33 Days

Today is April 14, that means it has been exactly 33 days since my children, my students and my colleagues and I were in a traditional school environment. In those 33 days, we have learned how to Zoom, we have learned how to be more strategic in our social media posting, we have learned that it is hard to be motivated to get up and dressed every day when you're not allowed to go anywhere with other people and we have very much learned how important it is for our sanity to be connected with other people. Our kids' schools have announced we aren't going back for the remainder of the year, my preschool is out for the rest of the year, our churches are not meeting personally and the places we would go to wander about are banned. It has become common for people to wear masks everywhere we go - my mama made us each custom ones so we can wash and reuse them. People are calling this a 'new normal' and this new normal was punctuated on Easter Sunday by tornadoes.

Y'all - this is categorically NOT normal. I miss seeing other people smile when we cross paths in the produce section. I catch myself mentally calculating how many feet I am standing away from other people, sometimes even in my own home with my own family. My hands look like alligator bags from the washing and sanitizing. Zoom is not a replacement for classrooms or workrooms. And I'm aware that my family is lucky beyond measure - our refrigerator is full, my husband and I are both still working and being paid, our children like school and take it seriously, we have computers and good internet for us to use, our house is a safe place to live. Yet we still have moments when we crumble - our words get short, our tempers flare, the tears flow. I shudder to think about people who don't have resources to make this shelter in place business as bearable as we do and we're trying to help in ways we can. But, I know that the food we donate is not a replacement for a feeling of safety within your own home. I can't imagine the helplessness that must accompany not having tools to do e-learning at home, or parents who have lost a job, or parents who must still go to work leaving children home alone. Our world has stopped only in part and the stoppage is effecting everyone, at a minimum mentally, emotionally and physically. This is hard.

There are upsides - at least at our house - for which I'm deeply grateful. The supplies we had bought some time ago for home projects have been put to good use. We've spiffed up our kitchen (pictures to come later), we've painted, we're finishing trim and thresholds from our pre-quarantine tiling of floors. The projects have been more than conduits to 'kill time' - they have been grounding - starting things that have defined ends. It has been life giving to do physical work that feels transformative. It has been exhausting, but that has made sleep come easy and soundly. Upsides include our foursome watching movies together and laughing together. The sun is shining and our children are learning life skills and how to enjoy neighbours from a safe distance.

I wonder what we adopt in this weird time will last - will we continue to monitor how close we walk to people? We will ever be able to shake hands again? Will we (please God) realize that teachers know best how to teach students and get rid of standardized testing? Will we cease to have board meetings in a physical location and stick with the Zoom model? Will we be able to have summer camps? There are so many questions and so very few answers right now and I find it disorienting. I wonder how I will react once 'shelter in place' is deemed over. Will we rush out to restaurants, to baseball stadiums, to parks? Or will we be hesitant and watch how it goes for the first round of folks who venture out? I wonder if, once we have permission to be back in the world, we will find we have only delayed the inevitable and this virus will rear its head again and we'll find ourselves at square one? It's dizzying really - to let yourself wonder.

But wonder gives rise to hope as well as fear and for that I'm grateful. Hope breaks in in unexpected ways - our teenager and I are driving together and learning and laughing together. My husband is home and we eat 3 meals together each day as a family. We're staying in the same room more and that gives me hope. The fact that the world keeps spinning despite our human pause is hopeful - the sun still rises, Easter still happens, babies are still born. Thank heavens for hope's incessant perseverance, may our eyes never grow blind to it. And may we look for ways that we can add hope for others in whatever distance is permitted. I'm convinced we will get through to the other side of this and I'm convinced we will be called upon to be brave and bold and determined. We don't know what 'returning to normal' will look like - I contend we'll actually have to redefine normal and my biggest hope is our new normal takes the best parts of pre-quarantine time and quarantine time and squishes them together to create a new, bright reality that makes room for us to better hear the harmony of the world's song.