For the first few weeks of this crisis, it seemed like everyone was running on adrenaline. Especially with the switch to online teaching, I was too busy to really do much thinking. And during those first weeks, I felt more connected to people. Between the video chats with various friend groups and the video chats with the wonderful team of educators I’ve been working with, I was socializing more than usual. (This is more a reflection of my social life pre-pandemic).
But now, I feel people contracting: drawing inwards. We’re shifting gears from the adrenaline-fueled sprint of the early days, to a long, slow slog. No one wants to se each other’s faces in little boxes on screen. It’s dawning on people that we’re doing this for…months? Years? And some of that goodwill that a crisis brings out has grown frayed, as people’s conflicting ideas about staying safe butt up against one another.
Case in point. Today, Dot and I went for a long walk. We didn’t mean for it to be a long walk. But the park that we usually go to was packed, and then the next park was packed, and then at the next park there was a freaking ice cream truck and people sunning themselves on picnic blankets and playing soccer. Once again, I tried to focus on what I can control. I can’t control people’s actions. You’re allowed to go in the park (though soccer isn’t allowed). It’s a beautiful day and everyone wants some outside time.
But the numbers are creeping up again, and it’s hard not to try to assign blame. What will the numbers look like next week, when those who got infected during the Easter Long Weekend start showing symptoms? And the week after that? Will the actions of a few people fritter away everyone else’s sacrifices? Or do I only feel that because there’s so little of my life I can control right now? Maybe it feels better to blame the Instagram/TikTok beautiful people with guitars sipping coolers in the park, than to admit that while social distancing measures work, so much is also luck and chance.
I constantly have to fight the urge to turn this moment into a story: to give it meaning. Stories are comforting. They have a beginning, middle and end. A protagonist fights an antagonist (Man vs. Man! Man vs. Self! Man vs. Nature! All three at once!) This isn’t a story, but a moment we’re living through. It’s a virus, not a life lesson.
Today was grocery shopping day. In a past life, Dot used to careen through the aisles pushing her mini shopping cart, putting Peppa Pig books in while I wasn’t looking. We’d take our time selecting what fruit to buy. But now, grocery shopping is A Whole Thing. There are 3 steps.
Step 1: The Preparation.
You review the list the night before, making sure the items are arranged into aisles. You’re going to Safeway, because you’ve heard it’s more orderly than SaveOn, but your list is configured to SaveOn’s store layout. You try to remember what this Safeway is like. You write out the list by hand, hoping it helps you remember. You don’t have time to constantly check it.
You are goddamn Pandemic Santa: making a list, checking it twice. In the morning, you psych yourself up. You’re just going to go in and out. You have money in your bank account and a car: you are doing this pandemic on easy mode. Quick and easy. Easy does it. It’s not like you’re robbing a bank. (It feels a little like robbing a bank. Or like you’re in Guy’s Grocery Games, but instead of spinning a wheel to find out the protein in your dish, you’re trying not to breathe on anyone).
Step 2: The Big Shop
Safeway is far more prepared than SaveOn. (SaveOn was some Lord of the Flies shit. I got shoulder checked the last time I was there!) People line up outside, appropriately spaced. You’ve put on your mask, and you’re aware of your breath. When it’s your turn, you’re given a freshly sanitized cart. The aisles are wide. You start at the produce aisle, kicking yourself because you should have gone right to check for Lysol wipes. Now your tomatoes are going to get smushed.
It’s surreal to do such a basic task with such urgency. You want to get in and get out. Avoid touching too much stuff, but make sure you get good produce, the brands you’ve been asked to buy. Everyone’s quiet, aware of each other’s movements. No one makes eye contact, except for two old men who are angry at everyone and making their frustration known. The packages of meat are too big, one complains. Not appropriate for seniors. A woman is taking forever comparing types of yogurt, and you have to remind yourself to take a breath, let her pick her yogurt. Some people wear masks and some don’t. Some are following social distancing, some don’t seem to care. Your mask slips up and you try your best to tug it down without touching your face.
You can’t find hashbrowns. The aisles are one-way now, and so you need to circle back and take another look: still none. It’s not worth a third look. You’re not going to bother the busy grocery store staff with this request. You’ll survive without hashbrowns.
Still, you delight in finding Lysol, and paper towels, and black beans: things that have been sold out for weeks. And you even find Girl Guide cookies. And there’s a Starbucks in this Safeway, so you reward yourself with the ultimate score: a big iced coffee.
You pay, load up your car, and take off your mask: breathing in the cool air. You won’t have to do this for another week.
