9:30 am
It’s been a week. Officially. A week of this bizarre counterfeit reality. I didn’t fall asleep until 3 o’clock this morning. I tried all my tricks … The Gilmore Girls didn’t even work, and that adorable duo always turns my lights out. My body doesn’t know what day it is, what time it is, what I want from it. What is the circadian clock of which you speak?
There is no talk of such things as work/life balance right now. Why try, when it’s really work/life/anxiety/activity planning/binge eating/homeschooling/distraction creating/workouting/stress reducing/refereeing/sanity salvaging balance, instead? I have decided not to set expectations that I simply cannot meet during this unscripted, unexplored, unprecedented period.
JoJo brought Hank and I breakfast in bed. She’d hand-squeezed (literally, with her tiny hands) a small cup of orange juice for each of us. She had Golden Grahams for him and high fiber something-or-other for me, and a bowl of fresh fruit (half apples, half sweaty raisins). I turned on CBS Sunday Morning and leaned into it. She was so proud of her efforts, and I was so proud that she thought highly enough of us this far into this thing to do it.
11 am
The chicks decided to put a tent up in the backyard. I used to worry about only having our little chicks. I wondered if Hank would ever regret not having a son. But the truth is, he’s just so good at being a Girl Dad. I sat in the next room, listening to him coach JoJo through assembling the poles, and my heart nearly exploded. These times are different, tense even, but they’re sweet, too. It’s opening up space for more imagination, more play and more willingness for us to say, “sure, why not?”
1 pm
Canceled race be damned, my training buddies and I decided to meet for a little run at our favorite state park. I’d been so desperate to stretch my legs and see my trail sisters. Call it forest bathing or tree hugging or nature therapy … whatever you name it, the stuff works. Passing like a pin through a sea of sturdy oaks gives me perspective. It humbles me and warms my heart. I take so much in with me – stress and expectations and doubt – and I lose them somewhere along the path. The woods absorb my problems and wash me clean.
Today, maybe more than ever before, I tried to sink into my senses. I listened to the boisterous bullfrogs around the pond. I felt my feet lower into the mud. I acknowledged the subtle burn in my legs as the hills picked up. My friend, Dr. Dave, recently wrote a great piece about mindfulness during this COVID crisis, and I highly recommend checking it out and then applying it wherever and whenever possible.
The funny part is, I was absolutely dying to see these girls. Dying. The only thing I wanted was to catch up with them and have real conversation with real humans. But once I got there, I realized I didn’t have much to say. The world was in much the same disarray as it was the last time we ran. My house, the same. My mind, the same. It was still nice though. Lovely actually.
One thing I love to see, I have to share, is the increased number of folks getting outside. The park was hoppin’ like a Florida strip on high school spring break. People were strolling with pups and kids and one couple, I swear, was on a first date. As I ran by and for several minutes after, I imagined they met in some virtual space and decided to take it face-to-face but had legit fears about swapping air. I’ve been watching a lot of Love is Blind ,OK? Anyway, so glad to see people gettin’ out there.
4 pm
“What the hell is going on?” Sloppy Joan asked from the kitchen. We all gasped and Hank sent her into the corner to the soundtrack of our muffled snickering. It was directed at some carpet Hank had torn up in the basement, but really, isn’t it what we’re all thinking? I couldn’t even fault the five-year-old for voicing the question I’ve been asking the general universe every 10 minutes for the past few weeks.
One thing giving me life right now is the app Marco Polo. I have three main groups: My high school posse, my family and Hank’s family. My girlfriends are always entertaining (my friend in LA shared an entire sequence of her catching a mouse on a sticky trap, transferring said-mouse to a jar and then letting it go, all on Marco Polo) and it’s just good to see their beautiful faces, but the family groups … oh, you guys. I love people of an advanced age navigating new technology. For her first five submissions, it was just my mom’s squinting, shifting eyes and crumpled nose. The next slide would be my teenage niece just hysterically laughing at her Grammy. It is the comic relief we need in this time of quarantine.
People hate on technology so hard all the time, but with all that’s going on, I say zoom, facetime, instant chat, polo … whatever virtual meetup you need to do to stay connected and share the experience of hiding from your children in a pantry. We don’t have to be totally alone right now.
And now, it’s snowing.
7 pm
The doorbell rang while we were havingdinner. It was my sweet friend Taylor, stopping by to drop off a framed illustration for my new home office. It was a tiny, giant gesture; a flashlight flickering to send signals of life in the darkness. She stood on my porch – absolutely embarrassing from hours of little girls setting up forts and herding earthworms – snow falling furiously behind her, and smiled brightly. She’d driven across town just to hand deliver the paper-wrapped gift. We couldn’t hug. She didn’t come inside. But I still felt the contact, and it felt so, so special. At a time when nobody knows what to think, she thought of me.
I said it before and I’ll say it again, these times are tense, but they’re sweet, too. When this thing passes, and we thaw out from the social freeze, we will be so grateful for the touch and closeness of the people we love and who love us. We just have to keep our eyes forward. Toward the warmth.
