Weekly Recap + what we ate: Five years ago

I had a thought that I should write a list of gentle aspirations for March, but then I realized that I accomplished NONE of my gentle aspirations for February. So if you want to know what’s on my March Goals list, you can just go back and read the February list. It’s all the same stuff. I just never did it last month. I take that back – we did get the kids to write Valentine’s Day cards. And I did make it to one of the 13 year old’s middle school basketball game. (Though that might have actually been this month and not last month.)

So mid March 2020 was when we all retreated from public life. Well, those of us who weren’t considered “essential”. The five year anniversary of the start of the COVID pandemic is making me reflect on those times. I’ve been struggling to put my thoughts into words, but then Daria had a lovely reflective post, prompted by this podcast, and I’m going to use her questions. I guess for my purposes, I think of the thick of the pandemic as being from March 12th 2020, when my show was cancelled up til probably September 2022, when it felt like we were doing opera again, albeit with masks and precautions in place.

What do you remember most?
I remember being home with my kids a lot, and not being able to go to work. So many people in my industry pivoted and started producing opera/theatre online or in other venues. At the time, I had a six month old, a three year old, and a 8 year old. I couldn’t think beyond just keeping everyone going at home and struggled to figure out how to have structure in our days. Thank goodness for the internet. Other things I remember, off the top of my head:
-sewing masks as part of a church mission
-pumping and donating breastmilk
-lots of cardboard box creations
-struggling with online schooling for the oldest child and not knowing how hard to be on her for constantly surfing the internet when she should be paying attention in class
-Lots of time outdoors. Exploring new parks and trails.
-RBG dying and taking the two girls down to pay respects.
-The Husband being at home for a little bit, setting up a desk and computer wherever he could and then going back to the office the moment they let him. (I don’t blame him on that one.)
-The Husband doing all the grocery shopping so that we could limit contact.
-taking a drawing class online – it was such a great creative and social outlet.
-Borrowing so many books from the library. The library setting up a system to request books for pick up.
-Masks. Wearing masks. I remember the first time I put on a mask. I was in line at Costco and I thought, “Well, here goes. I should probably put this mask on.” It felt like a big step, admitting that there really was something going on.
-Once we started producing opera again, arguing with singers about, “Yes, you do have to wear a mask in rehearsal.”
-The not knowing when things would end. What “end” even meant.
-So much time together as a family.
-Figuring out Zoom. Having a Zoom birthday party for the Husband.
-The vaccine, finally getting vaccinated.
-The youngest participating in a vaccine trial.
-The show we did in May 2022 when people were still getting COVID in large numbers and every performance there would be a list with all the people who were out that night. Even the stage manager got COVID and I had to bump up to call the show and we called every available stage manager we knew to come in and cover my assistant stage manager track, and ended up with a patchwork of stage managers to cover the run. There was one show where no one was available for the whole evening, so we just hired someone to cover my track for the first half of the show. That to me was just bonkers – that we had a sub come in for half a show.

What led up to here?
I remember in February hearing about a virus that was proving deadly and spreading quickly, but it was not yet in our county. And then on March 12th, suddenly being aware of this phrase, “social distancing.” I asked my co-worker, “What does social distancing mean anyway?” And she didn’t know and we went on with our tech session. We were in the theatre at the time, in tech for an opera that I was very excited to work on. It was the day of our first orchestra rehearsal onstage and we were at the theatre that afternoon setting lighting levels. On a break, my co-worker came up to me and said, “Six feet.”
“What?” I asked, having forgotten our earlier conversation.
“Social distancing is six feet apart.”
Okay, I thought, I can do that. And then a couple hours later, my big boss came into the theatre where we all were working on lighting cues and said that the show was being cancelled and we should all go home.
And the next day, we were told that the schools would be closed for two weeks.
And that’s how it all started for us.
And then I made the mistake of going to Costco on March 14th. That trip took two hours and I couldn’t get paper towels or eggs.

Who went through this with you?
My family- the Husband and the three kids. My mother, who had planned to come help out with the new baby for one month and ended up staying with us for five. My mom’s group, via Zoom and masked distanced walks. My friend K, who decided that we needed a weekly socially distanced happy hour. All the teachers and educators who taught kids through zoom. My online art class. The whole world. I think that’s what was amazing about this is that it was world wide. Everyone experienced it differently, but we all experienced it.

