Pause-a-palooza
Yes, a lot of the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown has sucked. Being stuck at home with 2 special needs kids, for one, has been challenging. My carpal tunnel syndrome from being a college professor, with emergency migrating of my classes over my spring ‘break’ (not much break!), getting mini-panic attacks while wearing masks, and the parenting-palooza of caring for special needs kids 24/7 while my spousal unit and I are holding down our jobs, to name a few, have not been fun or even character-building experiences.
On the other hand, this gigantic pandemic pause has also been about the personal satisfactions and positive public results of slowing down. There are benefits to society of privileged white people (including me) having enough mental space to pay more attention to social, economic, and other inequalities. White, middle class people are out protesting to support and alongside of Persons of Color (POC). Citizens are demanding change and changes are already occurring at cities large and small, as a result of the nonviolent protests and diversified embodiment of support for Black Lives Matter.
In my little exurban corner of Northwest Ohio, aside from the odd hardware or grocery store run, we’ve just stayed at home. Even when our state ended the stay-at-home order, we still stayed home virtually all the time. We did have to go out to my mom’s former assisted living apartment and get her stuff moved out since she’d already moved into a higher-level care facilty months before. But aside from that, we just stay home.
Years ago, we lived in a small town in Idaho’s panhandle, called Moscow. Our little ranch house was on the edge of town, with a few newer houses sitting right on the border of the open wheat, pea, and lentil crop fields. My usual jogging route passed by the home of a modern equivalent of a family like the one in Laura Engals Wilders’ ‘Little-House-on-the-Prairie.’ I’m not sure what (if any) religious sect they belonged to, but they drove a plain, gray minivan and the daughters all wore the same kind of ‘half pint’ style dresses every day. They were always home, no matter what time of day or day of the week my jog took me past. Back then, I thought it was weird, bordering on the insane. I wondered: What do they do all day long, every day? The kids didn’t seem to play with other kids, and their old fashioned garb indicated they probably weren’t allowed to play video games or watch much in the way of movies to pass the time. It was so mysterious and alien to my busy work, socializing, entertaining, rushing around life.
Fast forward over a decade, my hubbyus maximus and i have 2 kids of our own. And now, since mid-March 2020, we’ve been hunkered down at home. All day. Every day. During spring’s bad weather months up here, when it’s bitterly cold and rainy, we did a lot of school work, tutoring the kids, trying to figure out the crazy patchwork quilt of assignments they each had, refereeing their fights over their shared laptop. “He got more time than I did today!” son 1 would say. “Well he got more time yesterday!” son 2 would retort. Then, simultaneously: “It’s not fair!” Meanwhile, we were frantically trying to figure out how to do our professor jobs online with endless Zoom or WebEx video conferences, while juggling feeding and care for 2 kids’, 1 dog’s, 3 cats’ and 1 old horse’s care needs, housework, plus a suddenly ‘remote’ eldercare for our moms.
Each day’s old race to eat, dress, hop in the car, race to drop off 2 kids at 2 different schools, then to circle to find a parking spot, then sprint off each to our respective classes and offices, became a new kind of Endurance race, as in the name of Shackleton’s ill fated shipwreck and journey of death and pain. Only instead of shipwreck, we live in a ramshackle, crumbling old farmhouse, the kind where you grab a doorknob and it falls off in your hand. Or the septic system gets full to overflowing and you have to ‘tag-team’ when flushing the toilet. It was a mental endurance each day.
But then, the 3.5 best things about being a professor arrived: half of May, all of June and July, and, just around the bend from now, the first half of August, where our regular classes fall away to a few independent studies, and we can focus on our research, or just catching up on our very messy home’s projects, like vacuuming or handy-wet-mopping of floors festooned with furry tumbleweed sized dust bunnies. The dreadful flooding and freezing rains of March and April turned to balmy then very hot days. We could send the kids outside to play most of the day, hooray!
Things calmed down. We could catch our breath. I got to do some fun reading, in addition to getting another research article prepped and submitted. I read some serious nonfiction, and I read some hilarious memoirs. I felt the stress not disappear but come into more of a clear perspective. Nothing seemed as rushed or panic-attack inducing. Heck, we sometimes even got to take naps!
I don’t miss our daily rush out the door, “Who forgot the kids’ lunches?!” “Where are my car keys?!” I don’t miss circling the parking lot for a spot. I don’t miss running across campus from class to meeting, building to building, in the freezing sleet. I don’t miss having to rush to drop off the kids and then pick them back up again for their endless array of sports practices and games. I don’t miss taking my mom to a zillion doctor’s appointments, hearing the same complaints about the food or staff at her eldercare facility. Now I’m only allowed to talk to her by phone, and I keep it upbeat and short, no time to get to the wingeing, yippee!
The Big Pause-a-palooza has meant, for the first time in years, I have been able to slow down just enough to read, absorb, percolate. To think deeply. To be that warm, furry mammal that relishes a catnap. To be a little less cynical, to empathize, to use my talents to write and to use my White privilege as an ally to support POC, and throw myself into learning more and doing more for environmental justice (okay, so I only planted some shrubs and 10 little trees on our few acres, but still) and for nonhuman animals’ welfare and rights (I’m working on a book proposal on the latter).
Life has not been, nor will it ever be, perfect even during this not quite total pause. But in this all too brief moment of at least slowing down, less driving, less dry-cleaning, less shopping, my family near and far has grown closer. After all, with Covid, any among us could fall ill and maybe even die. But now we are all more present, and say and mean it, “I love you, Bro!” or “I love you, Dad!” We are savoring our good fortune to live out here in the sticks of Ohio, in a farmhouse that would collapse if the carpenter ants, termites, and post beetles stop holding hands. We are laughing more at each of our own respective foibles.
Don’t worry, we still squabble. Our house is still a big mess. Our septic tank is probably about to explode. But we are here. Now. It is a time that I think we’ll miss, once a decent vaccine comes out. Until then, I’ll get back to you. I think I’ll shut this puppy off now, and go finish my latest book.
