Uncertainty
The days of Safer at Home are long, eventless, rolling past like the rust-colored Wisconsin River in our backyard: constant movement, little variation. The emotions I experience: boredom, restlessness, having time (finally!) but without motivation. This is the gift, I think, that I do not want: the warm socks wrapped in an elaborate package, all ribbons and bows, but with only sensibility hidden inside.
Our April has been wet and cold, so instead of working in the yard, my husband watches hours of game shows. I hear him from the other room calling out random answers, “Hammer! Toothpick! Wagon, you dumbass!” When he tires of this, he switches to Gunsmoke: “Honey, you gotta see this. Festus is getting married!” He isn’t a man of indoor projects; to break up the day he makes a trip to get the paper and reads aloud the small-town police reports that make me sad. “Woman requests teenage daughter escorted from the house for being disrespectful,” or “Man accused neighbor of luring away his cat.” I sigh. Then my husband turns to the daily crossword that he puzzles out, asking for help with the spelling. Some days — fewer than I am proud of — I am patient when reciting, “Thorough. T-H-O-R-O-U-G-H.”
Oddly, I keep recalling the I Love Lucy candy on the conveyor belt scene. Normally conversation at home runs between us at an easy pace, but lately, I feel like Lucy, overwhelmed by the speed of the chocolates rolling by, having to stuff them relentlessly into my mouth just to keep up.
My daughter is 21 and has moved in with us temporarily after having lost her retail job in the city. She doesn’t enjoy small town living — already there was nowhere to go and nothing to do — but she’s resigned to it now, the endless loops of daily life. We make meals, do laundry, walk the dog, read books, watch our favorite series. She found temp job here — 3rd shift packaging — so at 10 pm she and I do the 20-minute drive to the factory in silence — we’re all talked out for the day. In the early morning when I drive to pick her up, the horizon smudges from dark sky to smokey grey to a muted blue with some bright pinks mixed in, dense clouds stretched like taffy across the sky. We return home in peaceful silence — she is exhausted. I will never tell her that these short commutes together feel like a mothering bonus round: I get to keep her close, and safe, to know her routines once again.
I text or call my mother most days; each exchange simmers in my gut, stirred with the spices of frustration and anger. She is 83 and lives three hours away in a senior apartment building on lockdown, yet she refuses to follow the rules. She shops the grocery store every few days and refuses to cancel appointments with the ophthalmologist, the dermatologist, the orthopedist. “Can’t these wait a month or two?” I scold. Her response is a clipped, “My health is important. I’m not stupid.” After we speak, I usually clamor around in the kitchen, banging pans or scrubbing counters with a vengeance.
My husband sits at the kitchen counter one afternoon and questions my mood. He knows the limitations of my complicated relationship with my mother. I make a challenging admission: it’s not that I’m afraid of my mother dying, it’s that I’m afraid if she gets sick, she will die alone; that is what scares me. “Maybe she’s earned the right to make her own decisions,” my husband suggests. I start to assemble a response, but my thoughts scatter like loose marbles.
My son, quarantined with roommates in Florida, was the first of us to take the virus seriously. He warned us months ago, telling me to stock up on groceries and supplies. Like many, he has worked remotely for weeks, but as a significant portion of his job requires field visits, he expects to be furloughed soon until it is safe to go out again. I can’t bring him here — and at 27, this isn’t “home” to him anyway — so I do what I can do: text him, mail him rations of homemade treats, and hope for the best. My son is our family’s politico, and he has preached for some time that a class revolution has been simmering. Reading daily news of gun purchases and hoarding, knowing there are a multitude of “essential” workers who aren’t paid a living wage, and seeing most eveyone’s patience worn to near breaking makes me believe his theory that once felt far-fetched.
My best friend and her husband who live in Buenos Aires cannot go outside. She climbs sets of stairs in their apartment building for exercise and breathes fresh air only when sitting on their small balcony. She and I communicate frequently about books we’re reading or to swap stories, but mostly we share text-sized tidbits about how we’re feeling boiled down, transformed, freshly aware of how we want to emerge on the other side of this. We are both in the last third of our lives, so we are prone to these conversations anyway, but now they feel more urgent, more defined. “No more bullshit,” we tell each other when talking about disengaged ex-husbands or rude acquaintances. We assure each other that we’ll pay more attention to all we’ve taken for granted.
On a long walk one afternoon I wanted to take a video for her — the jagged sunlight beaming through pine branches, my dog’s paws padding on the trail accompanying the nasal songs of the geese — but I didn’t, because I thought it might make her sad. In an act of rebellion, the other day she snuck out for the first time in 18 days, stealing a walk at dawn, avoiding the police and everyone else, reveling in her short-lived crime. Small pleasures, we agree, will feel different to us now.
As the days of quarantine roll by, I have learned that uncertainty is a new sweater that we all try on differently. I am trying to honor what I feel, to trust what seems to fit my needs— and what does not — these days. I’m trying to leave some room to respect the choices of others, to pay closer attention to everything around me. And so, tomorrow I might get outside to rake the lawn, check in on the neighbor, watch an episode or two of Gunsmoke with my husband. And then later in the day, when the sky empties of bright color, I will relax on the back porch and once again study the river: constant, alive with certainty, defiant of crisis.