Where did you go through this event?
At home. In the kitchen. In the dining room. In the living room. In our backyard. At parks. On hiking trails. At mass vaccination sites. At drive through testing sites. And eventually, back at the theatre.

How did you feel then?
Bewildered and numb – I was just waiting for someone to tell me what to do and I tried not to think about things too much. Angry. I was angry a lot at the people around me for not being easier to live with. Frustrated with the sameness of every day. Grateful. Grateful for the things that did come to us, grateful for the ways that we could isolate and be our own bubble. Grateful that the Husband could still work. Grateful that my mother was with us and toilet trained the middle child. Tired. I had a six month old who had to be nursed to sleep at the time. Worried. For my grandfather who didn’t believe in vaccines. For my father living on his own because my mother was with us. Happy too, though, that we could still have some good times and adventures.

What changed in your world?
Well, I couldn’t go to work anymore and was home all the time with the kids. That was probably the big thing. But also I think there was a re-thinking in my industry about work-life balance. People who were getting burnt out from going from gig to gig to gig without a pause started to take a step back and ask if it was all worth it. There was a mass exodus of mid-career stage managers from the industry.
I think also, we became more aware of the health of people around us – I’ll always remember the quote I heard, “It used to be we coughed to cover up a fart. Now we fart to cover up a cough.” I think we became much more aware of how to stay healthy in large groups of people – masks, hand washing, covering coughs and sneezes, staying home if you’re sick. I mean we should already have been doing this but it became downright uncivilized if one didn’t do it in the wake of the pandemic.

What changed in you?
I always find these questions hard because I feel I lack the self awareness to really answer it. I don’t really think of myself on a pre-ordained path, so I don’t really see it as changing. I kind of see myself as flowing and bending as life goes on and there was a lot of flow and bend in 2020-2022
Here’s one thing – I stopped worrying about the oldest kid’s grades. (I was actually interviewed for a story in the Washington Past about this) I realized that in elementary school I just wanted her to be learning, and I had to stop caring about the A. I’m a little more concerned about her grades now that she is in middle school, I will admit, but the pandemic gave me a good insight into my expectations for elementary school.
I wouldn’t really call this a change, but I also had to shift my mind from being a work out of the house mom to being a stay at home mom. That took a bit of adjustment. But I was also glad for the time with the baby because I had gone back to work when she was just a week old, and I hadn’t really had time with her.

What good came out of this event?
I think we learned that family is important. That as long as we were stuck in this thing together, things would be okay.
One thing work-wise that came out of this was I started to do supertitle work. It was one of the first jobs that was offered me when my company started doing opera again. I hadn’t really thought about doing supertitle work before and it turns out I actually love it.
When I did come back to work, working from home was acceptable. I remember going back to work after having a baby in 2017 and 2019 and asking if I could work, from home on the days I didn’t have to be in rehearsal or at the theatre and it was like pulling teeth. But after the pandemic, it was something that everyone was allowed to do. Well until now.
I started a blog. Yup, this here is a pandemic blog, started in April 2020. And this blog has been a wonderful outlet for all the things in my head, and has also lead to my discovering a great community of people who also share what’s knocking around in their heads.
I started running. When the local Taiwan School opened up for Sunday Mandarin classes again, I enrolled the middle child. The last time we took language classes at the Taiwan School, parents had to sit in the classrooms, but in September 2021, they did not let parents sit in the classrooms anymore. So I had 90 minutes of time to kill while the middle child was in class. I decided to start running. I didn’t really have much of an exercise routine before that, maybe some yoga and a few post-partum fitness classes. But I figured I was approaching my mid 40s and I should start something. I don’t love running, but it’s a pretty low barrier for entry, so I do it. And I usually feel better when I do.

What would you do differently?
I don’t know that I have a good answer to this questions, because I think we all did the best we could with the information we had. I guess one thing is I would try harder to reach out to friends. We had good friends whom we didn’t see for a whole year, and they live two miles away. I think I would have tried harder to reach out even in a distanced way. I loved our little family unit, but I think it’s also important to nurture all relationships, to check in on people, form connections.

