The updates at dinner are so robust it could be a weekend. My daughter learned to ride a bike. She and my boys had martial arts classes online. The middle boy discovered a new, free video game and my oldest went on a geocache adventure. This wasn't Sunday or a day off. It's a Wednesday. We did all this while we were working at home. Coronavirus has requested that we spend more time together.
Vitamin D is free.
We start the day with some home schooling. There is no sleeping in because our new puppy's food clock is more accurate than a Swiss timepiece, but that's good. We need to capture the kids before they're fully aware. We eat and then line up with a laptop or whatever workbook or activity we can conjure to maintain the kids. Sarah and I try to keep our work frustration language family friendly and the kids do everything in their power not to be focused. I can't blame them as I check the news every five minutes. How many cases are there now? What's Trump said to further deflate a nation? Do I still have a job?
Somewhere between an issue with fifth grade fractions and a conference call, you realize how important your work is. That overlooked physical space. A walled-off sanctuary to give you adult time to flex and recoil, repeat. It gives you time to, you know, make enough money to pay for children. That refuge is gone. Work has sent all of us home to keep working from home. School has let the kids out, too, and you realize just how incredible a place that institution is. No more complaining about crappy art programs or slashed PE budgets. I'll kick in more every year just for the structure and the discipline.
So here we are as a family, our refuges ripped away and we're left to slide down into the same small space. That wedge we work our way out of mornings, evenings and weekends, but now it's all the time. These first two days have been the longest month of my life.
7am. cupcakes.
The kids are autonomous for a few minutes. My wife looks at Twitter. I look at Twitter. We stare and scroll before coming to, inhaling our surroundings, and setting our phone as far away as possible. This time it's her that makes a noise. "Oh," she intones across our marriage. Those little squeaks are cries for help. You need someone to talk to. At some point you start making little noises when you don't mean to. That's your brain just trying to help. Or maybe we're nuts now.
The "oh" has grapple-hooked me. "What are you reading?" I ask. She tells me it's about animal shelters in Los Angeles. They're shutting down and the animals need homes.
I freeze. Not the dogs. They didn't do this. "You know we can live wherever we want right now," imagining us with a field of dogs somewhere in California.
"I know, I know," she quiets my impulse by letting me know she's always game if I have a plan. Tonight she's likely to dream about us getting stranded with a horse trailer full of emotionally broken animals and the only food we have is gluten-free bread.
We'd move on hoping someone in California would help. (They would.)
There is that phrase that I can't stand: at the end of the day. If someone says this at your work more than three times a week, they should be barred from speaking on important issues. But now, when I see us at the end of the day, the literal one, it's kind of amazing. These days are huge. We're multitasking at multiple levels. Fourteen hours of full contact living. Greco-Roman carpe diem with our hands on absolutely everything but our face. (I yelled, "Don't touch your face, asshole" to myself in the grocery store.) It's like an 80s movie montage stretched into real time. No easy edits from slovenly to svelte. It's constant motion. Sarah getting her chance to do work stuff while I brave the grocery store to get things for ourselves and our neighbor. Then I work while she's helping one of the kids with their musical instruments. It goes back in forth in this two-by-four frame of a daily square dance.
We hadn't realized how many dimensions our life had until they were folded onto our lap. Actual dimensions of time and space stretching into a commute to kid activities. The karate school, the music school, the school school, and our work has all been smashed into the confines of our home. Quick-thinking entrepreneurs utilizing online interfaces to teach and share and still make a living. So instead of dropping our kids off for an hour, they're staying with us. We all did karate together today. At first we gathered around the live feed like it was a Depression-era Fireside Chat.
My daughter’s feet freaked me out.
My oldest finishes his class and asks if he can watch the post-apocalyptic movie Bird Box. I probably shouldn't let him but I do and ten minutes later he's back. "Was watching a movie about something killing everyone different before something was actually killing everyone?" he asks. I thought about when my brother and I watched it. A mindless thriller while we sorted through pictures for our dad's memorial.
"Yeah, probably," and I laughed at this poor kid's horrific revelation of our current reality. We hope to make our own time together a feel-good family flick. And then I swallow and wonder if my tonsils are feeling weird.
Part of the stress is seeing the new opportunities to change the way we live. You see that in Venice. For the first time in years, boatless canals reveal clearer waters and actual wildlife. Dolphins are returning to ports where the ships have discontinued their deliveries and, in many Chinese cities, the air is cleaner than it has been in a long time. This pause has given nature a chance to reveal itself in ways that we rarely notice. Or maybe the beasts are checking to see if we’re gone for good.
When things get better there will be what's called (it's an actual term for an actual thing) revenge pollution. It's when our desire to catch up with production will make up for all the pollution that isn't happening, the commuting that isn't happening. All the family time that is happening. And it weighs on me as I wonder how we can come out of this and learn something. How can we turn this lesson into real life? That's churning as my two boys are about to go to fisticuffs over a video game, and my daughter is trying to get my attention while I'm on a company call. Someone on the signal from their own smashed reality peers through the portal and asks what I think. Think? About what? I have no idea what to say to my coworkers so I use my daughter as a distraction. "I think I'd better get my work done so I can play with this kid!" There's laughter and I promise to get back with some thoughts.
The piles of responsibility push us outside. We all take a break to teach our little one to ride a bike. And she takes off. It's the most liberating thing I've seen in years. She has wings. You go girl. Don't be afraid to do something big and new. Get your balance. Capture the momentum. Look where you're going and not where you've been.
