quarantine life – Life Off Headset

Weekly recap + what we ate – SNOW!!!!

Saturday we went to the park for the first time in weeks. The four year old took his new scooter and the nine year old rode her bike. At the park the kids climbed and ran and swung and hopped. We worked on teaching the four year old how to pump his legs on the swing. There was sun and 40 degree weather (which feels warm these days), and fresh air and a change of scenery and neighborhood dogs playing catch in the tennis courts.

It proved a good thing because it snowed the next day. Beautiful white snow! A thick blanket of it, covering everything.

The snow gave us several days of fun, despite the fact that distance learning has done away with the idea of a “snow day”. I’m a little bit in mourning about that, though one of the teachers had a virtual snow day that consisted of the students throwing wadded up balls of paper at their screen. IRL (as the kids say these days) we bundled up and went outside and built snow forts, shaped snowmen, made snow angels. The kids even helped the grown ups shovel. The four year old found a “snowchair”- a divot in the snow bank left next to our drive way by snow plows. The baby discovered the joy of eating snow… she would find chunks of snow and carry them around in her hand, chomping it like a snow cone. The nine year old delighted in throwing snow balls.

As for me- I loved the quiet and the cold. After the kids went inside, I would just stand outside, letting the cold envelop me, the snow muffling the sounds of outside and day. It was like being in an isolation chamber. And I could breathe and for two minutes not be responsible for anything except my own breath.

Afterwards, there is a quiet satisfaction to seeing all our snowy boots lined up next to the door and our snow suits hung in a row to dry in the bathroom.

The listservs exploded with snow gear for sale and free, a lot of it posted as “like new” and “barely worn”. I guess a lot of people had stocked up in snow gear last year. And then it hadn’t snowed.

I’ve been doing some more cardboard building. When we got our new stove in December, we acquired a new appliance sized box for projects. Also- when the stove was delivered, I asked if they had other boxes and they left a refrigerator box as well. Around the end of the year our cardboard box UPS truck finally collapsed and went out for recycling. For weeks the four year old has been requesting a FedEx Truck while the nine year old wanted an ice cream truck. And because he wanted to give me a challenge, the four year old requested a door in the back that went up and down. Well. I guess I was going to get serious about carboard box building so I did some internet research to find better ways of attaching cardboard together and found these screws designed for cardboard box building. Between those, packing tape and brass fasteners, I feel like I have a decent variety of tools for cardboard box construction, and my cardboard box construction game has been upped.

The back door on the truck is manually operated, but it does go up and down! It took a bit of making and testing and trouble shooting, but a fun challenge.

Also on another day, I made the four year old and airplane as well. There are many modes of transportation inside our house.

Despite the snow, the hyacinths have started to poke their green heads up. Perhaps the warmer weather has confused them. It is so deceptive to see them push their way through the ground so soon. I hope they survive.

Hearts found in nature:

We did some kitchen reorganizing and, taking stock of what I was using and not using these days, I packed away our lunch boxes and lunch containers. I realized that we haven’t really used them in a year and they were taking up a lot of accessible space that would probably be better occupied by things we actually did use. I’ve been seeing articles about pandemic fashion and how that has led people to minimize, and I feel like that’s what I did this week with our kitchen too. When I had pulled out all the containers and stacked them, they seemed like a lot, but I guess back when everyone was packing a lunch, I often felt like we didn’t have enough.

Back at the beginning of the pandemic, I really got into making these window clings from an art kit the nine year old had gotten for her birthday. Last spring, it seemed like window art was a huge source of solace and connection. Our neighorhood had various scavenger hunts where people would put things in their window for people to look for on their walks – there was a Bear Hunt and a rainbow hunt. I made all sorts of pictures and designs and one day, I asked my husband what word we should put in our window. And he said, “Resist.” It seemed appropriate at the time: resist implied health and resilience.

Making the word was a lengthy project – each letter took two to three days to make becuase you had to make the outline and wait for it to dry, and then add the colour and wait for that to dry before you could peel it and stick it to the window. But back then I was eager for tedious projects that required patience. It seemed at the begnning of the shutdown all we had was time and ourselves.

RESIST has been on our window for almost a year now. Some days, the late afternoon sun comes through the window and projects the word onto our walls. The colour has faded somewhat, but the word still shows up loud and clear. A message and a reminder. I’m contemplating adding another word to it. Not sure what, though.

What we ate:

Saturday: Brisket and Salad. On of our good friends has a smoker and he brought us some of his smoked brisket.