Step 3: The Inevitable Let-Down
It takes 3 trips in the elevator to get all your groceries into your apartment — trying to balance the bags while pressing the elevator button with your elbow — and now it’s time for the last, worst step of grocery shopping: the post-shop criticism. Your partner will inevitably look in a bag, roll his eyes and say, “Ummm okayyyyy,” drawing out the last syllable.
“Ummm okkaayyyyy, I asked you to get nacho Doritos.” He holds up a bag of Doritos as you point out that they say ‘nacho’ on them. It’s not the right kind of nacho Doritos. The box of cat litter is too small. And the last 4 tortillas in this package are broken — what is this? — what happened to these? And ummm okkaayyyy this pork shoulder is 1.7 kg, which is not the 4 pounds that he asked for, but whatever. Whatever. I guess we’ll just have less meat.
And then you really messed up and forgot the hamburger buns for the pulled pork. A total self-own. You thought you’d checked the list, but you forgot something. I’m sorry, you say. I’ll figure something out. Maybe you could make hamburger buns.
The plastic bags spill out of the cupboard. You never use plastic. You usually shop several times a week, and just put your groceries in the basket of the stroller. You want to say that you didn’t have time to properly evaluate the nacho-ness of the nacho Doritos because you were too busy trying to follow the social distancing rules, and an old man was yelling the store manager, and someone was coming up behind you, getting too close, and the mask was slipping up into your eyes, and they only had the tiny carts so you tried to Jenga all of your purchases and some were falling out, so you were balancing the cat litter on the handle and holding on to the milk. I went on a goddamn quest for those nacho-but-not-the-right-nacho Doritos, you want to say. I conquered Mt. Safeway.
Instead, you stand there, wiping down your phone with Lysol, marinating in someone else’s disappointment. All that pent-up energy that’s been sustaining you through the whole shop dissipates, replaced with a jangly caffeination from the iced coffee. You’ve done the last two shops because you can drive. And you get it — it sucks to not be able to pop to the store for some Doritos, to have to trust that someone else will get you what you want. It sucks. All of this sucks.
You take a shower ostensibly to wash away any last Coronavirus, but really to be alone for a few minutes. The hot water hits your stiff back. And when you change into clean sweatpants, you finally feel calm. You’re lucky. So much luckier than most. Your fridge is full. Your pantry is stocked. Tonight, you’ll make slow cooker chicken with soda bread. You’ll knead the dough while listening to the Pogues. You’ll fill your house with the scent of warm bread and rosemary and sage. You’ll eat a Girl Guide cookie. And though your best is not quite enough, you’ll get by.
Today, the saddest thing is how well my toddler follow quarantine. As I put on her shoes to take her outside, she says, “Slide broken. Swings broken. Outside broken. It’s okay.” When people come near, she hides behind me. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “It’s okay.” She doesn’t ask to go on the swings. She admires the dogs from afar. “Sit,” she tells them. “That’s a good boy.” When we go inside, she counts to 20 as we wash her hands. “Keep safe,” she says.
It’s Easter Sunday and I woke up in a fury over all of the people who went away to their cabins over the long weekend, who are refusing to cancel Easter parties, who are gathering on picnic blankets on the lawn out front of the hospital near us, beers in hand, yukking it up as I cross the street to keep Dot and I six feet away. I know that I can only focus on myself and my actions, but it’s so easy to think, “I’m cloistering my kid in our little apartment, she hasn’t seen her grandparents in over a month, all so that you can keep up with your busy beer pong schedule? So you can go to your SECOND home when so many people are struggling to afford their rent, and spread disease to communities without medical facilities?” I’m scared for what the next few weeks hold.
But it’s Easter, and I found this handmade smocked Easter dress that my mom kept from when I was Dot’s age, and my mom dropped off some Easter treats yesterday, so we had a little egg hunt. Dot ate a chocolate bunny and some “gummy’s bears” and then I made pancakes. Mostly, she was confused about the whole thing. But we did what we could. We tried, in a small way, to make it special for her.
Holidays are hard, I think, because I can’t imagine what next Easter will look like. I can’t picture our whole family gathered around a table again. Right now, despite the partiers outside my window who are “wooooo”ing and playing loud music, my life feels as if it will be un-peopled forever.
Tonight, I found a photo of me when I was Dot’s age, wearing the same dress. When she was a baby, we looked a lot alike. People on the street would often stop us to say things like, “Well, there’s no mistaking that she’s your daughter, eh?” But it was lovely to hold the two photos side-by-side and see that Dot is no longer a carbon copy of me, but her own person. She is growing into herself so wonderfully. She is becoming exactly who she is.
