sadness.
We were in Chattanooga for the lockdown and the hoarder part of me took to it like wildfire. I still have dried beans waiting to be soaked and cooked. That part of it I enjoyed. And the time spent with my husband who was let go from his job just as the first wave hit, I savored. We, like most of our friends, stayed put. We wore our masks. We cleaned. We listened. All around us in the deep red territory of Tennessee we watched things falling apart. Something fundamental shifted, I fear forever. I know a family forever separated because of vaccination. I know people who died, likely because of vaccination misinformation. We were diligent and got our shots and then, in last fall's wave, we got Covid anyhow. We are really just now coming out and life, we find, is not the same. Maybe because all of our friends are as cautious as us, maybe because we aged so much during the pandemic, I mean I was in my mid-fifties. Now I'm almost sixty. In a flash. Like the Covid time wasn't really time at all, it was a bubble we stepped into. I sometimes miss the bubble. And I wonder if I'm actually on the outside of it. And I just got Covid, again.
Thanks for sharing this. Thinking of you - hope you are able to rest and recover quickly.
Thanks. I am better, as of today.
May you covid be mild!
thanks. I am better today. Finally
Our son was in kindergarten when the schools closed, and so he had a bit of routine under his belt but he was also at an age where hanging out with his parents every day was fun. Still, there was a lot of anxiety and grief (I work in theatre as well as political writing). We tried to find some form of ritual or routine to keep us going. I read comic books to my son and my wife and I made tater tots every Friday. (We had Tater Tot Friday on the calendar so we would remember what day it was.)
"It is not accidental that all phenomena of human life are dominated by the search for daily bread." --Ivan Pavlov
How does the clicking sound of a non-working stove burner come to signify the trauma of a pandemic? I suppose it could have been anything. Maybe your family or your body associates the pandemic with something else, like long white tubes or swabs or discarded masks atop the floor mat of your passenger side. I suppose the actual object says more about the context of one’s life inside the pandemic than it does about the actual pandemic itself. Regardless, at some point during 2020 multiple burners on our stove stopped working, and the ones that did work often made a non-stop clicking sound whenever ignited. This would have been a particularly annoying situation in the best of times. Yet here we were, as a family of 7 (sometimes 8 depending on if the college student was home), almost every single day, eating 3 meals, inside our 4 walls. That last sentence may appear mathematical, but I assure you, it was an auditory, not numeric, kind of trigger.
I wonder exactly, the precise moment, when Pavlov’s metronome went from being a neutral to conditioned stimulus. How many rounds of clicks until the dogs lost their proverbial spit?
There was no salivating in our pack of queer carnivores, ages 40, 39, 27, 18, 8, 6, and 1. When the clicking sound set in, we’d experience a creeping sensation in our necks and start twitching, like our whole bodies were being flooded by anxiety. In the beginning family members would endure the clicking, do the suggested tricks of lowering and heightening heat on various burners until you hit the sweet spot. The “sweet spot” brought about silence for 2 minutes before the clicking started again. It’s amazing how many times inside of those 2 minute sets of silence we’d convince ourselves that this time it’d be different, that this pattern somehow fixed itself out of thin air. Just when we’d let the hope of suckers set in, click click click. Then we’d smack our teeth, heavily breathe aloud, almost as if to signal: it’s happening again; someone come help me! But we knew there was no helping this situation, so the breath just floated into the air, awkward, untoward.
Some might be wondering why we didn’t just get the stove fixed. Turns out it’s a high-maintenance brand with very few replacement parts and even fewer laborers willing to play nice with that manufacturer and those parts. Pre-pandemic we would’ve gotten a new stove, easy peasy. Here’s the rub. Pre-pandemic I had 3 jobs. In the midst of the pandemic I had 1 job that was barely cutting it. We simply couldn’t afford to get the stove replaced. So we kept making due. We went from 4 burners to 2, to 1.
Our menu options started to change when the heat capacity got minimized. It’s hard to boil noodles, saute vegetables and simmer marinara sauce with one burner. So you either take twice (or triple) the time preparing meals or you begin making dishes that only require one burner. I had no idea how much the quality of my family’s dietary life depended on accessing multiple sources of workable fire until I no longer had access. We underestimate our dependence on the elements to our peril.
The last month of the stove’s life, it did that thing humans sometimes do when they’re about to die. It’s called Terminal Lucidity. All of a sudden there was no clicking and 2 of the 4 burners started working again! You should have seen the praise and worship sessions that erupted in those days of kitchen appliance hospice. But then the clicking returned, the single burner wouldn’t go above medium heat, and to add insult to injury, the oven died.
When the oven stopped working, I looked around the room for a baseball bat. Instead I found a rolling pin left on the floor by my busy-body toddler and it took everything in me not to pick it up and smash every surface, dish, and glass in my kitchen. It wasn’t just the rhubarb crisp I couldn’t make for dessert now or even those expensive bone-in chicken thighs I’d just spent 15 minutes covering in all the right seasons and spices. No. It was everything: the threat of contagion everywhere, death hovering constantly, being at home too much, being broke too long, being without adequate child-care, trying to home-school without any educational training, isolated from familial, social and resource support, being stressed every single second of every single day. Fear. Grief. Isolation. Overwhelm. Rage. Exhaustion. On loop. The clicks of my stove and the cool air in my all-the-way-turned-up oven were about all of that...and all of that was because of Covid-19.
