Why can’t I do something else?
is what the purple post-it says. The note was written to me in anger, after a moment in which I’d asked her to perform some kind of simple task like, for example, writing down a sentence or two about a book someone had just read them on a YouTube Safe Mode video. The post-it was shoved into my hand, with furious furrowed brow and hard eye contact and there was no mistaking it, no reading response would be put down on paper today.
Here is an excerpt from a monologue performed at least twice during this time: You know what I do, right? I am a teacher. I teach kids. You’ve seen it. You know! And guess what? I’m very good at it! I’m very very fun! And funny!
I’ve learned that playing with a small piece of purple Play Doh during my childrens’ Google Meet calls helps me relax.
I can hear the hum of the refrigerator. The cats, cleaning themselves, awaiting their next spontaneous annoyance. Him, scrolling through the Criterion Collection app, me at the round table. Red wine. Time.
The girls got to sleep late, that seems to be the trend. Sushi night, for the first time in three months at least. Delicious food prepared by others, thank you. I wash the plastic grass to be used for a future craft project.
Tonglen for the ambulances. They are still going by.
I feel like I’m running out of feelings.
I feel the rope pulling me, the headlights that only show the next few dashes on the road ahead, the in a few months, we might know more. My sister says write about how maybe this is no longer quarantine, maybe it’s just life. As I type this, a tiny flicker of the feelings return.
Gone again.
I’m watching people go. I’ve watched people on Zoom calls in front of beige walls, eggshell blue walls, ecru walls, mauve walls. I’ve watched people on Zoom with framed pictures of egrets, framed paintings of mountains, framed photographs of family members in their backgrounds. These are not their homes. Where are you? Where are you going? Are you leaving? Are you already gone? What will we do without you?
In the third week of quarantine, my daughter’s appointed class buddy popped onto the call in the foreground of the screen, sun-drenched empty beach house walls behind her. Where are you?, my daughter asked, giggling. We escaped!, she said cheerily, which was immediately followed by her mom, covering for her. Don’t say that, honey — say “we left.”