How do you feel about the pandemic now?
I think back on 2020-2022 and it feels a little surreal to me that we went through that. That the world got quiet and empty. That there were special early morning shopping hours at the grocery store for the immunocompromised. That people really became innovative about how to do the things that they were used to doing. When I think of historic milestones that I’ve lived through, there’s 9/11 and there’s the COVID pandemic. I also think right now in America also feels a bit like a historic moment as well with the dismantling of the Federal government. All these events have that same sense of bewilderment and confusion and upheaval. March 13th will always be a “Where were you when…” moment for me.
One thing that the current climate is making me realize, though, is just how much kindness and community materialized when we couldn’t gather. There were certainly events of hate and fear during COVID, but there was a reaction to it, a sense that people wanted to set things right. I don’t get that sense right now. Right now I feel as if America is dividing from each other and the rest of the world.
It’s funny, we were trying to explain the pandemic to the two younger kids the other day. They have no memory of those years, but the oldest was 8 at the time and very much remembers it. I asked her to tell her younger siblings about it, and she said, “The pandemic was the most amazing time. We got to stay home all the time and be together and watch lots of tv and screens.” I think that’s a good perspective to remember – even though it was such a stressful and anxious time for me, the 8 year old was actually loving life. I do wonder what will be the legacy of that two and a half years of pandemic life.

Funny Story – This morning as I was driving the kids to piano lessons, we passed the beltway, which at 7:15 in the morning was already bumper to bumper. “Look,” I said, “All those people going to their office.”

“Are they going to print things?” asked the 5 year old.

“No, they’re going to work,” I replied.

“Oh,” she said, a little confused. “And then they will go back to their houses?”

“Well, no. They now they have to work in their office.”

“Oh. That’s silly,” she said.

I think about all the ways the world changed, has changed. I mean the world is always changing, right? But it seems like there have been some big shifts in the past five years. The 5 and 8 year old don’t really know a world where going to the office every day was the norm for most people, even though the Husband does it. They don’t think twice if they are asked to put on a mask when they are cough-y. They submit to nose swabs and shots without a second thought. I feel like these little things are what part of what remain of those years we spent in lockdown, even for people who don’t remember it.

On that note, I’m leaving you with this, which made me laugh out loud and then I sent it to all my friends who are trying to do all the things while pretending everything is fine:

I don’t actually have Instagram, so excuse the weird screen shot, but it’s from Emotional Club’s Instagram feed.

Grateful For:

-Whatsapp calling and friends. I have a friend who moved to Oman because her husband works in the foreign service and was posted there. They’re halfway through their posting and I really miss her. We’ve been texting back and froth frequently, but this week we decided to have a phone call, which we did through Whatsapp. It was amazing! We talked for 90 minutes, catching up on all the things.

-After school park time. Sunshine and warmer weather.

-That I’m okay after a fall. I tripped on my run through the woods and fell face down on a huge smooth slab of rock. I for sure thought that I was going to be a bloody mess, but I wasn’t, luckily. I was a little sore and shaken, but otherwise okay. 24 hours later, my chin is black and blue and looks awful, but at least I didn’t have to get stitches or knock out my teeth or anything.

-On that note – I’m grateful that I started back up with running. I want three times (well, two and a half – I kind of abandoned the third run after that fall) and it wasn’t that painful. Last year I ran all through the winter, even in 20 degree weather, but I didn’t have the will to do it this year. It feels nice to be back at it after a break, though.

-Cake! I made another cake. This one was an Old Fashioned Donut Bundt Cake. It tasted just like a cake donut. If you like cake donuts, make this cake! Sign of the time- I had originally planned to make another cake, but that cake called for six eggs. What with eggs being expensive still, I decided to make this cake that only took four. And even then I asked myself if that was a good use of eggs. It was.

-The 13 year old’s basketball coach. Basketball season is over and I’m really grateful for the coach and referees that made the season possible.

-High School Musicals – We went to the high school production of the musical The Secret Garden this weekend. It was SOOOOOO good! The Secret Garden is my favorite musical and I figured that would either make seeing a high school production either a blissful experience or a grin-and-bear-it experience. Here’s the thing about this musical – The music is gorgeous, so heartbreakingly beautiful. Also it’s not easy and it’s very exposed and the ensembles are tricky. You have to know how to sing to pull it off – none of this sort of speak-sing stuff that you can maybe get away with with some other musicals. The kids in this show had such beautiful voices. And so much spunk and personality onstage. And the production was so well put together – some minor technical difficulties as one would expect at this level, but nothing major. And there were some really lovely directing choices. I think it’s going to be one of my favorite theatre experiences this year.