I love working out. I’m an anxious person, and the only way my brain settles is if I exhaust it by one of two methods: overthinking my entire life, or exercise.
Unfortunately, for the past 3 years, working out has been painful. Actually, walking, sitting, bending forward, driving…most things are painful. It used to be that I could push myself to the limits and just lay on the couch for the rest of the day, but now I have a toddler, and toddlers are hard on the old back. Before I had Dot, I thought that the most physically painful part of parenting would be the baby stage, because I would have to pick her up so often. I was wrong. I spend my day bending to keep her from darting out into traffic, to wipe her face or help her put her shoes, to grab a marker out of her hand when she’s trying to draw a rainbow on the wall. I sit on the floor to play cars; I let her ride on my back; I still babywear her when she’s very sad. Parenting is physical work, and my body is basically held together by duct tape.
But today my husband took her out to run in the sunshine, and I decided to try a quiet cardio routine. Some days you just got to get your endorphins however you can. So, I put on Hole’s “Celebrity Skin” and flailed away to a workout video I streamed from Youtube. Celebrity Skin was one of the defining albums of my teenage years. One day you’re 18 and you’re moodily using “a storm in the form of a girl” as your bio for your Myspace page — note to teenage Arley: you were not a storm in the form of a girl; you just have executive functioning issues — and the next day you’re 37 and huffing along to the song as a cheery blonde woman tells you to do one more lunge, that’s it, just one more, you can do it.
But it felt glorious: my heartrate up, the sun streaming in through the window, Courtney Love giving voice to my angst, those exercise endorphins flowing. But then, 20 minutes in, I tweaked my back.
I am a “push through the pain” kind of person. I’m also a “get injured because you pushed through the pain” kind of person. But today, I did myself proud. I stopped. Instead of finishing the video, I did 10 minutes of stretching. Then, I took a series of post-workout selfies, which only confirmed that my lazy eye has gotten lazier during this quarantine.
Practically an Instagram fitness influencer #LiveLaughLove #Blessed #Gains
I’ve noticed that everyone seems crankier this week. People are tense with one another. Dot hasn’t been sleeping, so I haven’t been sleeping. The adrenaline is wearing off and all we’re left with is this miasma of uncertainty and worry. Has the curve flattened? Will all the jerks who disregarded orders to stay home and not go to small communities for the Easter long weekend spread COVID-19? Will this be the new norm? What will be the new norm? How many more months of this? When will my toddler get to hug her Nana again?
We’re past the panic of the early days and settling into the uncertainty of the long haul, which is its own kind of terrifying. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. And it’s better to do a 20 minute workout and conserve your strength, than to push too hard and not be able to pick up your toddler. Best to do a little workout, then put on your sweatpants and sit on your couch with your toddler, holding hands.
Today, Instagram reminded me that today 4 years ago, I was grading my first stack of papers as faculty at KPU. I took a picture of the stack of final reports with a nice iced coffee perched on top. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a cold brew and a salted chocolate chip cookie from Platform 7.
My students’ final projects are beginning to roll in. Many of them have chosen to create archives of their time during Coronavirus, and I’m just blown away. I can barely write a few blog posts, but they’re producing such smart, touching, raw, creative work. I’m really lucky to have my job.
Other than that, it was a day of small pangs of sadness. For the past two days, I’ve taken Dot to an elementary school to run around and each time, we’ve encountered other kids around Dot’s age. They’ve grown wary of each other so quickly. One little girl just stared at Dot. Dot ran behind my legs and softly repeated, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” How will these kids ever learn to play with each other again? I worry for my sweet, sensitive girlie.
I was introduced to John Prine by a former wheelchair basketball teammate when I lived in Victoria. We’d train together and sometimes I’d go over to his apartment after and listen to music. I was 18. For most of high school, all I’d wanted was to sit on someone’s couch and talk about the meaning of lyrics: to turn the words over and over with someone, admiring them, holding them up to the light. I wanted to meet someone who cared about the same things I cared about, or better: someone who knew more about the things I cared about, and maybe cared about them more, and could introduce me to more things to care about. And now I was living in a new city on my own and finally, it was happening.
The first time I heard “Angel From Montgomery,” I closed my eyes and knew I wanted to write like that. To believe in this livin’ is just a hard way to go. It was like John Prine was writing about me. Of course, he wasn’t. I was 18. My years had not flowed by like a broken-down dam. I was not an old woman named after my mother, married to someone who’s another child who’s grown old. But I felt that shock of recognition all the same. I knew it was a song I would grow into.