Sunday: can’t remember. ugh. Maybe take out???

Monday: Broccoli tofu panang curry with rice noodles.

Tuesday: Potato curry and a fennel apple salad from Fresh India.

Wednesday: Black bean burgers (from Run Fast, Cook Fast, Eat Slow), green salsa (from Bittman’s VB6 cookbook) and coconut lime cilantro rice.

Thursday: Cod soup based off a recipe from from Milk Street: Fast and Slow. This was actually a vegetarian soup leek, carrot and potatoe soup from the Milk Street Instant Pot cookbook. I threw in some cod for protein. And just used onions for the leeks.

Friday: Pizza (home made – dough from Bittman’s Dinner for Everyone cookbook) and Once Upon a Mattress – the 2005 television version of the musical. Charming and sweet. The four year old would get up and dance during the dance numbers. The double dance routines going on was adorable.

Seeking and Sharing

I was out walking with my kids the other day. We were running some errands and had some time to kill in a part of the county where I usually don’t spend much time. So I asked my friend google if there were any trails nearby and three options came up within a 10 minute drive of us.

We headed to the first one, and there was no where to park. So we drove on. The second one was apparently a private trail access for residents of that neighborhood only. So we drove on. Thankfully, the third one, had parking and public access. Thankfully, because by then the kids were definitely getting irritated by having been in the car for almost half an hour and mom’s seemingly aimless driving.

The trail meandered through some wooded areas, more or less parallel to a stream and the unfenced backyards of some houses. There were some people loading their bikes onto their car when we arrived, but it was pretty empty otherwise. A sign at the beginning of the trail mentioned that the trail was maintained by a local mountain biking group. I was a little nervous because the dirt path itself was pretty narrow and I would probably have to pitch the kids into the undergrowth not to get run over by bikes if any were to come upon us as we walked.

As it was, the trail was pretty empty. We came across a lady walking a dog and one or two other walkers, but that was it. At one point, we went off the path to what looked like part of an old drainage tunnel into the stream. I sat on a log and nursed the baby, while the two older kids spent some time throwing leaves into the water and watching them float down the stream. The shade and the cool rush of water made it an ideal place to rest during our walk. The weather was pushing the mid 80s, and even the sound of the rushing stream seemed to make things feel less hot.

It having rained the night before, there was definitely mud. The eight year old was wearing her sandals and delighted in the cool squelch of mud between her toes on such a hot day. Of course the three year old wanted to follow suit in his brand new, still-shiny pink sneakers. I tried to be okay with that. Perhaps my initial squeak of disapproval was unsuccessfully smothered as I mentally reminded myself that it was just mud, and the purpose of impromptu hikes is not to stay clean.

On the way back to the car, the eight year old ran on ahead down the path while I paced myself with the three year old’s sturdy little legs. At one point, I looked up and saw the eight year old talking to a man who was working on some of the trees. As we got closer, I saw that he was part of the mountain biking group that maintained that trail. By the time I got to him, however, the eight year old had taken off again, so I nodded hello, and continued on.

“Were you talking to that man?” I asked my daughter, when I caught up to her.

“Yeah,” she replied.

“What was he doing?”

“He was pulling vines off the trees.”

“Oh.”

“But I knew that. I could tell. But you know, ” she continued, “sometimes when you work by yourself, it’s nice when someone comes up and asks you questions. I wanted to be nice to him and be interested in what he was doing.”

Later that day, I was listening to a recent episode of On Being, featuring a conversation between the host Krista Tippett and the renowned primatologist Jane Goodall. Tippett always releases an unedited version of her conversations, alongside the edited version that is heard on the radio, and I usually prefer listening to the unedited version of the conversations. There are so many small details that don’t make it to the edited version – details that are not really substantial to the conversation at hand – a mic check where Tippett asks the guest what they had for breakfast, for instance – but I think they really show the craft and care that go into having a sincere conversation.

There were so many thoughtful and inspiring moments in their conversation, but the one that struck me the most came towards the end. One of Tippett’s standard questions towards the end of a conversation is to ask the guest what they think it means to be human. And Goodall, as part of her answer, said that it was the difference between intellect and intelligence.

