Social distance diary – Day 1

7:35 a.m. 

JoJo and I decided to go on a short morning walk around the path behind the house. “Let’s do this every morning,” I said, my voice whimsical and drunk on the optimism I’d sponged off of celebrities’ Instagram stories just minutes before. The sky had a gray glow about it and the air was cold but welcoming. Birds flew over us in arrowhead formations and mismatched groups of three. They were talking to each other. JoJo and I were talking to each other. The day was rising and it was all going to be fine.  

JoJo saw her friend’s Great Dane trotting around his backyard. “Hi Jake!” she boomed. “Hi Julie!” she called to her friend’s mom, who was standing at the door trying to coax her small horse of a canine back into the house. The poor woman, likely braless and uncaffeinated, smiled and shyly stepped onto her back porch. She gave a slight hello. “Good morning,” I offered, and urged JoJo to keep moving, out of respect for this woman and the quiet house I could see just beyond her shoulder. This, I realized, might be the only somewhat peaceful hour in her entire day. Let us not tread on that.  

7:55 a.m. 

Hank was waiting in the garage when we got back to the house, showered and ready to go face the public and all its pandemic-feeding germs. We walked into the house and found two little chicks awake and sniffing around for breakfast. “Can we get donuts?” Sloppy Joan asked. There’s something about a 5-year-old with raised eyebrows and a glazed twinkle in her eyes that just melts me. 

“Does everyone want donuts?” I asked. I was trying to give off the oh-this-is-such-a-sacrifice vibe, but anyone who knows me knows that a donut run is just like a warm bubble bath to me. I’m always up for the cheap thrill, given the time. We climbed in the SUV, turned up “Hot Girl Bummer” and went for a box full of Long Johns and fritters of various sorts. 

After my second cakey sour cream wheel, the guilt set in hard. I’m realizing that more time at home also means more time near my pantry. That, paired with my impressive impulsive stress eating habits, is shaping up to be quite the scale shifter. I’m tuning into a familiar inner dialogue: 

Me: You’re going to go for a walk every morning, at lunch and to end the work day. You’re going to get all your workouts in, even extras when you have time. 

Also Me: We should probably eat those zebra cake rolls to make room for more healthy staples. Also, that last fritter isn’t going to take care of itself. 

I was on a phone call with a co-worker while eating my morning pastries. She expressed similar concerns about the carb-laden, shelf-stable staples she had in her cabinets. “Do you think the COVID 15 will become a thing?” she asked. I mean … if the last nine hours are any sign of what’s coming down the pipeline for this mama, it’s not out of the question. Thank goodness I only buy things with elastic around the waistline these days. 

8:25 a.m. 

I work in social media. Healthcare social media. Times are not slow, I assure you. The last several days have been an onslaught of direct messages, tweets, comments, replies, emails … all of the digital forms of all the communication. They haven’t tapered or showed any signs of slowing. I don’t see that as something that’s coming any time soon. And that’s OK. People are so scared. They’re sick or their loved one is sick and they’re trying to make the best decisions in a climate filled with booby traps and quick sand and unknown enemies lurking around every hidden door. 

In my lifetime, we’ve never encountered a situation like this. So many lives are on the line and people – as empowered as we truly are given the option to distance ourselves and really impact the outcome here – are terrified. If I can offer an answer in someone’s moment of uncertainty, I am here for that. I am plugged in and on stand-by for that. 

I sat down at my desk and refreshed the feed of messages. It looked much like it had for the past 72 hours – a colorful bouquet of political divisiveness, prayer, conspiracy theories, rally cries, questions and hate. So much hate. I don’t care how many years I spend scrolling the depths of social media, I will never get used to the anonymous warfare that plays out in hand grenades of profanity and bazooka blasts of disregard for civility. The things that people type from the safety of their cowardly keyboards is astonishing. Surprisingly, times of crisis, when the world should be pulling together and dosing out love in abundance, seem to amplify the disgusting dialogue. I’ve seen more people wish this virus on total strangers, simply because they don’t like their preferred political candidate or agree with state- or city-level restrictions, than I care to count. 

If I may just offer one small suggestion … If you, unlike me, don’t have to jump into the deep, dark ocean of chatter and social scuffles, don’t. Follow and fill your feed with the people and personalities that lift you up. Lord knows that’s what we really all need at a time like this. Opt for facts. Stay above the rumors and run-ins and just hunker down with hope, happiness and humorous memes, instead. (There are some really good ones floating around.) Let all the children out there scream at their screens. Right now there’s all the time in the world, and absolutely no time for that.  

11 a.m. 

