COVID thoughts

An honest look from a tired working mother

This is not the type of thing I normally post… I think only like 3 of my almost 50 posts are not strictly about UX writing. But the whole COVID situation is a deep part of the global human experience right now permeating everything, now, including this blog.

Part 1: Quarantine begins

At the beginning of the pandemic I live in the most quarantined neighborhood in the country. (I still live there, we just aren’t the most quarantined anymore.) I personally know several people who had corona and many families with more than one member in isolation at a time, in different rooms in the same house. We know small children who were in isolation, requiring one parent to endanger their health by being closed in with them and the other to handle everyone and everything else. (I’d definitely rather be exposed to corona than be that second parent…) Men and women in hazmat suits sprayed down all of our local public spaces including parks and playgrounds. Before they started, announcements were made on loudspeakers to get in the house. One kid heard the alarm and asked her mom, “Does this mean we go into bomb shelters now?” Let that sink in. (We live in Israel after all.)

After being on lockdown for a week, not allowed out of our homes except for a single designated family member who can go to the grocery store and pharmacy, I wrote about our challenges.

Work

My husband and I both worked full time, remotely, throughout. That involved needing to focus for significant stretches of time and many Zoom calls, with 3 kids with cabin fever in the background. I’m gonna leave the rest to your imagination. Now triple whatever image you have in your head.

Kids

When this whole nightmare started, the interwebs became flooded with fancy schedules and laundry lists of activities to do with kids to keep them entertained, all involving materials, time, and patience that I don’t have. I’m not a teacher or a nanny for a reason. I hate that shit. And I’m not good at it. Just because there’s a pandemic sweeping the globe does not mean I’m suddenly running a summer camp. Corona is not my fault, I don’t need to be punished.

So our kids played ball. They colored with regular markers on plain paper. They sent video messages to friends and danced to this Just Dance app that apparently we are the very last people on the planet to discover. They spent whole days building towers from paper cups. They bickered. And they watched a shit ton of YouTube.

I read in Calvin and Hobbs that boredom builds character and who can argue with Calvin and Hobbs?

My theory was that keeping the bar low increased the chances it would be sustainable, and that unfortunately, we were in for a long haul. Setting reasonable expectations early was mean to prevent a lot of disappointment later.

School

Aaaand we have homework. The teachers keep sending us stuff to do. Mandatory stuff and optional stuff. And online stuff that requires usernames and passwords, passwords that can only be reset by calling a national hotline for heaven’s sake! Now I get it, I get it. It sounds realllly nice in theory. But WTF. I could hardly follow the 50 million emails and 400 billion WhatsApps in Hebrew anyway so I’ve decided myself what my eldest (the only one in elementary school) studied (on her own, without our help!) I didn’t know or care what everyone else was up to, though I’m pretty sure it involved paper helicopters. (Was that from the art or science teacher?) Like I said, I didn’t start this whole corona business and I will not be punished for it. Homeschool my ass.

Schedule

Morning and bedtime routines framed the day. Morning started at 7:30am (anyone who woke up before then was on their own); bedtime started at 7:30pm. Consistent meal times anchored us in between. Food was no healthier or junkier than two weeks prior.

There was no plan beyond that. That’s enough. In between, my husband and I worked as much as we could. The kids played or fought with each other, usually both. We sent them upstairs a lot and we sent them to the yard (I may or may not have actually locked them out for a bit once (twice)… don’t judge.) If scheduling every minute worked for you, by all means! There is no right or wrong way to weather this storm. But if that did’t work for you, you are not a lesser parent. Your kids will not love you less or not get into college. (Unless they weren’t going to get in anyway.)

I saw a lot of free enrichment opportunities for adults, too. “Now that you have all this time…” I don’t have “all this time”. If you did’t have the time, you’re not going to fall behind in your field. Everyone did not go get smarter than you. They were just trying to pass the time like we all were.

Anxiety

In addition to all of those challenges, there’s a health and economic crises of unprecedented magnitude happening out there. Scary shit. And I’m all tapped out. I just don’t have the bandwidth left after work/kids/blah blah blah for anxiety. So I don’t consume news (we don’t have a TV anyway, which makes it easier.) I left some WhatsApp and Facebook groups and don’t get involved in the conversations in the ones I do follow. I don’t answer many calls — what are we going to talk about, corona? And I don’t make more than one decision a day. Tops.