And I felt that in “Sam Stone,” when he sings sweet song never last too long on broken radios: which I used to belt out in my car like an anthem when I was frustrated with my inability to ever get my shit together, or my body’s inability to get its shit together. And I felt itin “Dear Abby” when he sings you are what you are and you ain’t what you ain’t, which was a lesson I should have listened to John Prine about earlier. John Prine is the type of music I used to go on long walks to, back when I could go for long walks, back when I had alone time.
It’s been decades since I’ve known someone else who loves John Prine. There’s a particular kind of loneliness that comes from loving an artist and knowing that when your favourite song comes on the car stereo, no one else is going to sing along. No one’s going to say, “Man, this is a great song. It’s been years since I’ve heard it.” And when you like John Prine, you can’t even have the satisfaction that no one else’s music tastes are as cool as yours. You’re just someone whose music tastes run towards old dudes who can fingerpick.
I am not a great singer, but when you have a baby there’s a grace period where there’s a person in your life who doesn’t care. (That window has passed. I tried to sing along to “The Wheels on the Bus” with my toddler today and she said, “Mommy no wheels on a bus for you.”) And then you’re tired and lose your self-conciousness. And one day you find yourself on a warm summer night, standing on your porch rocking a baby who won’t settle, singing I am an old woman, named after my mother. My old man is another child who’s grown old as she nuzzles into your neck, as her little body gives up its tension. If dreams were thunder, lightning were desire, this old house would have burnt down a long time ago, you sing to her, and to yourself, because motherhood has you feeling both filled up and hollowed out.
John Prine died of COVID-19 today. He was one of my favourite songwriters. I didn’t go and see him the last time he came to Vancouver because I couldn’t find someone to go with. I should have gone anyways. He wrote boredom so well. He wrote characters who were waiting for something to change in their lives: for something to begin. He was funny. His last album is so damn good. Tonight, I sang “Sam Stone” to my daughter as I was getting her dressed for bed. She likes to stand on her changing table so she’s taller than me, then play with my hair. “Oh no,” she said, “Mommy’s hair is too messy,” tousling it in front of my face as I sang to her. “Don’t worry mommy,” she assured me, raking it out of my eyes and smoothing it down. “It’s good. It’s okay. Yes, okay, it’s good.”
I don’t know why I’m spending so much time thinking about my relatives. Maybe it was the bread, but maybe it’s a love story that my grandma often told me. My grandma was a single mom of two boys when she got sick with polio. She was living with her own mother, who struggled to take care of her. A family friend named Joe McNeney came over every day to care for her. He’d already had polio, so he was immune. Day after day, he would carry her to the bathroom, and tell her to think nothing of it. When she was better, she married him.
An epidemic is part of my family origin story, so perhaps I am seeking out these stories now. Or maybe I feel stuck in the present moment and feel the need to unearth the past. I think even Dot is feeling it. When we were on our walk a few days ago, she stopped in the middle of the street, looked up and said, “Oh hi daddy’s grandpa! Bye bye grandpa! I love you!” She was so convincing I asked my husband to phone is grandpa to make sure we hadn’t been visited by a ghost.
So, ghosts all around us. Whatever the reason, I spent Dot’s naptime scanning a stack of documents and photos that my uncle had given to me years ago. My family’s on the eccentric side, so while other people find staged photos of Christmas gatherings, I find rhyming erotic poetry about dances in the 1940s in Burnaby and narratives about how my grandma’s gin poisoned a cockroach. But it was lovely to see my grandma’s handwriting, and to read all the old recipes, and to marvel at the wonderful strangeness of my ancestors.
Instead of writing yesterday’s post, I drank two cocktails and fell asleep watching Nailed It. That’s how she goes sometimes.
But today, I threw a birthday party. Seven years ago, my husband and I randomly decided to celebrate movie director Roger Corman’s birthday. We pick a movie, I make a themed cake, my husband makes a dinner. It is a fun little tradition. In fact, Roger Corman knows about our tradition and picked the movie one year.
My cakes used to be really elaborate (2014 – 2016 are particularly impressive, if I do say so myself) but then I had a baby and I never quite got back on the cake-making horse:
Obviously, I can’t just pop to the store for the ingredients to make an elaborate cake, but Dot is obsessed with birthdays after watching a million hours of the episode of Elmo’s World where Elmo celebrates his fish’s birthday (“THAT’S TOO MUCH TAPE MR. NOODLE!!” is seared into the deepest crevices of my brain), so we decided to soldier on. I cut balloons out of construction paper and Dot decorated them. Then, we made a banner.