It took no less than a few hours for Spike and JoJo to start fighting. Ugh! The fighting. They were playing Battleship and lying about the location of their missile carriers, or whatever they’re called. Who raised these children, I ask you? We’d already had a handful of come-to-Jesus chats the day before, so they were familiar with the high points … We’re going to be spending a lot of time together … We have to work together as a family to get through this … Your sisters are going to be your best and only friends for a while … I will send you all to your rooms … blah, blah, blah … etc. and so on. 

It’s so tired. Everything I say is so tired. They don’t wanna hear it. I don’t wanna say it. And every time I start in, I find myself already thinking about how many times I’m going to have to give the exact same lecture in the weeks to come. All we want is more time with our kids, until we get more time with our kids and realize just how unreasonable they really can be. 

I told them they get one hour on the tablet or watching TV a day, so they better get creative. JoJo picked up her cookbook and chose a soft pretzel recipe. (Shout out to the Man Upstairs real quick for tucking that half a pouch of active yeast in the top cabinet. Thanks brotha!) This kept her occupied for a pleasant chunk of time. 

Noon

I hung up from a conference call and realized there wasn’t any chaos. They were playing, peacefully. They’d repurposed the Battleship game into some sort of pirate-Medieval times scenario. There was a lot of scurvy and talk of those poor souls held captive, and I just kept typing away until the crew inevitably started demanding lunch. 

JoJo’s timer beeped and she checked her pretzel dough. She was confident in the proof. I wasn’t quite convinced it had the right bounce-back, but I was trying to be pretty hands-off. She started rolling and shaping that dough like a gosh dang boss, and I couldn’t believe the Auntie Ann’s showmanship on display. “What? We had a pretzel guy come to our preschool class,” she shrugged.

“OK, guys,” I clapped my hands together, “We’re going to eat the more perishable foods first. So, what do you want for lunch?”

“Chicken nuggets!” Spike shouted. 

“No, that’s a frozen food. We can hold onto those for a bit.” 

“Ramen!” Sloppy Joan requested. 

“Nope. Again, that’s a food we can hold onto for a long time.” 

I was starting to realize that my children were 1) Sodium-seeking junkies, and 2) Not on the same page as me. We settled on deli sandwiches, apples and a second round of my lecture on sisterly love.   

When JoJo’s pretzels were done, we all picked a condiment and grabbed one, warm off the baking rack. You know when your kids make stuff and you eat it to be nice or fan the flame of their creative fires? This was not that. These were so good, you guys. Like a warm, expandable hug that traveled down your esophagus, deploying miniature baby hugs all the way down. Here we go again, I thought. The COVID 15 is coming for me. Hard. Should I even fight it at this point?

3:20 p.m.

The governor just confirmed the first death related to COVID-19 in our state. The article announcing the news said that the patient’s wife also has the illness. “A nurse stayed with the patient so he didn’t have to die alone.” 

I read that sentence, and then I read it again. And then I cried for a man that I never met. And I cried for his wife, who will hopefully one day soon feel physically healed, but who will be left with a scar so deep and so sore I can’t imagine the pain. I cried for the enormity of it all. And I cried for the beautiful, selfless, heart-wrenching gesture his nurse made today. One soul sitting with another soul, walking them right up to the place where the human experience crosses over into something else. That is so overwhelming and big. Bigger than any petty inconvenience this pandemic may cause. Bigger than politics and policies and brackets that never get to be busted. It’s as big as it gets … people loving people.

It’s a reminder that behind all of the climbing numbers on the maps and closure announcements and fear-inducing headlines, there are real human beings, fighting for their lives. And there are real healers and housekeepers and delivery people and manufacturers working tirelessly and giving relentlessly to this battle. It’s frightening and moving and immensely humbling.   

6 p.m. 

My phone vibrated on the desk next to me. A message from my friend Britni to the thread of gals I’ve been training with for the GE40, a 20-mile trail race in April. The event is canceled. It was a text I’d been waiting for, and dreading for a week now. All those miles we’ve logged. Not for nothing, but certainly a disappointment. We shuffled down rooty, soupy paths and up slushy hills in 30-degree weather in pursuit of a better time than the year before. I guess it isn’t in the cards. Onto the next challenge, whatever that might be. One that doesn’t involve more than 10 people coming together in one place apparently. It feels like everything is falling away, being taken off the table, one at a time, and seemingly all at once. 

I put my phone down and finished up dinner. Sloppy Joan was rambling about who snuggled with whom last night and at what times. 

“And then,” she said, “I walked in and I saw two little coochies in your bed.”

“You saw what?”

“Coochies. Two of them!”

And just like that … we smiled. We even laughed a little.