Calendar Time with Hank (Day 15)

We start each morning with the calendar I put up in my son Hank's bedroom when he cried about missing morning circle time at preschool. He repositions a Velcro-backed arrow onto weather squares according to his view of the sky when we pull the curtains back from the window. Why is it always cloudy, Mama? He pulls out the next square from a little orange pouch to place in the next slot, then takes his pointer and counts all of the days we've lived in March. I always know the month and date. Time does not ebb and flow at Christmas-break speed during quarantine for me. The hours go quickly and I am never bored. Somehow, I have less time than usual. Now that Hank's birthday is over, the countdown begins to the birth of his sister. On Sunday, there will be 11 days left. Appointments are canceled, rescheduled. All plans change but life continues, regardless.
Hank's understanding of the virus is limited to what a four-year-old can grasp, which is more than what I expect sometimes. When he plays, his dinosaur villain is Coronavirus, who lives at his daycare, the grocery store and now: the hospital.
But it's spring break so I try to make fun out of what we have now. His interest has deepened in the backyard bird feeder after it was visited by a fat pheasant for a few hours last Sunday, a sign of good luck, according to my parents. We watch for favorite birds at certain times of day: mourning doves, goldfinches, cardinals, and chickadees. I watch too much news. I read too much news. I make Paw Patrol Macaroni & Cheese three days in a row. On his fourth birthday, he misses out on the crown he'd wear at preschool, the treats he'd bring to class, and the games he'd play outside with friends. But we video chat with our family and friends as he blows out the candles on the cake that the two of us make out of a box and top with canned frosting. His dad assembles the big kid bike that we ordered for Hank's birthday present weeks before we confined ourselves to the house on the evening of March 13th. The pedals make it trickier than his old balance bike, but Hank doesn't give up, even though he's clearly frustrated. I watch from the sliver of our front porch, standing in the puddle of light that leaks outside from the entry window. He practices pedaling with his dad jogging next to him for balance, back and forth across the uneven asphalt until you can no longer see the sidewalk clearly in the dark. 

Why now?

I started my first online journal a few weeks before 9/11 as a freshman in college. Every few years, I revisit what I wrote then and remember the uncertainty of the months that followed, remember visiting the ATM with new friends from the dorm and withdrawing the meager savings I'd managed to set aside for that first year at Beloit. It was an overreaction then, but none of us knew it at the time as we walked together beneath that eerily empty, beautifully blue sky. Rumors were flying and everyone seemed to know someone who supposedly knew what was going on. In truth, the people who claimed to have inside knowledge or seemed confident about what was going on in the world were dealing with just as much uncertainty as the rest of us.


In some ways, it was reassuring to revisit my old journal today. It's hard to really know what's going on right now, and COVID-19 is definitely making a lot of us nervous. My hope is that our country takes self-quarantining seriously and manages to "flatten the curve" in order to give everyone a fighting chance when they experience the virus. There's a lot of uncertainty right now so I'm trying to focus on the things that I can control: figuring out how to make a Buzz Lightyear birthday cake for my soon-to-be-four-year-old son Hank from the ingredients in my pantry, training my cat Gerri to stay off my desk while I'm working, keeping in touch with my brother and soon-to-be-sister-in-law who are self-quarantining after returning from a cruise in late January. My newest niece Zara will be born in the next couple of hours, and although I'm disappointed that I'll have to make do with pictures and video chats since I won't be able to visit her for a while, I'm looking forward to when I’ll able to meet her for the first time. I know that Zara will grow up in the new normal that comes after today's uncertainty.


I'm glad that I can revisit my own thoughts, decisions, and fears from almost twenty years ago because it does give me some reassurance today that the world may change, and that's definitely scary, but life continues and situations stabilize. I will never regret keeping a journal of that time in my life and that time in this country. It helped me to deal with my anxiety then, and it helps me to cope today.