“I believe that a trick of this intellect,” she continued, “… was that we developed this way of communicating – of speaking. So I can tell you things that you don’t know. You can tell me things that I don’t know. We can teach children about things that aren’t present. And all that has enabled us to ask questions like ‘Who am I?’, ‘Why am I here?… and I believe, part of being human is a questioning, a curiosity…”

And as I was listening to this, I couldn’t help but to remember what my eight year old said in the woods earlier that day, and how she seemed to understand that asking questions and exchanging information was so fundamental to connecting with other people. I was struck by how her sense of empathy manifested it self in a natural curiosity. And I thought, perhaps it is not just the questioning that makes us human, but also the seeking and sharing.

I know this pandemic has been hard on many of us because all the ways that we usually seek and share have been restricted – especially all the ways we are compelled to seek and share with strangers. One of the challenges I’m finding these days is nurturing that impulse at a time when we are being told to be suspicious and cautious around people who aren’t in our “bubble”. It’s a challenge both as a person and as a parent. My daughter seems to show no such reluctance to seek and share, but I have to balance that beautiful forwardness with the need to behave safely and responsibly.

I remember one day, about three weeks into the quarantine, when I had to go to school to pick up a laptop of the 8 year old. The school employee handing out the laptops was the first stranger I had seen in ages. And interacting with an unfamiliar person sure felt strange. It was as if I had forgotten what it was like to smile, exchange pleasantries and connect with someone new. The deeper we get into staying at home, the more indefinite the terms are, the more I worry that my impulse for connection and curiosity will wither. And I wonder if I have to worry about the same for my children.

Back in June, on and episode of Fresh Air the epidemiologist Michael Osterholm made a comment about how we should stop using the term “social distancing”. “What we should do is physical distancing, but don’t social distance” he says. “If there is ever a time when we all need each other, it is now.”

That thought has stayed with me over the months. Yes, we are quarantining, but we don’t need to isolate ourselves off from anyone, not even strangers. So I try to smile at people, even when wearing a mask. I try to take time to read and exchange tips with internet strangers in different forums. I encourage the kids to speak up and compliment people’s dogs when we meet them on our walks. When we do encounter neighbors, we take time to talk and catch up. On hikes, we maintain distance and wear masks, but we also take time to tell fellow hikers of neat things that we’ve passed on the trail so that they, too, might also be on the look out for frogs in logs and waterfalls. We remind ourselves to connect with others, to ask seek answers, and to share information. This pandemic does not mean we need to go forth alone.

Where the Wild Things Are

Our dog eared copy of the beloved classic.

That very night in Max’s room a forest grew and grew – and grew until his ceiling hung with vines and the walls became the world all around and an ocean tumbled by with a private boat for Max and sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year to where the wild things are. – from Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

I feel as if suddenly it’s spring. Not just spring, but late spring, verging on summer. Somehow we missed spring, while sitting at home during a pandemic. The cherry blossoms (which are always an indicator here) peaked at the beginning of the stay at home orders. Usually the cherry blossoms are time marker for me, but this year, it was a blip, barely registering.

My cousin Karen has been writing daily on Facebook, each post labelled with the day number. I think if it were not for her posts and for the daily posts of other blogs I read, I would have absolutely no sense of what day it is or how deep into stay-at-home orders we are. When I’m working, the rhythm of time is pretty much defined by when in the process we are (ie. prep, rehearsal, tech, or performance) and when the next free day is. Without those markers, time seems to be particularly slippery.

Several years ago, when the eight year old was a baby, there was a knock on our door and it was our across the street neighbor with two shopping bags full of book they had our grown. In that pile was a well worn copy of Maurice Sendaks Where the Wild Things Are. These days, the three year old has been really into reading Sendaks classic are at bedtime, there is something beautifully apt about Max’s story – how our walls are now our “world all around” as we sail “in and out of weeks.” I feel as if we are living with a pack of feral creatures who root in the pantry and fridge for food when the whim strikes, leaving mess and havoc in their wake.

To be sure, part of this is my own fault – perhaps I should not have left the three year old alone with a spray bottle, two cups of water, and some water colour paints. My hopes that he would docilely create art while I showered were laughably naive. I emerged from the shower to shouts from the 8 year old trying to contain the mess, and a rainbow of water spread on the floor, while the three year old stood on his chair, the spray bottle topless and empty. There are definitely terrible eyes being rolled and terrible roars and terrible teeth being gnashed. Sometime they are mine.

Unlike Max, I have no tricks to tame the beasts. Though come to think of it, his trick seems mainly to embrace the wild rumpus, even to instigate it. Maybe I should try more of that. Perhaps that is what we can learn from the little boy in the wolf suit. That at the end of the day, once we have exhausted ourselves rumpus-ing, we just want to be where someone loves us best of all. And where dinner is hot.