Quarantine Diaries Day 314: Worn Down

Last year, I wrote minimum an hour a day five days a week. Notable exceptions include the week after the pandemic shut down the U.S. (which I spent picking nits out of my hair and doom scrolling), the week I got really, really sick (which I spent freaking out), the week I went on a real vacation (camping in Michigan), and the weeks I spent “on vacation” in my house (spring break, winter break). This year I have big goals. I want to finish my memoir and start a novel. I want to keep writing these diary entries and, if this pandemic ever ends, I want to publish every single sad puppy posts into a book. I want to start a newsletter. I want to write about all the cool stuff I do when I’m not ruminating about my life choices and place in the world. I want to post about tarot on Instagram because nerding out about a niche hobby is me in my purest form. We’re only two weeks into the new year but instead of writing I’ve mostly been, uh, staying up too late and sleeping in and writing nothing at all. Last year, this diary was the easiest place to show up. This year, I have nothing to say.

What is there to say about parenting? My life with my daughter is a mixed bag of joyful, mundane, hilarious, excruciating, and poignant moments. None of it is new. My daughter is really into jokes. Knock knock jokes and puns and dad jokes and and jokes she made up that are actually pretty funny. She’s always been this way, and we support her habit with joke books that she reads to us page by page like she’s telling a story. When she was a tiny baby, her dad and I had a stupid running gag about how she would disappear every night to do blue comedy at a club in the city. The jokes have taken on a life of their own this school year. One of the rotating jobs in her second grade class is joke teller. The joke teller is supposed to come to class prepared with one joke–just one!–but when it was my daughter’s turn, she had three at the ready and my husband reassured me that’s how it goes. The teacher lets the joke teller get away with telling at least two or three jokes and then the next twenty minutes is a free for all with absolutely anyone who wants to chiming in with their own jokes. Once, I came home from a walk and heard my daughter saying “knock knock” and the teacher responding “who’s there?” and my daughter saying “banana” and the teacher asking innocently “banana who?” and my daughter repeating “knock knock” and the teacher asking, with trepidation this time, “who’s there” and my daughter (daring girl) answering “banana” and that’s when I turned around and walked right back the door because I know exactly how long my daughter can carry on with this joke before she lets everybody off the hook with an “orange you glad I didn’t say banana?!” I don’t know if the teacher gets anything else accomplished during morning meetings and I don’t care because somehow she’s building rapport between twenty kids sitting in twenty different houses who spend the bulk of their days staring at twenty different screens. Thanks to the daily comedy routines with her class, my daughter has a ton of material, but, like a touring comic before the advent of the comic special, she tells the same jokes over and over again. Because there are so many and because half the time I’m only half listening, I forget the punchlines over and over again. “Hey mama. What room does a ghost not need?” “Ummmm, I dunno, let’s see. . . The bathroom?” “No, mama. Why do you always say that? It’s the living room.”

What is there to say about navigating life outside during a pandemic? Functionally, life looks a lot like it did last March, which is to say, I barely leave my house. Emotionally, it is both more and less terrifying. We’re not wiping down groceries anymore and I’m not worried about supply chains breaking down, but people in my family are finally getting sick. They are recovering from it, thank God, but we know enough about COVID long haulers and about the unpredictability of this disease to know they’re not out of the woods. The worst part is, ten months ago, I believed that life would go back to normal in a few months. Now, even with the vaccine going into the arms of healthcare workers and people who are high risk, I have no hope that life is going to get better anytime soon. Maybe not even this year. The neighborhood, the extended family, the church, the school, the district, the city, the state, the country–they’ve all broken trust too many times. I know plenty of people aren’t living like this anymore, but there is nowhere to go in Chicago. It’s cold out and restaurants, museums, and parks are back closed. Anyway, you couldn’t play me to step into a room with other people inside. I had to run to Target to pick up on online order over the holidays and I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Last year, I stayed home to protect other people. I was trying to do something for my community, my country. Fuck that noise. It’s evident now we’re all in this for ourselves. This year, I’m staying home for me.

What is there to say about staying home? It’s lost its novelty. A few years ago, I took two weeks off work during the holidays. I didn’t travel anywhere and nobody came to visit, I just stayed home and celebrated Christmas and New Year with my little family of three. The time was restorative –I hadn’t taken that much time away from work since maternity leave–but it was also the longest two weeks of my life. That was the year of the polar vortex and it was mostly too cold to leave the house. I got so bored that I joined the YMCA just for a place to go. I hit up family swim and gym with my daughter every morning and went back to work out by myself every afternoon. When it was time to go back to work, I was more than ready. This year, I blinked and the holidays were over. Staying home was easy. Who needs a gym when you’ve got snow on the ground and warm clothes in the closet and art supplies and books and music and board games and television and a kid’s wide open imagination?

What is there to say about politics? I have no unique vantage or new insights. I’m watching our democracy crack like everyone else. It makes me sick what happened at the Capitol, but it doesn’t surprise me. There’s never not been cause for despair.

What is there to say about religion? I have none. I have something; you could call it spirituality and I’d cringe and say, “Ugh, I guess,” but it changes shape faster than I can track and I’m no longer interested in offering it up to the masses. I turned myself inside out for years and I’m not sure there’s any more marrow to suck from those bones.

What is there to say about (not) drinking? I gave up. I drank a few months out from what would have been a five year anniversary. I’m still working out whether I still put any stock in the concept of recovering out loud when the recovery is not a straight line.

Last year, I tied up every one of these quarantine diary entries like making meaning is my job. This year, the best I can offer you is a loose container for all the thoughts and events rattling around like the wooden blocks my daughter played with when she was a toddler. They never quite fit back into the package they came in. My mind is a cardboard box worn soft and coming apart at the corners. This blog is a slightly bigger box.