Corona Diaries: Episode 6

This post is part of the Corona Diaries series on my blog. You can read all the diaries here.

I didn’t realize how long it had been since the last Corona update, back in the middle of June. It’s been two and a half months and things have completely changed from that post. For the better, mind you.

What’s going on in the world? Well, life is now this weird state of normal-not-normal. Everything’s been canceled from the state fair to concerts to events to everything. But life is kind of sort of normal. More or less. The mask mandate went into effect a month ago or so and I’ve been happy to see the vast majority of people in public complying. I’m very aware of the fact that not everyone can wear one, whether it’s due to a disability or trauma, but I’m glad to see most people out in stores are wearing them.

Restaurants are serving outside and are at 50% capacity indoors. I have yet to eat inside of one, but I believe I’m doing that with a friend next week early with all the old people so hopefully, it won’t be even at 50%. Salons, churches, and businesses, those that survived anyway are open. Olivia and I got haircuts and my hairdresser made an excellent point: it was probably cleaner in the salon than it was at Home Depot with their strict cleaning regimens. Now, let’s keep this cleaning up for stomach viruses and influenza and I’d be 100% on board.

Our school district just released its plan of doing a hybrid version of school, not starting until September 15th. Olivia’s preschool has an amazing plan in place to be able to stay open and I’m planning on dedicating a post to that here soon. But it was something weighing heavily—very heavily—on my mind for the last month. There were so many unknowns and I understand her director’s motives for not giving us the plan until now with the school district still working on their plans and how the preschool will operate in regards to that.

I’ve been out running errands, masking up and so far haven’t been in a situation where I’ve forgotten to bring one. I’ve been building up a stash of masks for the three of us so I can wash them all together at once. I bought a box of disposable ones for the car in case we forget to bring one because GASP! I actually see them in stock. Same with hand sanitizer GASP! Clorox and Lysol have continued to be pretty much an elusive rare animal around these parts. Olivia does amazing in her mask. Granted she’s touching it and readjusting it, but what do we expect? A near-five-year-old to wear one appropriately? The other day I saw a woman pushing a cart of kids in Target with her mask hanging down below her nose so if grown-ass adults can’t—or won’t—wear one appropriately, I can’t expect my kid to be on point either. Still. I’m proud of her.

The baby hasn’t been out much. We took a family trip to Costco last week and Emelia stared open-mouthed and wide-eyed the entire time, never once making a peep because she was so enthralled. I took her once to the fabric store in her stroller and she did the same thing.

It wasn’t how her babyhood was supposed to be. When Olivia was her age, she was in Tot Time, ECFE, library storytime, ECFE playtimes, swim lessons, and the occasional free music class. Homegirl was well-rounded, even at ten months. With Emelia, we started out in the ECFE Babies class which lasted a few sessions before everything hit. Outside of us, my parents, and the occasional friend or sister, she doesn’t see other people.

Back in March, when COVID initially shut everything down, I remember a lot of fear and uncertainty. No one knew what this thing was. It was a potentially deadly virus. Since it hit the US, back in February, 164,000 people have died in the country from COVID according to the most recent CDC data. The conspiracy theorists can bitch all they want. A hundred and sixty-four thousand people have died in the US from COVID in six months.

In mid-March with the shelter-in-place orders, it was a very scary time. People were hoarding, stealing out of people’s carts, no one made eye contact with each other. And then when everyone was at home, there was this sense of “We’re all in this together.” That was a topic of discussion with my therapist a lot back then. We’re all in this together. I’m slipping into a depression, but we’re all in this together. And then, human nature was brought to the surface. We’re not designed to withstand such isolation, normally. Most of us need some sort of interaction with another human being, some of us more than others. While people like me continued to isolate and get more and more depressed, others were saying fuck it and going back to life as normal. I get the need to want to pretend the virus didn’t exist anymore. It’s a horrible situation to be in. It didn’t mean the virus was gone, in any sense.

I think the cases in Minnesota have been pretty OK, compared to other parts of the country. We’ve been pretty conservative which, according to some of the friends on my Facebook feed that are now hidden, is worthy of ridicule and attack. But I’m a nurse, certified in public health, and the data doesn’t lie. We go crazy opening everything up prematurely, we’ll be finding ourselves with excess deaths and shutting everything back down a few weeks later. You saw it in the news all the time. The masks have to be helping. If they weren’t, we’d be seeing it in the data.

So in my own family, we’ve been managing a balancing act. We say yes to daycare. We say yes to going out on errand runs in masks. We say yes to my parents coming over, who’ve been pretty isolated along with us. We say yes to the occasional get-together with friends (which happens far less than I’d like). But then we say no to everything else. Could we attend big gatherings? Yes, but considering we’re already doing things like daycare, it’s not worth the added risk.

Every decision made is a balance of safety versus mental health. Our health is a priority, but no longer at the expense of our mental health. I did three months of isolation where I was depressed, fully, and completely. I hated my life. I hated being a mom. I hated the anger and uncertainty and feeling like a trapped animal. I hated watching others go out and live life as normal. I hated, even more, the people teasing people like me, for being a “sheep.” Actually, I hated people in general for a long time.

For the record, I’m much better now. With Olivia thriving in daycare, her tantrums are non-existent. She’s stable. She can listen to reason better (more or less). She’s getting her socialization she was desperate for but was unable to communicate. I get time to myself. I’ve unfollowed the negativity on social media. I don’t read much at all about COVID. I can’t do it anymore. I’ll now go for several days without reading the news.

There’s still a lot of anger and sadness I have. And uncertainty. I can’t forget that. I can’t plan anything longer than a month out. Emelia’s birthday is coming up in October, and I haven’t fully decided what we’re going to do, because I don’t know what the world is going to look like then. As of now, I’m really hoping we can do a combined outdoor party with both of our immediate families. That’s potentially around 20 people, and we’ll be putting a bunch of rules in place, but I think it’s the best option in order to give my kids their parties. Never did I imagine Olivia sharing Emelia’s first birthday, but it is what it is. Who knows what’s going to happen by the time her fifth birthday rolls around mid-November? That way, we can still celebrate, just the four of us on her actual birthday, but I don’t want to wait and then the state shuts down before her birthday. I’m sad about this. I’m mad about it. I don’t know who I’m mad at, but I’m mad.

And now I’m written over 1,400 words, so I suppose I shouldn’t go 2.5 months without a corona update, yes?