Ah, Covid, we meet at last.
Well, sort of. Last Sunday Sarah was notably sniffly so I tested her, and she was positive. Amy ran up to her room in tears. Carl and I double checked all protocols and rules pertaining to our regular lives, and I began canceling every single plan for my week. Since all of us are vaccinated, if we didn’t show symptoms then it was ok to go to work or school (masked), except someone needed to be home with Sarah. That someone was me. Carl was due to fly to Texas the next day for work, and Amy had school all week. We started wearing our KN95 masks in the house whenever we were together or in common areas. Amy basically spent the entire week in her room when she wasn’t at school. Sarah stayed in her room or my bedroom. For the night that Carl was here he stayed and ate in the basement. Then he was gone until Friday night. I delivered meals by tray to the kids because they could be unmasked in their rooms. Mealtimes felt so lonely at the beginning. The night before all of this started, I had commented about how much I loved it when we all ate together at the table with candlelight and music. For the first few nights of our strange in-house isolation pattern, I got excited as I thought about dinnertime approaching and then remembered that we wouldn’t be together and felt so sad. Amy felt this all deeply too. It was hard not to be able to kiss my kids, though I learned from Sarah that you can still make a kissing sound and have your mask touch someone’s head and that is still heartwarming.
Sarah and I spent hours and hours together, masked, snuggling in my bed and saying “chirp chirp” and talking about my new shirt that has a bear with wings holding a fairy. The fairy represents the daughter of a friend of mine who has big life challenges. Sarah loved to ask me repeatedly if it was a bear or a hedgehog. I have no idea from whence that dilemma originated. She liked to snuggle her head on my chest as she pretended to be the fairy while I was the mama bear. She also wanted to talk about a shirt I used to have based on I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen since it also had a bear on it. And she wanted to go over all of my different t-shirts and the various colors of pants I have and where I bought them. I’m used to our repetitive interactions, but this week was really above and beyond in terms of how often we did this. I also let Sarah have more technology turns than usual in order to save my sanity. One morning after I walked Amy part way to school, I came home and just sat on the sofa looking at Facebook. I couldn’t bring myself to tell Sarah I was back. Then I rallied and we began our usual routines. When we napped together, she was unmasked and I was masked. It is very weird to nap while wearing a mask.
Covid numbers were so high at Sarah’s school that they didn’t have enough staff to continue in-person schooling. Instead of missing a full week of school, Sarah only missed Monday. The rest of the week was virtual so she had anywhere from one to four GoogleMeets. Thursday and Friday were the synchronous days with the most meetings and were thus my easiest days. It was also a freeing revelation that we could walk to a mailbox! We were actually free to leave the house.
Every night I waited until 11pm to go to bed, which is later than usual, because I wanted to let my bedroom air settle for three hours before being in there unmasked. Saturday morning felt like Christmas in terms of the elation in our household at being able to move freely around the house and each other without masks. I know we were very lucky that the only difficulties were those described here and not any real physical health concern. Sarah’s symptoms never moved beyond very slight congestion and an occasional cough.
For Christmas I bought Sarah a box of 12 Peppa Pig puzzles, even though jigsaw puzzles have always been quite hard for her. Whenever I asked her if she wanted to do them she said no, but one day after we played Chutes and Ladders, I flipped that board over and took out one puzzle for us to do. Sarah was instantly way more interested in this puzzle that I expected. I think it was because she recognized the characters. We did several puzzles overall, with me always helping with what pieces I handed her or making suggestions. I felt like it was a delicate balance to slightly challenge her without having her get so frustrated that she would give up. The concept of edges and corners is elusive and does not factor into Sarah’s placement attempts. One night she said she wanted to do a puzzle by herself but wanted me to sit with her. It took great restraint to just witness. When she asked for help occasionally I made verbal comments but that was all. She did the whole puzzle by herself!!!!! This is way above and beyond what I thought she could do. I feel like it was a good metaphor for parenting and life, reminding me not to help so much. That is hard!!
Yesterday the kids made a smoothie all by themselves. They also played together often. There were many times when Sarah wanted to do Chirp Chirp with me when Amy would swoop in, to my relief, and invite Sarah to play Squeak. Squeak is a game where they sit on my bed and tip back simultaneously while saying, “Squeak!” Amy took selfies of the two of them playing and sent them to me. Amy also had a lot of fun with dress-ups since we sorted through our bins to clear out whatever didn’t fit. Meanwhile, Sarah helped fill the new bird feeder that a friend gave us for Christmas. Overall yesterday was a good day, which left me room to feel all the feelings about how hard the week had been. So by the evening I was the one needing time for tears. My old stuffed animal puppet Blackberry was a very good listener. My mom used to inhabit Blackberry when I was younger so it was easy to imagine Blackberry’s kind and inquisitive personality. It really is so wonderful having all of us back together again in our shared spaces with bared faces.
I hope you are all well. Or if you aren’t, then I hope your cases are mild and your isolation short.
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