-The smell of witch hazel blooming in our front yard. That floral spicy smell greeting me as I come home.

-Finding just the right books. I popped by the Library’s used bookstore last week. I had meant to donate a bag of books, only the paper bag split as I was taking it to the car and the I could only find parking in the far parking lot and didn’t want to carry all those books in a split paper bag to the used bookstore. So I’ll deal with that another time. But as long as I was there, I figured I’d do some browsing and I lucked out because I found two books that were on my “want to find” list. One is Nelson Mandela’s memoir that I want to read in anticipation of a trip to South Africa later this year, and the other book is the memoir of Renee Fleming that I wanted to to get for the 13 year old because Fleming is her favorite opera singer. It’s my lucky day! I also picked up two comic strip collections because the kids really love reading those- one Calvin and Hobbes and one for The Boondocks. Does anyone remember the Boondocks? It was this hilariously edgy comic strip from the early 2000s.

Looking Forward To:
-Lenten Reading Group. Last year a friend invited me to a Lenten reading group and even though I’m not what anyone would call religious, I did enjoy doing the readings and thinking about how we can function with grace and kindness towards ourselves and other human beings. The group is meeting again this year, just three times, but I’m looking forward to it. The readings so far have seemed very apt in the times that we live in.

-Voice recital this week for which I’m doing super titles. It’s an eclectic program with lots of contemporary pieces and five or six different languages.

-Reading my library haul. After hitting up the library bookstore, I went to the library to pick up a hold and ended up coming away with a whole new stack of books to read and a cookbook:

What We Ate:
Monday: Swede and Red Lentil Soup. I had a rutabaga that our friend had passed a long to us from his CSA. Hot tip – googling recipes for “swede” (what the British call the Rutabaga) yields much more interesting (to me) recipes than googling “rutabaga”. I really liked this soup. I was the only one, though. Thankfully I made a batch of no-knead bread to go with it so people were still happy with dinner. Vegan. Except some of us put butter on the bread.

Tuesday: Shrimp Tacos from New York Times Cooking. This was a surprisingly fast dinner – it was on the table in about twenty minutes. And with this meal we finished up the 6lb 13oz cabbage.

Wednesday: Salmon with Miso Rice and Ginger Scallion Vinaigrette from New York Times Cooking. First day of Lent, so a meat free dinner. This was really tasty and simple. Everyone liked it. Except one child who screamed that they didn’t like salmon and why didn’t I make catfish. But then proceeded to eat the rice with their hands. I don’t bother to make food that the kids will like because this is the sh*t I have to put up with. If I’m going to get yelled at, I might as well like the food that I’m eating.

Thursday: Sheet Pan Veggie Shawarma that I’ve seen linked on Suzanne’s blog. When I was reading this recipe, it struck me that it was very similar to the delicious Kabocha Squash and Apple Shawarma recipe that I got in my Purple Carrot meal box one time. So I added apples to the original recipe and made a zhoug sauce to go with it all. It was delicious. Except the 5 and 8 year olds who said they didn’t like vegetables so I told them they could make their own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which they did. Good, more Shawarma for me! Vegan.

Friday: Pizza (The Husband made) and Glee.

Saturday: Pasta Salad made from Jenny Rosenstrach’s marinated beans as a base. Then I add tomatoes, cucumbers, pasta, and red onion. Vegan. Only once again some child rebelled and they had pasta with butter and parmesan cheese for dinner.

Sunday: leftovers and Ramen. Sunday is one of those days when I get to six o’clock and realize that, yes indeed the kids do need to eat dinner. At least the younger kids. The 13 year old fends for herself because she has evening swim clinic and needs to eat on the early side. So Sunday was ramen because it’s easy and fast. I added vegetables (the last of some napa cabbage that was in the fridge) and eggs to the ramen, and for my own bowl, I threw in a bunch of kimchi.

I hope you are having a lovely week. We are battling the time change here, but every day is better and there is more sunlight at the end of the day now.
Are you reflecting on the early days of the COVID pandemic now that it’s been 5 years? If you could tell March 2020 you something, what would it be? How would you describe those times to someone who didn’t have to live through it?