Coronavirus Journal, three years later

A publisher put out a call a while back for Coronavirus diary entries and I happily obliged since, of course, I'd been writing in my journal during those initial dark, confused days. I've heard nothing from the publication so I am publishing the entries here. In our particular corner of the world -- by which I mean, the Bonner sisters and their families -- we were simultaneously handling the initial phase of my father's decline. It feels individual and unique and yet I have the sensation so many of us were juggling two problems -- two pandemics, as it were. The wider emergency of Covid taking over the planet, and the personal imprint of a local tragedy, complicated by the restrictions and the terror of those early pandemic days.

March 25, 2020

Leo yesterday had a Zoom meeting with his teacher. The same Zoom software I am using to teach my class at Wesleyan, except it’s not actually at Wesleyan anymore.

He’s above average in reading and he likes Math a lot so perhaps we are lucky in some ways because I don’t fear he will miss out on as much.

Nonetheless, a part of me grieves that he’s been robbed of the fundamental social nature of school, particularly as an only child.

Yet I am always of two minds. I mean, quite literally always -- before coronavirus and probably since I was born. (Or) I think of it as an occupational hazard as a journalist.

He should be in school, but in my home school, he can rock in his chair or even slump (for a while at least). He can stand up to do math problems, and he can walk around the computer room on the third floor while he explains fables to me. Oh, and we have gym every day, multiple times a day.

And yet – the other mind weighing in again – he has not played with a friend in a week.

March 27, 2020

My coronavirus diary walks side by side with my Daddy-Is-Sick journal. I spoke with him yesterday and it was not the same person I knew. It was like talking to a hybrid of Mommy and an exhausted Daddy. He kept repeating certain key details of his fluid transfusion – that it took four-and-a-half hours hours, for example. He told me there are good days and bad, and the bad ones are when he wants to pull the blanket over his head. What was yesterday, I asked? A pull-the-blanket-over-your-head kind of day.

When I like to write

I like to write in the morning after a fractured night’s sleep has left me feeling so emotionally fragile it feels like a form of grief. I’m overcome and on the verge of tears, and my brain suddenly alights on a thought, then 10 thoughts, then 100. The words quickly filling my mind need a space to live. Feelings I left festering under the surface emerge and demand to be heard. I’m running on adrenaline, and at my wit’s end, and too tired to be careful. What makes me ache, what tortures me, what I truly think comes pouring out. I confess that I feel as though I am in mourning at fall’s first warnings, when the sudden chill in the morning air is so jarring since until yesterday, there was nothing but heavy, humid air mugging my every breath. Or I whisper to the journal I keep in my car, “I think I’m losing my fingerprints.”

I wrote this gush of words above after beginning a graduate writing program in my early 40s. I was finally attempting to fulfill my third-grade teacher’s prediction that I would be a writer when I grew up. Trying my hand at fiction for the first time, I had the zeal of a convert. I’d deferred my writing dreams (and my vague grad school plans) for so long, I never thought I’d be someone who lived to write. Then a series of unforeseen events – motherhood in my late 30s, among other things -- lead me to the magic door. I found the more I wrote, the more I wanted to write – like an itch you keep scratching or better yet, a lover you can’t stop kissing. If I showed up to write, I would write, then write a little more. Later after I’d taken a pause, a new thought might occur to me and I would race to my laptop to record it.

In the early days of this writing frenzy, which began during my maternity leave, I convinced myself it was all tied to breastfeeding and post-pregnancy hormones. (My true religion is a combination of Catholic guilt and jinx theory.) Plus, writing felt magical, too good to be true. I feared it would all disappear once I ceased to nurse and my body went back to its old self.

When this pessimist’s fantasy lifted, I found I wanted to write fairly often; some days, every spare minute. Not that every day produced the same kind of writing or quantity. Oh no.

So while writing after a night of broken sleep unleashes in me highly emotional, highly unstructured thoughts, writing after I’ve had eight hours of solid slumber produces an excess of energy that converts my mind into a trampoline, and I find myself revising multiple pieces in one sitting, organizing notes for a future piece and gathering details on, say, a fellowship for writers. I’m full of wonder and confidence; I have something to prove and I want to fight – on the page.

(Note to young writers: Sleep is cool if it allows you to go wild in your writing).

Running very little very often

I have a photo of myself and my son that became instantly beloved to me the moment I saw it.

He’s on his bike and I’m chasing after him, in a bid to keep up with him -- and keep an eye on him. We’ve come to the Beltline, the rails-to-trails economic development project that’s remaking Atlanta, where we once lived.

I’m dressed in tight jeans and black sandals with hard wooden soles; my hands are gripping my pocketbook and a cell phone. I’m not, in other words, dressed to run. But I am running full-on -- and reveling in the moment.

