December 22, 2021
So, turns out there was lots more to happen in December. Omicron is here. What is this, the third wave? Fifth wave. I’ve lost count.
Yesterday a child in Evangeline’s daycare tested positive for covid and they shut the daycare facility down a day early for Winter Break. I’m not too worried because while Evangeline could have had some exposure (although limited), the kid was only there on Friday and Evangeline only attends on Tuesdays and Thursday (but could she have crossed paths with the kid on Thursday? Who the &%^ knows!). So I had to go pick her up early at noon which I was not too happy about as Emerson had finally fallen asleep and I still needed to poop and get some writing/cleaning/laundry/dishes done during her hour nap. Oh well. I couldn’t concentrate on writing or reading or anything else anyways. What did it matter with the doom of climate change, rising inequality, our democracy eroding, fascism on the rise, and another wave of a pandemic half the country didn’t take seriously?
The next morning my brother called:
“Hey brother, so uh, bad news …” I already know before he says anything. “I tested positive for covid.”
He was vaccinated so this means it was a breakthrough case. A bummer too because he’d been so careful for the last two years. Cat and the girls and I were definitely exposed to him, as we had just had our early family Christmas gathering the past weekend with the rest of my family in Hood River. My brother was also supposed to stay with us the week between Christmas and New Year’s. That plan is also shot down. I feel tremendously angry and disappointed about the whole situation. I had so many fun breweries/bars/movie theaters and coffee shops to take him to!
I wonder now if we will even be able to have Christmas with my parents? Anyone? Under that anger and frustration is a deep sense of sadness, loneliness.
All I know is that with another surge coming I feel my mind and body instantly start to simultaneously panic and shut down. I feel a combination of anxiety and claustrophobia flood my mind. I will be stuck inside yet again with a toddler + infant for the next week or two with nothing to do but go on walks and stay inside.
After I get off the phone with my brother I run into the bathroom and fling through the items in our medicine cabinet looking for the thermometer. I take the temperature of Evangeline and Emerson and myself and am relieved to find that we are all in the 97-98 range. Still, there could be time yet for symptoms to develop. Or to be asymptomatic. Now all there is to do is wait and monitor.
I turn on The Grinch—the 2018 version with Benedict Cumberbatch, (and a banging intro song by Tyler the Creator) and then I call Cat.
“Hi, yeah, you know how Toby wasn’t feeling so great on Monday? Well, he tested positive for covid.
“Oh no!” she says. “Is he doing okay?”
“Yes, fine.”
“How are the girls?”
“They seem okay,” I look into the other room to see Emerson eating a battery and rush over. No temperatures at least.”
“Well, I guess I need to tell my boss to see if she needs to go home from the clinic.
I go into what I call “Command Center” mode and begin making plans and contingency plans for the next couple days:
Let’s see, we’ll have to quarantine for a couple days until we know for sure if we have covid. I’ll need to order groceries online for pickup. Schedule a test for Evangeline and maybe the rest of us.
I look online to book a covid test and I can’t find any PCR tests before Monday the 27th. Rapid antigen tests are mostly sold out.I’ll have to call my cousin and tell him that Christmas is cancelled at our house.
After my command center mode I enter into the sunken realm, i.e., a stuck, depressive, fatalistic mode that I am not sure will ever leave. I lie down on the couch and begin doomscrolling through Twitter.
The worst thing is that I feel stuck. Trapped. My therapist tells me that this could be anxiety which would initiate a flight or fight response.
“It’s good to know the features of these symptoms,” my therapist tells me, “With anxiety there’s fight or flight, with depression there’s the fear you’re going to be stuck in the stuck. After all, one of the worst things about depression is not the moment, but the fear that it’s going to last forever.” (Feels a like a metaphor for this pandemic). He talks some more. About being stuck and polyvagal theory. Fight or flight. Stuck place versus anxiety. How we are built for connection and action and from that sunken place there’s none of that. It’s all true. I never thought I would say this, but I truly miss people right now. Staying at home with kids all day everyday is not exactly helping either. I’m too tired to go out late at night. Besides, where would I go? Some bar or coffeeshop to maybe read or write by myself or perhaps awkwardly make small talk with strangers? A movie? Movies are nice. You see normally I would enjoy these things, but not lately. I want to do things with people, people that I am not married to or currently raising.