We were low on baking supplies, so I made a Wacky Cake, which is a cake from the Great Depression that doesn’t have any eggs, butter or milk. Dot delighted in dumping in the ingredients and stirring, but spent most of her time sampling the batter. After her nap, we iced the cake in rainbow colours (she was head frosting taster), then put on gold star sprinkles (more frosting tasting – for quality control). We didn’t have candles, so I made some out of popsicle sticks and construction paper.
Decorating the cake
Dinner was another big treat. We’ve eaten every meal at home for a month, but I’d read that takeout is still safe. So, we ordered some Thai food. Unfortunately, it was 2 hours and 15 minutes late, which meant that first we ate the cake, then I ended up making sweet potatoes and eggs for Dot, and by the time the Thai food came she was teary, and I spent the entire meal saying “gosh, you have some strong feelings about that” and “I can’t let you throw your plate.” Still, she soldiered on and sang happy birthday, while I worried about whether takeout food was actually safe to eat at all, and washed my hands a million times.
Happy birthday Roger Corman!
Still, it was probably our best Roger Corman birthday yet. Happy birthday Roger Corman!
Today I made chicken pot pie in the slow cooker. I love using the slow cooker because the scents of whatever you’re making sneak up on you. You throw the ingredients in, turn it on, go about your day, and just when you forget about it: bam! Rosemary, thyme, and sage! A far better scent than our place’s usual melange of ‘apartment that 3 people and a cat have been cooped up in for 3 weeks straight.’
When my husband took the toddler out for her walk this afternoon, I decided to make an Irish soda bread to go along with the chicken pot pie. I love to bake, but I’ve never tackled bread. I’m not a very patient person, and bread takes time. You have to coax it to rise, knead it (not too much!), let it rise again. Not like muffins, which you can have in the oven in 10 minutes.
But I’ve been told that quick bread is easy, and we’re officially at the stage of self-isolation when I’m moodily baking to Townes van Zandt. (“Living’s mostly wasting time. I waste my share of mine. But it never feels too good, so let’s don’t take too long.”) I’d prepared the dry ingredients and was waiting for the buttermilk to curdle, when I startled out of my folk-music-induced reverie. I was slathering my hands in margarine.
Hands have long memories. As a child, I baked a lot of bread with my grandma. She’d make me roll up my sleeves, then slick on butter so the dough wouldn’t stick to my hands. As she did, she’d look at my palms and say that I had old hands: a sign that I’m an old soul.
Then, as she prepared the loaves, my siblings and I would make little people out of the bread dough scraps, or roll them in cinnamon and sugar and eat them raw. (Far more dough landed in our mouths than on the baking sheet). Sometimes, my grandma would place her hands over mine to show me how to knead the dough: pressing with your palm, folding. Her rough hands were soft on bread-making day.
Nana Elsie
My grandma’s been dead for over a decade, and I probably haven’t made bread in 20 years, but I can still remember her kitchen: her spoon collection in its display case on the wall, the mug full of even more teaspoons, her brown teapot with a crocheted cozy over it, the glass-front cabinets full of trinkets and the good china: all of it labeled in blue felt pen with the name of the person who would get it after she died. You’d have a snack at her house, bring a dish to the sink and realize that it had “To Susie When I Die” written in blue ink on the bottom. And you’d feel a brief pang at the reminder that one day your grandma would die, and the plate in your hand would be Susie’s, and you would get the china doll with the sailor suit, and a little china jewelry box with painted roses. (My grandma lived next door to a graveyard, so you were always reminded of your own mortality).
It’s an extinct smell now: the odour of her kitchen, the rising bread — which smelled of butter and yeast but also faintly of dill — the tea with milk (Tilk, she would call it) cooling in the cups, her Neutrogena hand cream. And my craggy little lump of dough heaped on the baking sheet is not in the same universe as her uniform golden loaves in their heavy square pans. But my hands — soft with margarine — remembered what to do.
And the bread was delicious, in its own way. I forgot to grease the baking sheet, so the bottom came off. But we ate it warm slathered in butter. Dot liked it so much that when I had my back turned, she snatched the remaining 1/4 loaf off the table. I found her sitting at her play kitchen, putting the bread in the oven, humming to herself, taking it out, checking it, putting it back in. When she decided the bread was ready, she turned on some rocking tune on her drum set and sat thoughtfully picking little morsels of white bread out of the middle of the loaf and chewing them and bopping up and down to the beat.
While we’re still at the wait-and-see part of the curve, knowing worse days are ahead, knowing that loss is coming, it is good to focus on new beginnings, and to think of the people who fed you when you were young. Maybe I could be good at bread. Maybe I could get better at waiting.
