All the advice I’ve read about blogs says you should keep your blog centered on a specific topic. That’s about to go out the window here, and I have no qualms about that.
Ten days ago, my university closed operations and sent all the students home early for spring break. I was not on campus that day. I woke up prepared to telecommute, as I usually do on Fridays, and discovered I was not expected to work.
My first thought: well, I’ll work anyway. After all, I had not one but two stacks of papers to respond to. And because I spend about 30-40 minutes on each, I’d meticulously planned out how many of these I needed to respond to each day before the end of spring break in order to keep from feeling overwhelmed. (I’m a planner–if not by nature, then by necessity: planning keeps my anxiety in check.)
I called my boss to check in about a few things and let her know my plan. She advised me to abandon it. Did we know if the University would be reopening this spring? No, not yet. What did I need to be doing now OTHER than work?
This may have been the moment the virus became inescapably real to me. I hadn’t been in denial about it before. I’d been tracking its spread for weeks, and I knew it was only a matter of time before it hit my city. But it took my boss saying “What else should you be doing?” to shake me out of my “work first” thinking.
So I did the thing I’d been thinking for a week that I simply HAD to do: I bleached every commonly touched surface in my house. Then I texted my older son at his college apartment and told him we could pick him up for spring break anytime that day. I made sure I had something to feed him (he’s a strict vegetarian). I brought snacks and drinks to my husband, who is recovering from foot surgery and really should keep his foot elevated. When my younger son arrived home from high school with a dismantled marimba on loan, I helped him assemble it and listened to him practice while I cooked dinner (he won’t let me post the video I recorded).
Half of my family is at risk for developing a severe case if we contract COVID-19. If I think about that for more than a few seconds at a time, I can’t breathe. So we’re taking social isolation seriously, venturing out only to the grocery store and pharmacy. Quarters are tight (1200 square feet), but huddling at home is making way for something beautiful. We’re navigating the territory all families navigate so they can live in close proximity without coming to blows. The kitchen table has been turned into workspace, so we’re eating dinners sprawled out on the living room furniture, and those dinners are lasting longer than usual. We’re ribbing each other mercilessly and reminiscing about the looney things the boys did when they were small, about parenting fails, about the things that have shaped us into who we are as a family (though no one says that’s what we’re doing).
The university closure lasted only a day. The students went off for spring break (at loving homes and with good social isolation, I hope, though I know that’s not the case for everyone). Those of us who could began working from home. I meet with my colleagues from the University Writing Center via Zoom every morning, and we parse out the work of moving our popular face-to-face operations online. I’ve returned to my students’ papers, with an adjusted number of papers per day, and am currently adapting my class for online instruction (but that’s another post).
So I’m back to business, but the pace is different. My commute is short. I’m waking up without an alarm after a full night’s sleep. I’m finally doing those rotator cuff exercises the doctor told me to do for my sore shoulders, and my walks with the dog feel exploratory rather than rushed. I no longer race around to get to things on time: I just click JOIN MEETING in Zoom. And when I remove my noise cancelling headphones for lunch, the people who are dearest to me are right there.
In the midst of the unthinkable, we’ve been given the gift of time. Let’s use it well.