More than 100 – yes, 100 – days ago, I set out to document this temporary, wild, overwhelming, memorable season of our lives. I never pledged to do it every day, but I certainly didn’t intend to go three months without a word. But things happen, or they don’t as the case may be in these quarantine times, and let’s be honest … there have been too many words out there lately. The internet and all of its limbs have been heavy with screaming and skepticism and rock hurling and I just couldn’t dip my toes into that boiling water. But here I am, ready to explain my absence and get all caught up in four reader-friendly sections. Here’s the scoop …
The fever of an unknown origin
On April 18, about 12 days after my last post here, the weather broke. It was one of those days Midwesterners relish – the first after months spent chilled under an endless ash sky. The sun felt warm and beckoned us out past the safety of our cul-de-sac. We planned to go visit my mom, who we hadn’t seen in weeks. We were going to sit on the deck outside, masks on, and catch up sans the risk of a failed connection.
Out of an abundance of caution (the most tired phrase of 2020), I took the girls’ temperatures. All clear. I took my own. It was 99.7. “We’re not going,” I text her. “I just won’t take a chance.” Mind you, this was during what would now be considered the dawn of the pandemic. Fear was high and there were even more unknowns than there are now. My parents are both over 65, my father has heart disease, and I was determined to play my part in keeping them safe. I figured it was a fluke, anyway. I’d been working in my front room all day, there are lots of windows letting heat in, I’d been stressed. It would pass.
It didn’t pass. And, spoiler alert, it hasn’t passed.
Over the next 20+ days, I took my temperature at least twice a day, every day. It ranged from 99-100.3. The only constant was that it was constantly elevated. On day 26, I decided to email my family doctor. We did a video chat and she wasn’t quite sure what to do with me. On day 28, she referred me to the clinic where they were sending patients with COVID-19 symptoms. They did a urinalysis, bloodwork, mono test and a chest x-ray. Everything looked great. On day 32, I landed a then-elusive drive-thru COVID test. After 11 days of waiting, it came back negative. In the meantime, plot twist, Sloppy Joan also began running a low-grade fever. What in the actual hell?!
Eventually, they sent me to the land where they send all the misfit toys … Infectious Diseases. I had two visits, a vampire’s Thanksgiving feast worth of blood drawn and lots of rehashing the variables. On day 68, they diagnosed me with a “fever of an unknown origin” and told me to wait it out. As long as nothing changed, nothing had to change. And nothing has changed. They say it can take up to a year to resolve. I feel fine, really. I’ve embraced my role as the family furnace, and the chicks fight over who gets to cuddle up next to me on the couch. I wouldn’t say my temp twister was the key culprit in disappearing from the blog, but it was consuming on many levels for quite some time. I guess “being hot” isn’t as easy as everyone thinks.
The pressure to perform
I’m taking a big leap here in guessing that I wasn’t the only one penning an ambitious list of creative projects at the start of the pandemic. I was going to self-publish a children’s book, journal every morning and, let’s not forget, recommit to Desperately Seeking Superwoman on an at least twice-weekly basis. All of this “extra time” at home was going to be the gift I’d been waiting to unwrap as a writer for more than a decade. The words would pour from me like sugar from a lemonade stand. This was it. This was my time.
Oh, and my body! Let’s get into that. My plan was to start each morning with a gentle walk. To meet the sunrise and greet the day. Every day. I’d then pepper in daytime workouts to really get in there and chisel out those muscles that have eluded me all of my adult life. Exercise would be so convenient; I could do a dab of weights here and a sprinkle of cardio there. Give me a few months in this new arrangement and I’d be runway ready. In retrospect, it was kind of cute, really, and almost like COVID Courtney had never met actual Courtney before. I was fostering this quarantine-induced delusion about what life at home with a full-time job, three kids, a geriatric dog and a murder mystery fever could be like.
Then I came to one day over a plate of Totino’s pizza rolls and realized I hadn’t worn anything without elastic around the waistband in damn near 9 weeks. I was … squishy. Soft, at best. Sure, I’ve been working out consistently, but does that really matter if you’re over-creaming your coffee and partaking in Soy Delicious ice cream appetizers while dinner cooks? I’ve been trying to clean that mess up.
