Deep Quarantine

Happy belated new year! Looking back on 2020, JK ha ha ha. I’m definitely not doing a post like that, because what is there to say? All I’ll say about 2020 is this: never in my life have I felt the energetic pull of a force beyond myself--someone or something taking our human-scale momentum and giving it a kind of superpower. A cosmic open door. Andrew argues that we did it all, that it was our decisions and our actions that got us to this next chapter, but to this I say--Let go and let God. Jesus take the wheel. “Want to know how to make God laugh? Make a plan.” Kidding. I don’t actually say these things unless I want to make Andrew laugh uneasily, unsure whether these are deeply ingrained Catholic things he shouldn’t make fun of. Anyhoo. Here we are.

Remember when I used to title my blog posts with “Quarantine: [date]“? That was cute. That was back when it seemed like lockdown was something temporary, when I was convinced of the importance of recording how we spent our days because it was a strange, liminal, TEMPORARY period that we’d look back on one day with awe and disbelief. Now that we’re in day one million, the novelty has totally worn off. I mean, it wore off a long time ago, and now it just continues to wear and wear and wear further down. The novelty is now concave. It’s negative novelty. And yet on we go with not going anywhere.

Recently Andrew accused me of being “deep quarantine,” and though I protested, he’s right. I am in deep quarantine. Lockdown is maybe my natural state. Though I’d literally saw off my arm to walk around a Target right now without worrying about contracting a fatal disease, “forcing” me to stay home isn’t really so hard--in fact, it’s an invitation to just do more of the homelike things I always do. And so I just sink, sink, sink into it. Further and further. Andrew’s accusation was sparked by an impassioned description of how my crocheted afghan is coming along, how many more rows it needs, what color I’ll finish with. I delivered this information at length, with my new double-light round-the-neck reading lamp blazing, my feet in warm slippers, tired from a day of organizing and labeling craft supplies with Berenstain Bears-caliber precision (you either get this reference or you don’t, sorry) and quilling. This wasn’t long after the New Year, and the children hadn’t emerged from the basement for two days, immersed in making slime and building new Lego sets. So I get it. I get it. We’ve been home too long. We might always be home. It’s hard to imagine not being home. 

And yet! We’re okay. Truly. The hellscape of early January has resolved itself with all kinds of positivity: a blessedly changed White House, First Dogs with a Twitter account, those Bernie memes (I saw one today with Bernie/mittens captured in a trail cam image--thank God for funny people), AND--the best of all!--first vaccine doses for my parents. I’m not a lottery-winning kind of person, but being on Twitter at the exact moment the expansion of Pennsylvania’s 1A to 65+ was announced, which allowed me to snag their appointments before word began spreading, was probably as lucky as I’ll get in this lifetime. I’ll take it. We can’t really see them with abandon right now since the kids are in school, so having them get this vaccine really feels like a miracle.

And yes, the kids are back in in-person school, after being virtual since mid-November, which I’m grateful for every day. That said, my children love being home, and they were in the rhythm of home, and I loved having them home--I loved making hot chocolate and reading books together during their breaks; I loved how Farrah perched herself in a little chair in the upstairs hallway, keeping watch over both girls as they worked in their rooms; I loved hearing snippets of classroom life. But they’re happy to be back. I’m happy they’re back. We’re very lucky to be in this position. Fingers crossed it lasts, but it’ll also be okay if they wind up home again for a while.

Because there’s nowhere we can go, we’ve been focusing on this house. The basement renovation is complete. It is amazing. There are four rooms: a craft room, a playroom, a billiards room (I know, what? the pool table also converts to ping-pong), and a yoga/exercise room. Bright light, high ceilings, (faux) wood flooring. There are also three unfinished rooms: a workshop, storage, and holiday storage. It’s a fan-freaking-tastic basement. Some people make house-buying decisions around marble foyers; I make house decisions based on basement potential. Worth it. The kids have been making giant craft-room messes with slime, collaging, paper-punching, Lego-ing. 

Now we’re embarking on a new project: redecorating the living room. It’s not exactly a “living room.” The kids call it The Long Room, which is what will probably stick; in realtor terms, it’s a drawing room. Big, formal, useless. But not for long! We’re bringing this stuffy room down to earth with built-in bookshelves and more, making it into the library of my (sorry, sorry, OUR) dreams. Would you like to hear about all the details and decisions? I could go on. I have nothing else to talk about, except maybe how cold it was waiting in the car last weekend for my groceries to be delivered to my trunk. Sigh. 

This month, I taught the girls to crochet. That was frustrating but now it’s fun, because they love it. Their first attempts were very revealing, though I’m not sure of what: Lucia dropped so many stitches that her square became a triangle; and Greta added so many that her square became a kind of mushroom. Any child psychologists want to weigh in on what these suggest about their futures?

Being back in in-person school means back to packing lunches every day. We made a big change this school year: the kids pack their own lunches now. Every night, after dinner, I send them into the kitchen with a loose guideline of...make some kind of lunch. Honestly, I don’t care what it is. Lucia usually makes a salami sandwich and adds grapes or apple slices and some kind of cracker or snacky thing. Greta gets a little more creative: yogurt, hummus with veggies, leftovers from dinner. I’m glad she likes a nice healthy lunch, except she’s also the child who goes really far afield now and then. Last week I watched from a distance as she made a sandwich from sunflower seed butter and Honey Nut Cheerios. Yesterday her “sandwich” was two slices of American cheese with a slice of salami between. But: whatever. They actually eat way more lunch now than they ever did when I packed them, so this is a win all around.

Has there ever, in the history of this blog, been a more random post? It’s fine. I resolve to post more etc etc. Now I’m going to make a cup of tea, cover myself in an afghan, start up Ted Lasso, and dive deep into quarantine.