We are in the eighth month of this SARS-CoV-2 virus pandemic, and the end is not in sight.
It calls for the endurance of the marathon runner — the mental toughness, the steel in the spine — which one encounters when one hits “the wall” around mile 18 of the 26 required to complete the race.
The journey would have been easier to endure if we knew we back in March at the beginning that we would be in semi-quarantine for what will probably be a full year or more. When this started, we had no idea. Back then many spent a month or two frozen in panic glued to their smartphone “doom scrolling.” What is happening? Will I get sick? Will we be ok? When will this be over? Yet here we are in mid-November already. Nobody — from the homeless guy on the corner to the senior statesmen making the decisions — really knows what they are doing. They are making up the rules as they go, hoping for the best. With decidedly mixed results.
Eight months in, it is a mixed bag for me, too. I rode out my frustration and anxiety on the road, in the pool, and on tennis courts all summer.
“Pandemic Diary, I: The Crucible — Hard Times and Stress; Mental and Physical Strength”
June 18, 2020
It served me well, as far as that goes. But as it gets colder and dark by five pm, it will be time to downshift and settle in for the winter. It has also been a good run of reading and learning. I’ll try to keep that up, too.
“Pandemic Diary, II: My Intellectual Diet During Quarantine”
August 7, 2020
This essay here —
“Pandemic Diary III: Mile 18 of the Coronavirus Pandemic Marathon”
November 8, 2020
— is the next entry in the autobiography of this fateful year, 2020, dear reader. Such has been my athletic and literary pursuits.
Work, on the other hand, has also been a mixed bag. I was ready to embrace distance learning with a passion, but concerns about “equity” cut me off before I could even get started. Teaching in the spring was a joke, as school administrators flailed and thrashed to find solutions which would serve “all students.” It was a perfect example of Voltaire’s “the best is the enemy of the good,” and school administrators hamstrung teachers like me who had experience teaching online. It made a private education look like the better choice compared to public school. “Shut it all down — for everyone!” the order came down from on high. It was frustrating, but I had no control over educational policy. I did the best I could. “Control what you can control, and leave the rest.” I’ve said this so many times over the past eight months it angers my wife to hear. “Distance learning” has gone better this fall, but it is far from ideal.
But work is work. Past a point I don’t let my job take up too much of my time. I have passion projects, intellectual pursuits, and my friendships.
And family. That has been hard.
As an adult, I am semi self-contained. I could do this quasi-quarantine thing indefinitely. I can take rational steps to adapt my life to get my needs taken care of. If Plan A is not working because of societal changes to our pandemic reality, move to plan Plan B. So it has gone. I have put pen to paper in CBT thought records and then committed to future Action Plans to improve the situation or Acceptance of what is irremediable. I’m an adult. I might not have total control over all external events — such as a pandemic and quarantine — but I certainly have control over my thoughts and responses to them.
But my daughters aren’t adults. They have less power to make those changes. My daughters have less control.
It has humbled me how dependent our family has been on the institutions of the public school and organized sports to get us through the day. “It takes a village to raise a child.” It sure does.
And the village is shut down due to the Coronavirus. Indefinitely. Even after so many months nobody has any idea when a sense of normalcy will return. My daughters are stagnating, at best. They are isolated, lonely, and floundering, at worst. They are ten and thirteen-years old.
And we are doing better than some. My wife and I have jobs and are middle class. We were doing ok before the pandemic hit. What is happening to people without money or support? To those whose mental health was poor to begin with? To people in recovery? To those who have few or no friends?
Well, I guess quarantine is not so different than any other time for those who have no friends. But more and more people are living the lives of the friendless and the isolated in this age of state-mandated “social distancing.” Oh, how I have learned to hate that term!
I have tremendous anger at California Governor Gavin Newsom, Secretary of the California Health and Human Services Mark Ghaly, Superintendent of the Ventura Unified School District Roger Rice, and Ventura Football Club President Andre Autotte. You’ve abandoned my daughters and us their parents: the schools are empty of students, and the soccer fields have no matches on them. The kids they are home all day everyday. “Shut it down!” The effects are horrific.
Perhaps I am too harsh.
I imagine those in power are making the best decisions they can. Down the totem pole of authority the lesser chieftains obey orders from those on top, and so I see Governor Newsom as the chief devil and VFC President Autotte as almost blameless. History will judge the lockdowns, and I suspect it will judge people like Newsom harshly. Even now the historians are sharpening their quills, ready to dissect in minutest detail the decisions of those in power during this pandemic, with the benefit of hindsight and possessing all the digested wisdom about COVID-19 which was unavailable at the time in 2020. Historians can look backwards at what happened, but we are condemned to move forward, groping in the shadows of uncertainty.
My older daughter, Julia, is in eighth grade. She is doing relatively well, I think. She spends long hours in her room looking online at clothes and makeup. Julia occupies her days watching slick TikTok dance moves and banal YouTube videos. She sees her friends occasionally, and text messages them constantly. I have urged and tried to read books with her, but she resists quietly. I let it drop. I ran a book club for her and some of her friends back in the springl, but that is too exhausting to repeat. I have tried to get Julia to study and learn independently — I even borrowed a dslr camera and signed us both up for an online class. We could learn together. She was uninterested. I tried to read poetry with her. No go. Julia is drifting. She is guarded nowadays and doesn’t share much. She is a teenager: sullen and indolent. She says she’s tired and sleeps a lot. Julia has picked at a patch of skin so much it is raw and discolored. That is worrisome. But I think Julia will be ok. She has shown remarkable resilience so far. I’m impressed.
In contrast, my younger daughter, Elizabeth, in fifth grade, is still a child. She is lonely and bored. Struggling. Elizabeth is incredibly needy. If Julia stays to herself in her room, Elizabeth is always my elbow. She wants to sleep on the ground next to my bed at night. I read book after book after book after book out loud to her. We’ve gone to the beach over and over this summer. We have BBQed time after time. Sometimes we just get in the car and drive around to get out of the house. Seeing her struggle and so needy, I try to be all things to her.
I am teacher, coach, friend, parent. Because the adult world which normally produces all those persons is absent. And has been for eight months. It is all on parents. The adult world has abandoned us.
Once when Elizabeth told me yet again that she missed her friends, I told her I was sorry and that I’d be her friend. “You can’t be my friend, daddy. You’re a grown up.” I can’t be all things to her, alas. The situation is not good. Elizabeth exhausts me. She clamors to watch YouTube videos or play the Roblox video game until her eyes bleed and my wife is at her wit’s end. Tempers grow sharp. Harsh words are spoken.
Since they haven’t seen them in so long, many younger kids have lost their friends who are so important in growing up — that is in the worst cases. At best kids’ social skills have atrophied, and their friendships have atrophied, to one degree or another. When elementary schools open up again, will they have to teach kids how to be friends again? Explicitly teach them the social skills they lost during the quarantine?
As for me, I will be ok, no matter what. If I get sick, I’ll be ok. Annus horribilis 2020, you’ve thrown some hard punches at me which landed, but I’m still standing and I’m good-to-go for the next round. I’ll go all 15 rounds with you, Mr. Pandemic, if that’s what it takes. I’m the captain of my soul, and I’m ready for whatever life throws at me next. Good or bad.
Or switching from the boxing metaphor to the long-distance running one I started this essay with: if this winter is mile 18 of the marathon this pandemic seems to have become — the hardest part — then I’ll be fine —
I’ve run marathons before, and finished them.
“INVICTUS”
by William Ernest Henley
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