We’re a blur in motion, we’re laughing, we're alive; need I say more? The photo means more than the plaque I received at a 5K race in my neighborhood after finishing second in my age group.

As the mother of an elementary school-aged boy, I probably run more now than ever before. Running isn’t something I do occasionally – it’s woven now, in small doses, into my life.

My go-to sport and exercise regimen leans more toward lap swimming, and I love simply to walk. I also sometimes bike and paddleboard. But running is so simple, so low on equipment and preparation, that for me it’s like the exercise you pull out of your back pocket as needed. In a new city? Go for a run to map the place out. Can’t get to the gym? Run around the block a few times. Trapped in a cycle of insomnia because you’ve moved cross-country to start a new life in Connecticut? Run in circles behind your house, in the cool, green fields of a private school on your new street. (For example).

I don't run great distances. I don't even run not-so-great distances. I run very short distances.

But it doesn’t mean I’m not serious about running. I am serious about keeping running a constant, if not huge, part of my life. If for no other reason than it makes me feel like I am six years old again, and being six has a lot to recommend for itself.

Often when I’ve run over the past five years, it’s behind my son’s bike, like the scene in the photo. I have to keep up with him, and I relish a chance to be with him while also exercising.

No, it’s not like training for a 5K, or a half-marathon and it certainly isn’t elegant. But it’s running in its pure form, which is to say how we first learned to run as children. Their bodies start moving rapidly without any reason, without checking if they have the right gear on, and in a few seconds, they are engulfed by the euphoria running seems to singlehandedly bestow. My son and his friends run because they want to arrive at the next moment, at the next opportunity for joy, at the next post in life, as soon as possible. What better reason to run? So I copy them – because I, too, want in on this surefire path to smiles and laughter and joy.

As for races, they’re constantly being staged on a spontaneous basic. A few months ago, my son challenged me to a series of races in the school fields behind our house. Each race was a little bit longer – and one race was designated a “jogging-only” course. Do I let him win? I often do but not before running flat-out my fastest (then easing up). I mean, I am sprinting across that field like I am trying out for the Olympics.

I began doing that five years ago when my son turned five and his running sped up. He challenged me to a race on the sidewalk in front of our lilac Victorian in Atlanta, and all of a sudden, I was pouring on the power in a way I hadn’t in decades. I was back at my Long Island elementary school, competing in the 50-yard dash near the end of the school year, and I was joyfully passing classmates even while huffing and puffing around the makeshift track.

I cannot say what my neighbors might have thought, seeing me sprint across the sidewalk toward the corner. I wasn’t play-jogging as many parents do. I was in it to win it. And it felt glorious.

There have been so many days like that since he was born. Days where the highlights come when I’m getting some exercise with my son. I competed in gymnastics growing up and exercise somewhat regularly, but I have never been a jock. Nonetheless I’d always intuited, even if I didn’t fully exploit the notion, that exercise can change our days, and our lives -- literally. Now I try to work up a sweat when I can, including kicking the soccer ball around our small yard over and over (it’s running, just with a ball). And I don’t care how I look or who sees me or where I am when I begin running. With a son who runs at the drop of a hat, it’s not hard to do.

Some of this shift reflects the changes all parents have to make – and the underreported transformation that parenthood conveys. You get a do-over. Looking down after that first sprint with Leo, I suddenly thought, “I feel like a kid.” And it’s all because now I have a kid. Parenthood does that to you. You become the person you were when you were a child. You are given a chance to wipe the slate clean. Got bad habits? Don’t worry -- you won’t have as much time to indulge them. Never an early riser? You can be one now. Want to run around and burn off the frustration of adulthood? You’ll have plenty of opportunities now.

I love it when my son runs to retrieve something. Something he could have simply walked to get. My partner will tease him, by saying under his breath, “Must run everywhere.” And I think, “Shhhh!” I think, Please don’t let him realize the adult world ceased running as a matter of course a long time ago -- because the adult world sleepwalks through life. He aims toward adult life – it’s the natural trajectory of all humans. But let us imitate him – at the very least by moving our bodies often, without care.

Children who are my son’s age naturally belong to The United Republic of Running. No one is wearing expensive workout tights. No one has sponsorships But they are comparing their performances, contrasting the pros and the cons – and ready to race at any time. No excuses like you hear from adults. One day, when his friend heard that Leo and I raced, he challenged me to a race outside their school. Once again, I went full-on, and he cackled the whole race because he couldn’t believe there was a mom keeping pace with him (or openly acting so wacky) along that sidewalk.

For serious runners, this “baby-step” approach (quite literally) may gall. But it aims at a revolution: Running, running often, out of pure joy, and staying alive.

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