Wine helps a lot.

I know everyone deals with anxiety in their own way, and there’s certainly no right way, and I’m sure it’s a dynamic thing that will adjust as we continue to go through this. I think the best thing is just to be honest with ourselves that anxiety is indeed part of this.

We are anxious and it’s OK to be anxious.

To accept our anxiety, without an action item, without a remedy, without a plan to “heal” it. Call it by its name: when you shout a little too much or sleep a little too little, it’s not you, it’s Anxiety. It’s a healthy reaction, it’s normal. You’re still fine. In fact, you’re doing great.

Silver linings

In ascending order by cheesiness…

Memes: Israelis are the best in the world at memes, especially dark stuff, and they have not disappointed.

I’m was so freaking on top of my laundry it was surreal.

English: Being home 24/7 improved the kids’ English. Their Hebrew surpassed their English ages ago and we managed to play a little catch-up.

Bonding: It was actually pretty heartwarming to be around each other so much. I like these people I live with!

Gratitude: I don’t think I’ve ever been so grateful in my life. Grateful for having a home to hole up in and a family to hole up in it with, having a job, access to food and medicines, for technology in general and Facetime in particular, for friends and medical workers and scientists, for education about social distancing and epidemiology reaching eons farther, light years faster than ever would have been possible in any previous generation. For my family’s health and community support from our neighborhood, school, and colleagues. For our balcony and yard and having two separate floors. For ALL THE THINGS. Whatever gratitude practice you do or don’t have in your daily routine, there’s nothing like a pandemic to ratchet it up a notch or 70.

Hang in there, world! We’ll get through this. There’s no other choice.

Part 2: Quarantine ends (for now)

The first wave of COVID seems to be winding down here in Israel and people are starting to reflect on their experience. I love that I have apparently surrounded myself, according to my Facebook feed, with grateful people who have a positive attitude to life, seek out silver linings, and feel blessed. That’s beautiful. But it’s not the only way.

Lockdown sucked.

Everyone had their own challenges during this time, as in regular life, and I resisted with all of my might getting into the “my lockdown is harder than yours” game.

• Some families struggled to work in this time while others lost their jobs.
• Some people, essential workers, had to face the anxiety of having a much higher chance of actually getting corona, while others yearned to get out.
• Some families struggled with childcare while working out of the house while others would have given anything to work and parent in shifts as opposed to simultaneously.
• Some parents never saw each other because one worked while the other parented and then they switched, so they were never both around together.
• Some families only have one parent, no one to share the parenting with, while others don’t have a family at all and faced actual isolation and the mental health challenges that come with it.
• Some families have small children who don’t understand why they’re in jail and can’t be entertained easily for long stretches, while others have big kids who are bored out of their fucking minds and have made clear the torment that goes with it.

At the end of the day, everyone had unique challenges and I hope, everyone had some unique high moments as well. Most people have takeaways of things they learned about themselves, their families, their lives, that they’d like to hang onto when this is all over. Slowing their pace, shortening their hours or their commute, refurbishing their yard. Whatever. For some people, this was a time full of warm fuzzy bonding that they’ll miss.

Not me. And if not you, that’s OK.

We spent 2 months telling our kids to go away. To be quiet. To stop interrupting. Stop whining. Not now. Not later. We can’t. We won’t. We’re not. No.

Our personal circumstances did not allow for working in shifts, or not working, or working out of the house, or only working before the kids get up and after they go to bed. Our kids are too young for very long stretches of independent play, to prepare their own meals or put themselves to bed. They are too old for naps. We have more than one kid and the built-in playdates have been a blessing — the fighting in between has been a nightmare. So we weren’t great workers and we weren’t great parents and we were always tired.

I’ve taken no epiphany away from this time and will not remember it fondly. My takeaways are not to mix work-time and parent-time, but I already knew that and lived my life that way; that it’s important for my mental health to invest in creating the right physical environment in my home, but I already knew that and never hesitated to buy a new throw pillow or lamp if that would improve my mood; that I need time alone with nobody talking to me, but I already had that on my commute and miss it. I don’t want to shorten it. At this point I’d rather double it.

My point is not that I was already enlightened and therefore did not need to be enlightened by this step back from our daily grind. My point is that lockdown mostly sucked and that’s OK.

How’s COVID going for you?