The apathy
Then the apathy set in. I don’t know if it was the e-learning or the constant close proximity to laundry, or the strange food limitations at the grocery store, or the increase in work, or only seeing friends and family in a box on a computer screen, or the email about the third summer concert that got canceled, or being a chronic snacker with a desk now exactly 10 paces from the pantry or the fact that, no matter when I ran it, the stupid, MF’in’ light on the dishwasher is always on. Telling me it’s ready to be emptied for the fifteen-hundredth time this week. In truth, it was all of those things and a million more I didn’t list here for the sake of brevity. The fantasy of my best COVID self, came crashing down before it ever got off the ground.
I wouldn’t say I’ve been in a full blown depression. There was a brief period in my adult life when I was there, and this isn’t that. It’s just this ache for the former, for the familiar comforts of February. For hugs and get-togethers and grasping a buffet spoon without descending into sheer panic. I feel less of all my favorite feelings. Less joy, less excitement, less fire in my belly. These days, it feels like existing, without any of the exclamation marks.
The grind
I know everyone compares the COVID era to the movie Groundhog’s Day, but isn’t it just so accurate? I am on a hamster wheel in a chaotic cage with untidy bedding and I’m just frantically moving my hands and feet to stay upright. Shower, work, make a meal, work, yell at the girls to get off their tablets, work, make a meal, work, work, yell at the girls to get off their tablets, work, switch the laundry, make a meal, clean, work, snuggle for a bit, threaten to throw away all of the tablets, go to bed. Repeat. I never leave the cage. I never get off the wheel.
I love my daughters more than a good non-dairy ice cream, I do. They are the coolest kids I know, and I grew them, and I love them and I want nothing but all the best things in the world for them, but heaven help me … between the bickering and the technology and the blatant disrespect for this house and the woman who has to clean it, it’s been A LOT. It’s been all of the normal parental grievances magnified by infinity.
My life used to exist in buckets – the work bucket, the wife bucket, the mom bucket, the house bucket. And sure, sometimes, on occasion, a little water would splash over from one bucket to the next. I’d spend my lunch hour frantically searching for gold coin chocolates for the class St. Patrick’s Day party or some such task, but in general, I had boundaries. Or at least pencil-drawn lines. In this climate, being a working parent means being available in all ways, at all times, and never running out of water. My buckets runneth over.
Pre-COVID, I’d lined up a summer sitter. When that girl walked through the door in mid-June it was as if the gates parted and an angel flew into my entryway. Just to have another set of hands to make their bowls of ramen and pull them away from the screens for an afternoon was a blessing beyond measure. On her last day, I did all but get down on my hands and knees and beg her not to go. The moment the door shut, I cried. The girls just stood there and stared at me as I wept, so naïve to all the reasons her departure stung.
The “new normal”
So, that pretty much brings us to the present. I know I’m not the only parent who needs a bigger hat rack these days, and honestly I’m thankful that I still have a job and that my family is healthy. There are so many people who haven’t been as lucky, and that’s not lost on me. But there’s also something to be said for commiserating with your community. It’s been a long haul and I don’t see an end on the horizon. It would be a massive misrepresentation for me to pretend that I’m taking it all in stride and killing it over here, though some days that’s accurate. But not most days.
Most days I teeter somewhere between mild anxiety and bursts of rage, which I try to reserve for the category five catastrophes. Spilled bottles of paint, hair dye on the new flooring, etc. and so on. Most days I cry when silly things happen, like I discover the clean clothes I spent hours washing and sorting were thrown into the corner of my daughter’s closet, bags piled on top to cover up the crime. Most days I eat ice cream or chocolate, or chocolate on top of ice cream. Most days I use at least one of the following phrases, if not all: “Ah, you just have to laugh,” or “I’m not your maid,” or “I think I’m being Punk’d,” or “You guys act like we live in a dumpster.” Most days, by the time my husband gets home from work, it feels like I’ve lived three days.
But it isn’t all nail polish stains and Nutella fingerprints. This time has given me gifts as well. I haven’t worn makeup or done my hair in months, and with that extra 45 minutes to sleep in the morning, I feel more rested than I have in years. And more comfortable in my skin, which is pretty awesome, really. The chicks have memorized the entire Hamilton soundtrack, and I love hearing them upstairs screaming out the lyrics to “The Schuyler Sisters”, each with their own assigned role. (Sloppy Joan is Peggy, of course.)
What we knew about being a family has changed. The other day, JoJo looked up at me and said, “It’s just been too much togetherness.” And she was right. But my hope is that we come out of this with a deeper appreciation for the people and activities we took for granted, better communication skills and, perhaps, a renewed thirst for the opportunities that make us feel alive. For all the exclamation points.