Documenting the Quarantine ed. 5: Thanking our bodies

Jen Hatmaker was on the Facebook Live this morning reading a passage from Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire about our bodies. That’s not triggering for any of us, I’m sure. No one out there began to squirm or cross her legs for fear of the varicose veins or cottage cheese cellulite showing. Not one dear reader has body shame or is still grappling with the same dang issues she thought were behind her but continue to pull her into their toxic loop as in the manner of changing for gym class in 7th grade. And because I am perfectly at ease with the own sacred vessel that is my body, I feel comfortable enough writing about the miracle that she has been to me in quarantine. In the manner of St. Jen, here she blows:

Cheers, cheers to your teacher body who has pivoted from her comfortable spot as a sage on the stage of the classroom, into a home office that doubles as a greenhouse and a kiosk for wayward Minecrafters. She has gone, without warning, from standing and making large swooping gestures across a dry erase board and occasionally dancing, to existing as a flattened pixelated head in a box. She knows that this is not what she was created to do but she has adapted. She adapts so well. Even when she hates it, she agrees to play along.

Huzzah to your mothering body who has carried babies inside of her and papoosed them on the outside. Now she mothers ones that are taller and some smaller than she but whose problems are vastly more confusing and amorphous and seemingly solvable but probably just want to be listenable. Salutes to that listening body that hears the plights of the socially distanced youths and shows compassion on her face and offers hugs and Sour Patch Kids purchased at Costco in bulk because sugar prohibition has no place in quarantine.

Kudos to the body that has been present in her marriage, that has relished car rides and impromptu walks and laughter—my word, the knock-you-breathless laughter that this quarantine has fostered. What a beautiful thing for your body to bask in, uninterruptedly and indefinitely and unabashedly.

Raise a toast to that body that has obeyed stay-at-home orders, who has worn her unfashionable mask so well it has achieved new heights in Corona Couture. Your body has walked and run and taken medically-approved puffs of her steroid inhaler, and taken roughly three zillion showers because it feels like a field trip, that stepping into the soothing soundproof booth of steam and song. Glory!

Let’s be honest with your body: this has been a terrible time to be a body. It would be much easier being a turquoise cloud that gets to move seamlessly along the contours of the earth without boundary. But we are contained in bodies and we will occupy them and shelter within them as we shelter in this space and place that we call here and now, until all the other bodies can handle everybody taking their bodies elsewhere.

Documenting the Quarantine ed. 4: What I Miss

I was inspired by writer Austin Channing Brown to consider what I missed from Ordinary Time that is not Quarantine Time. In no particular order:

• Riding the subway to work and listening to a playlist that I curated in order to take my mind far, far away.

• Not being aware of how my TMJ appears to think it needs to hold up the entire North American continent with a tautness that is, frankly, admirable. (Also, if anyone has any pain relief for TMJ, I am all ears).

• Dairy Freeze. I think 65% of my grumpiness is knowing it will soon be warm and I will not be queueing with all my neighbors and their dogs in wait of a Reese’s Razzle in a waxy cup with a tall white spoon.
  

• Clear breaks from caretaking. Each and every day feels a bit like parenting babies where there is no weekend and no real guarded sanctuary of rest. There is just caretaking: for my children, my students, and my dog (who has regressed to new levels of diva infantilism). It is interrupted by moments of having to do administrative things or clean the bathroom floor or walking through the cemetery. I miss going to night class and buying myself a coffee just because. They were little totems in my week, little flags in the sand of where I staked my territory of being a human with singular interests and joys, and not merely a mom in servitude of others.
  

• Massages. Not that I got one very often, but merely the possibility of paying a stranger to kneed my back like a stubborn slab of bread dough is a huge luxury I took for granted.
  

• My students and their three-dimensional human forms and colorful ideas and incisive questions. This semester started out difficult and it persists in being really difficult but I miss the living, breathing, electric classroom experience.
  

• The library. The dining hall. The buskers in Park St. Station. The sweaty barista at the Arlington Starbucks. The hopefulness I felt about Election 2020 and which I hope I might feel again depending on whom Biden taps as a running mate (?). Concerts. Holding other people’s babies.
  
  I could write endlessly about the things I miss, but the present reality is blessed and full all the same. My house is rarely quiet, a reminder that there are people in this house laughing and FaceTiming and making friendship bracelets to deliver—delivering us indeed to a little freeze frame when we all were as tightly wound as the embroidery threads my children cross and loop and knot with conviction. We are still good friends, same as we ever were, we are just a few threads unslipped through knots for now. Ready and waiting for the chance to wrap around one another’s wrist again soon.

Documenting the Quarantine ed. 3: My students are in prison, no for real prison

I have struggled to write at all at this two weeks-in-quarantine mark. It’s as if the creativity has drained out as I wade through so much content! Digital resources! Zoom chats! There is no lack of input. The output, however, is harder to synthesize.

The liminal space we are occupying is difficult to describe. I know that I cannot have this Introvert Nirvana without our doctors and nurses and mail carriers and pizza deliverers out there risking their lives, placing themselves in the direct path of the virus. I live between coziness and the dread that continues to knock on my door. I live in the security of being able to continue to receive a paycheck while others, including my stepmom who works in event planning, have filed for unemployment. I am occupying two zip codes at once, the one of safety and the other of anxiety. I don’t think any of us can have one without the other. Because if stress is not our present reality, we know our peace is preserved by someone else’s stressful present reality. And that’s so damn unfair, as is all of this. The racism and xenophobia and lack of PPEs and the kids in New York who are living in shelters without wifi and therefore access to their education. The great underbelly of injustice in our country is being readily exposed by this virus, and it’s not all bad to call the ugly into the light. But it’s still heartbreaking.

In my own online classroom, I also am dealing with the very real ramifications having students who are in prison. Not the symbolic prison that is quarantining and social distancing. I have some students who are in pre-release programs who have limited access to video, etc. All the online learning tutorials in the world have not prepared me for reaching students who are surrounded by literal bars and the figurative bars of lacking steady wifi connection or even quiet places to read and research. These are luxuries that should not be luxuries. They have helped me to be successful in my life. I’ve spent the majority of the week sighing because I cannot be sure my students are getting anything they need. Even though good people are trying to support them. Sometimes it’s not enough. My heart beats loud for my students, now more than ever.

When I’m not walking around wringing my hands and sighing the sigh of futility, we’ve been having a pretty good time with the kids. Each day, we go somewhere to breathe the fresh air and let the spazz dog sniff the scent of God knows what. Rock quarries, beaches, cemeteries—wherever it’s not too crowded. I’ve played one mean game of Monopoly, I dominated Scrabble, and have watched the entirety of “High Fidelity” and “Atlanta” so far. And I have finished one book.

I think the best thing that merits documentation this week are these masks that my MIL sent. Pantyliners, our first defense against viral infection.