Connection in Quarantine
A Cup of Tea in an Empty Zoom
I sat alone on my old orange chair facing the laptop on my bed. I had just started an online meeting and was rearranging the screen to see my “We Got This, Humans” sign with post-it notes surrounding it — an ode to my post-it note covered classroom. I picked up my teacup from the windowsill and held it with both hands, gazing out the window while attempting to avoid the pre-Zoom self critique.
I sipped my tea, letting it fill me with warm certainty. I’m sure they’ll show up, right?
It was five weeks into online learning, and I had been hosting a daily write-in for my students since the first week. It’s optional but another ode to the things I cherish about my classroom — writing together, sharing, connecting.
I held the teacup to my nose. Have you ever noticed how reassuring a warm cup of tea can be? The way it feels like sunshine in your hands? This tea was a new one: black tea with smoke and burnt toffee. Kinda like a S’more at a bonfire in my cup. I wasn’t sure about it yet.
Five minutes until starting time, I noted hopefully, looking at an empty participant list. During the first week many students logged in to the write-ins with boisterous, infectious energy. There was hardly any sharing those days — everyone acclimating to an online sharing space, unsure, like dipping a toe into a not-heated pool. The group, of course, had dwindled over the weeks and now came to rest between 4–10 frequent attendees; the sharing, however, had increased greatly. But, as I noted at the looming empty screen, no one yet today.
I took another sip of tea and thought, I mean, it’s inevitable, right? There is nothing holding them here. No reason for them to show up. I’ve been told time and again that students won’t do anything without a grade attached, and even though I can negate that thought, my aloneness still forced me to consider it.
But something keeps bringing this group together. Daily, for 30 minutes, we share our writing, how we are hanging in there, what our days look like, what our quarantine indulgences are — like my new tea fascination. Just last week I shared I’m burning candles again, to which students responded by running off screen and bringing back fancy candle holders from their house and even a candle holder made of old pop tabs.
One day our write-in, inspired by the Isolation Journals site and a prompt by Maggie Rogers, asked what we really want in our deepest places. One student wrote: “I have a head full of thoughts and nowhere to go. Except [these] write-ins. The time and place for vulnerability is here and now.” Here. And now.
So we were connected, right? I wondered, sipping my tea, letting the toffee notes in the tea linger and the smoky taste shock me like walking barefoot on a wet sidewalk after a spring rain. Maybe I am warming up to this tea after all.
I have often wondered since quarantine began what connection means now. How do we connect with others while alone in our rooms? Without sharing physical space with someone and reading body language and eye contact and shifting proximities, what creates and sustains connection? I know I have never felt more singularly alone than in my room looking at this screen.
But when we write together, we are not alone, right? We are alone together. We are joined by a deeper desire to be seen and to be heard and to be valued, and I discover this more everyday outside of my writing space, too. I’ve watched connections weaken in some areas of my life while I also realized the people and the things I am clinging to are clinging to me too.
I sip my tea even slower this time, the sun beginning to shine in my window. Maybe one day these students won’t show up. I can’t blame them really. Maybe even today, I lamented, looking into my half empty tea cup. I inhaled its warmth as the bell on my screen dinged.
They were here. We are connected.
