Prelude to Pandemic
March 13th, 2020
This is what the pandemic looks like in our house.
My youngest son has one friend over on a Friday night instead of three.
My older son is enjoying what would normally be a typical Friday night gaming-marathon with his buddies, but tonight the atmosphere is unsettled.
Friday night going into a standard weekend is a very different feeling from Friday night going into an expanse of unknown. Schools are closed until March 29th, unless they're closed longer. It feels different when the structure around the time shifts, morphing into an unpredictable expanse of freedom during a period when things are supposed to be busy; spring break a month early and a long period of time off when there isn't supposed to be a break. Everyone settling into the heart of the academic quarter only to have it abruptly pause. The spring hockey season that started just last night postponed. The paintball 16th birthday party scheduled for tomorrow postponed. The activities and shared space of our lives together altered. No NHL games to watch during a designated "family night". No carpooling to sports practices. No beginning of the spring soccer season. The ice rink where I spend at least an hour a day most days of the week closed. The grocery store with its predictable cycle of slightly sparse offerings during a well demarcated window at the end of the weekend now sporting vast expanses of empty shelves on a Friday morning when the sun is shining and the temperature caps 70 degrees. Other than it being Friday the 13th, it should have been a glorious day.
There's an emptiness, a silence in my mind and around my body. After 24 hours of scanning the news and email during waking hours to digest the NBA, NHL, NSL, MLB, NCAA and others abruptly halting their seasons at or near the peak of competition; Maryland State school closures; the ripple around the country as jurisdictions anticipate and react to the wave of infections; the litany of cancellations, closures, and postponements; our figure skating club's spring ice show postponed; hockey scrimmage and spring try-out clinics postponed; spring soccer postponed; schools closed; my therapist's office going to 100% Telehealth; the ice rink closed; the grocery story shelves empty; church cancelled for two weeks; developing social distancing and contingency plans at work...suddenly, the headlines of the last few weeks apply to my world directly.
No longer requiring imagination or empathy or the discipline of focused compassion to place myself in the situation, the situation has caught up with me. Is someone hundreds of miles, or only a neighborhood block away, practicing Tonglen meditation for me, sensing the unknown but imagined suffering in my world? Is someone somewhere breathing in the racing heart and shower of anxiety I felt this morning staring at empty shelves where chicken breasts and pork and steak and sausage typically display in abundance? Is someone sending me waves of nurturing and peace, offering to the universe the image of a cup of coffee carefully balanced in my hand, while sitting in the morning sun on a sandy beach and feeling infused with love? Do the images I offer the universe in those moments when I'm standing on solid ground, secure in my physical and emotional well-being, confident in the health and happiness of my family, do those images reach anyone and are those vibrations felt in a way that changes anything? Should I even ask the question? Recognizing that over the course of the evening while finishing work, fixing dinner, sharing a virtual Friday night cocktail with my husband who lives 767 miles away in Alabama, the feeling of underlying anxiety I've felt since yesterday began to ease and in its place opened a wide space of possibility.
What does my world look like when there is nowhere to be? When I'm not late or rushing to do two things at once while hurrying myself and at least one teenager to a third commitment? What does it look like when my skating classes on Saturday are cancelled and the fridge is stocked with whatever could be salvaged from the grocery and there is nowhere to be? Nowhere to go? The imperative, in fact, simply stay where I am. To sit here, on the couch, watching my dogs snore, listening to the sounds of my children talking upstairs and imagining what I'll do with my weekend. Forty-eight hours unscheduled. No expectations, yet, for anything. I could take the dogs for a long walk. I could sleep in. I could bake a cake. Or spend consecutive uninterrupted hours lying on the couch reading a book. Start a new series on Netflix or Amazon Prime. Catch up on the late night television I haven't seen for weeks and alternate between laughing and crying at how we meandered ourselves into this place. I could just sit and do nothing. Or write poetry. Knit. Sleep. Sleep again. Do you notice the theme of sleep, how frequently it recurs in my thinking? I could blog. Work on the novel I've been chipping away at. Do nothing. Sleep. Do nothing. Just be. Be still.
How deep that stillness seems when externalities are removed. And removed not by choice, or by direct personal tragedy (that would overwhelm the interior silence), but removed in the setting of everyone I hold dear being safe, healthy, untouched so far by this global tragedy. But the battery is dead on the computer, and the power cord is across the room. So this is the end for tonight. I think I'll go for the book...on the couch...with ice cream...and two warm snoring dogs.