For about two weeks we ate a lot of sandwiches, cereal, and air-fryer foods. Then my angelic parents decided they couldn’t stand our suffering any longer. They generously offered to go in halfsies with us on a used stove that could get us through until we were “back on our feet.” Confession: I don’t know if we will ever recover from this time, economically, and otherwise. And their gift enabled us a reprieve. We’d been down and out long enough to take it with every bell and whistle of gratitude at our (still working) disposal.
The working class, heavily tattooed dudes that came to take the old stove out and deliver the new one probably didn’t understand why I was looking at them as if they were saving my life. Every time I opened my mouth to say “thank you” I just cried. My handy dyke wife and father-in-law installed the 32” chrome GE appliance that afternoon (which just happened to serendipitously be my birthday) and as they hunched over together with wire in hand, I couldn’t help but notice that our family’s nightmare ended in the hands of our most strident, foul-mouthed agnostics--literal answer to my prayers.
I can’t stop caring about the people who don’t have angelic parents or handy relatives in this economy where the cost of living comes at the cost of our collective well-being. I can’t stop caring about the thousands who don’t need stoves or a working oven because they’re no longer with us, which puts all kinds of things in grief-laden perspective. I can’t stop thinking/caring about how hard this has been, how we all still twitch and never want to hear another burner click for the rest of our entire effing lives, and how grateful I am to be making my grandma’s cinnamon coffee cake today which is something I couldn’t do last week.
Mostly I hope I retain the lesson--without an ongoing triggering stimulus/response, neutral, conditioned or otherwise--that we suffer together and we come through together.
I had a three year old and an 8 month old when everything started, and so it was an insanely busy time. I'd be on twitter daily for the report on the day's numbers; somehow that was what I needed to see to feel like I had any handle on the situation In the morning, my husband would be home with the baby, and I'd get my older kid outside for a while although the playgrounds were closed, so we had to get creative about where to go and how to play. Get back in for lunch, get the older kid down for nap (thankfully he napped) and then took on baby care while my husband attempted to do some work. There was a 45 minute point in the day when both kids napped, so we'd have tea and coffee and some kind of baked pastry. At first, we were buying those locally but as the expenses mounted, I started baking cinnamon rolls and scones. Then kids are up, we gave up any notion of restricting screen time so the older kid watched endless Paw Patrol. Made dinner, tidyed the kitchen, we'd get both kids down for the night, husband would attempt to get in some work, my brain was far too fried to write, numbed myself on Netflix, stayed up too late revenge procrastinating and then the next morning it would be all the same all over again.
oh the endless sameness of the days was VERY hard. I'm thankful for vaccines and other measures that have allowed us to have more variety again!!
I love Columbo!! Currently watching them all again with my husband right now. There is so much great about it- the great guest stars in every episode, the 70s clothes, the slowness and quiet of scenes, the way the criminals always completely give up when Columbo figures it out (why do they not continue to deny it or say get me my lawyer??!??), and of course the great Peter Falk who is an American treasure. If anyone needs a show, try Columbo!
I found the pandemic very stressful at times because I had a then 3 year old who could no longer go to daycare. And also just the general fear of not knowing what was going to happen, the grief of watching so many people die but also then feeling so lucky that it's not you or your family. But I also got a lot of joy out of it too- I spent so much time with my family, got to start working from home which has been something I continue to do and made my life so much easier, and got to slow down in so many ways. I used to worry so much that things would never be "normal" again, but then here we are 4 years later and it's like we are back to "normal" in so many ways. It's so weird.
I had never been on Zoom before March 17, 2020. That was the lockdown date in Monterey County.
(The day before my Birthday)
In less than a month I became a ‘Zoom Diva’ It was my social life and my sanity❗️
Thank You for your above sharing😴
Ellen
Monterey Peninsula
I had my daughter at the end of 2019, and was still deep in postpartum everything when the first lockdown occurred. I felt nothing and everything; I was a raw nerve and yet simultaneously I somehow managed to dull my senses enough to not succumb to fear It wasn't a choice, my brain did that as a survival instinct, I'm sure. I couldn't fully absorb the gravity of COVID, but I had extreme anxiety around my daughter being kidnapped out of her 2nd-story bedroom window.
I have a short story brewing about this time. I'd like to collect lockdown stories from other mothers, particularly those who were mothers of young children or first-time moms.
Loving TRPHGA. It's not really "about" COVID, though. We live in a society where isolation from one another is common, where loneliness is rampant. COVID exaggerated that. My single sister, who suffers from the effects of traumatic brain injury, nearly killed herself. I was her Monty, I guess. I'm proud of her now--she is an excellent vegan cook and met a man online during the fading bad years of the epidemic.
My question: Who will play the characters in TRPHGA in the movie or maybe a limited television series? The novel is SO cinematic with so many plot twists and turns. Who will play Ruby? Theo? The great minor characters such as Roland, Detective Ramirez, Greer, etc.?
Complicated is definitely the way to describe pandemic and post pandemic times. I was pregnant with my second child and so it felt sweet and luxurious to get to work from home as a teacher and nest and be with my family all the time.
It was also hard taking care of a toddler who couldn't go to preK or daycare and our playgrounds were wrapped in police tape and the basketball hoops taken down to deter gathering, very apocalyptic!
The slower pace of life and realizations that the the pandemic allowed for felt revolutionary, but now I feel like we learned nothing/held onto none of the knowledge we gained about our problematic pace of life and need for better or different systems. I have complicated and frustrating feelings about this.