everybody is together but in isolation

"We're all in this together."

That has been a recurring tagline for our state's response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and all these weeks later, I still go back and forth on its relevancy. Applied broadly, especially when one gets into the muck of reader comments on social media, it's a bunch of bunk, because clearly, there are many, many folks who are not in this with me. The people who haven't changed any of their social habits or think wearing a mask is a 'sign of weakness' are obviously not in this with me. Those who truly believe the entire pandemic is a planned hoax, some kind of attempt at world domination or something that is so beyond reason I can't even sum it up in a quick soundbite, are not bearing any of the burden that must be shared for the whole to see any chance at control of this virus.

Ironically enough, those who are in this together are the very ones who are apart.

We have a lovely group of friends in our town with whom we'd hang out regularly, meeting up at another dear friend's wine bar in the evening or hanging out on a Friday night doing nothing more than chatting and maybe playing a game together. I'm fortunate enough to work with several folks from this group, so I have the added bonus of seeing them regularly during the week, as well. But now we're together only in the sense that we're all staying far away from each other and everyone else.

It's been ten weeks since everything shifted here. My kids started spring break and my husband went away for the week for a work trip. I continued to work most of the week, minus a trip to IKEA with friends. It was the beginning of our sense of the virus inching closer. One friend refused to touch door knobs and cart handles, and I giggled at his extra caution. We ate at my favorite taco restaurant in the 'big city', and we were surrounded by loads of people out on a beautiful day shopping and playing the role of the American consumer that we all perform so well.

I think back to that day as the last time it felt normal to be out in public. That was 3/9/20, eleven weeks ago today.

In the time since, we've grown accustomed to working from home, doing something called school from home (that was little more than random assignments and busy work that may or may not have meant much of anything, more likely the latter), and living 99.9% of our lives at home. We have a dry erase calendar on our fridge on which individual family members' activities get recorded, each in its own color for easy reference. When I first wiped the second half of March clean from the board and replaced those canceled activities and experiences with STAYING AT HOME, I thought it was mildly funny. A brief break from the norm. In a way, a kind of blessing, for those weeks would have been as busy as usual, and now we had an excuse to take it easy for a little while. Things were canceled until the first of April, and I imagined I'd be back to filling up the next month's schedule as usual.

Then they were canceled again until mid-April. Then maybe they'd be reconsidered at the end of April. Then indefinitely.

All the while since, I've been reminding myself that we are beyond lucky in this wild time. We have a home with space and resources for each of us to be comfortable and able to do what is required of us without having to leave the added safety it now provides. We have food, water, and supplies. We have the ability to go for walks without being crowded by others, when it gets to be too much to stay inside. We have each other.

We're in this together.

How could I let such a remarkable time in our lifetime go by without some kind of acknowledgement here, even if this hasn't been such an accurate recording of our lives in the last few years? And in this space, I do love a good acronym, so here we go. When we look back at this time in our family's life, we could think about some of the specific PUPs and DOGs that we experienced.

Plans UnPlanned

• archery tournaments
• basketball team banquet 
• track practices and meets
• 3 book club meetings, and counting
• spring installment of Ladies' Weekend
• final Girl Scout meetings before our troop dissolves
• 8th grade class trip to Washington, DC
• 6th grade class trip to King's Island
• 6th and 8th grade graduation ceremonies
• 2 haircuts (meaning a stay-at-home order became a grow-out-your-pixie order, as well)
• basketball training camps for the hubby
• yearly Grown-Ups Weekend getaway

I'm sure there were other things that I'm missing now, as I literally deleted all the things from our calendar that we were going to miss. It was too sad to see them sitting on there knowing that they were forever stuck in the idea stage, never to be actually experienced. 

Even knowing that we haven't suffered in any way during this pandemic beyond the cancellation of plans doesn't erase the disappointment that was still very real. People who worked on the front lines fighting this virus and those who lost their lives or their loved ones to it have pain that I'll never know, and nothing that I say here is meant to even compare in the slightest. But, the point of this space has always been to serve as a record of our family's life, along with my own mindset. And honestly, this level of isolation has been challenging for my mental health. I miss all the regular daily things just as much as all those experiences we had planned. This hasn't been easy, even though our difficulties haven't compared with others'. 

We're all in this together, right? 

In an attempt to remember that this time in our family's life also came with bright spots, to balance out the PUPs, we also had these DOGs.

Different Opportunities Gained

• daily family walks around the neighborhood
• dinners together at a reasonable hour instead of rushed between practices or games
• seeing Hubby at random points during the work day
• delivering in-person midday rants to my husband about work wackiness
• connecting with faraway friends virtually
• celebrating several family birthdays with my parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins through the magic of Zoom 
• learning all about new apps to play games with pals from our own separate living rooms
• midweek banana bread baking by the kids
• work day lunch breaks that include reading in bed while snuggled up with one or both dogs
• receiving mail from friends-- like actual paper cards
• dropping off treats to friends' porches in a quest to bring them a smile, and receiving lovely surprises, too
• learning to not care too much about my multiple chins during a video chat because my friends don't give a crap, so why should I?
• having a virtual graduation that included more family and friends than a school ceremony would have
• acting as a lending library for a friend's adorable kids, selecting books that I think her adorable preschooler would enjoy and waiting excitedly for feedback about the choices
• streaming a live concert by Steven Page in my own living room (with more to come!)

This list is likely incomplete, as well, as there are all the small things that we've begun to take for granted in this new way of life. I don't know how long this will continue, and we're even starting to do a little bit more out of the house, in small increments. I went into a store for the first time earlier this month to get some teenager birthday supplies, and we've gone to the local garden supply place a couple times. Even if I stay outside looking at their plants and trees out there for 95% of the time, it still is an outing, especially if one of their cats is around to pet. Today saw us heading to a state park for a picnic dinner and some outdoor archery shooting, though this public outing didn't see us crossing paths with anyone else, thankfully. This weekend, we even sat by a fire with friends, in a BYOE(verything) kind of hang out, staying more like 18 feet apart and just chatting into the evening. A new chapter in the story of friendship. 

The future is uncertain. Will upcoming plans become unplanned-- a yearly trek back to MD in early September, a wedding in CT in mid-September, a friend gathering in early October? Will we be able to have any backyard BBQs? Will our kids get to see other kids at any point this summer? What will school look like as the kids start their first years in middle and high school in August? I don't do well without plans to look forward to and even small things to see marked ahead on the calendar. I'm missing so much, and I'm not confident that anything will be back to what we knew as normal any time soon. 

But I guess we'll just have to keep being in this together. Apart, together. 

Title inspiration: "Isolation" by Steven Page, a song written and recorded during the Covid-19 pandemic