I appreciate my therapist’s thoughts, but it doesn’t matter I think. He has a bad Zoom connection and our call keeps dropping anyways. Then Evangeline bursts into the room to ask me to play with her. My mom is quarantining and therefore not coming to help me with the kids on Wednesdays as she usually does.
Abandoned. Abandoned is the overwhelming feeling I feel and get from parents of kids under five when I scroll through Twitter or talk to others. There is no help coming. No calvary. Kids under five are barely mentioned as an afterthought in the White House’s pandemic response. We parents have been alone, so dreadfully alone, for almost two years now. Doing our best to keep it together. And there is just no end.
Christmas comes and it’s just the four of us. Evangeline wears her new Christmas present of a Pendleton hooded towel over her pajamas. She is pretending to be the character Bruno from Encanto, which we watch twice on Christmas day. Emerson crawls on the floor and examines her new animal walker. After Cat receives her negative covid test we mask up and walk down Peacock Lane at night to see the Christmas lights. Each house themed differently—The Grinch, Home Alone, Star Wars, nativity scene, etc.
After the girls covid tests on Sunday at the Brave Care in Sellwood (both negative!) we exchange presents outside at Cat’s sister’s house and then open them via Facetime when we get home. Not the Christmas gift exchange we had hoped for, but technically we’re supposed to quarantine until the 31st. Their family just got back from Disneyland so it feels risky to meet in person. Part of me doesn’t really care about being strict with covid procedures anymore. Fuck it! Let’s just get covid and get it over with! Then again, we’ve made it this far without covid, why give up now? We’d also be potentially spreading the virus and contributing to the rise in infections, which deep down, just doesn’t feel right.
Mentally I am doing okay, all things considered. I’ll have one good day where I can just stay in the present and keep my head down. But I already feel anxiety for the next week between Christmas and New Year’s. I already know it’s going to last forever. I feel lethargic and have an overwhelming amount of brain fog. No childcare, no family help, no places to go in the week between Christmas and New Year’s. The days stretch even further and I wish they’d snap like old rubber bands. 2021. A year when we we are all stretched thin, like butter over too much bread.[1]
The day after Christmas it snows, then even more on Monday. A welcome gift of white. We build a very crappy snowman. Then we walk to the park in our snow gear and pretend to ice skate along the way. I give the girls a bath when we get home. Build Evangeline a fort/tunnel with blankets and pillows from around our couch.
At night my mom texts us to say that she has also tested positive for covid. I guess it’s good we did nothing and cancelled Christmas with them after all!
Monday night the snow keeps falling and we get two (two!) inches in Portland. It’s not much when you’re from Colorado and lived in Utah, but it’s a nice change of pace to have something exciting, something new to play in.
Addendum:
January 1st, 2022.
We made it through December!
I wake up today with a renewed sense of hope. Perhaps it’s this arbitrary thing called the New Year. Perhaps it’s because I went to the climbing gym last night and had my first real sense of exercise and serotonin and adrenaline in weeks. Yesterday I cooked and baked myself out of my looming funk and ambivalence of the New Year. I made pizza dough, berry pie, and Jell-o with Evangeline (which she’d never had and got a kick out of). This afternoon I am going to attempt to make a Miso Ramen for New Year’s Day (which is more celebrated in Asian cultures). This morning I made waffles for the girls and rolled around with them on the floor and we played magni-tiles until lunch. They’re pretty great and I am lucky to have such a wonderful family that keeps me grounded. Now I’m thinking of going on a run to train for the this half-marathon that takes place in Portland in March. We’ll see. I do want get back into hiking shape and perhaps tackle climbing Mt St. Helens or Mt. Adams—maybe even Mt. Hood if I feel in shape and in good enough technical ability.
Wishing you a Happy New Year! (and a sincere thanks for following this silly newsletter of my daily life). Are you excited for the New Year? Do you think things will get better? Or this a trilogy of terrible years?
I hope to compile some year-end best of lists with books, albums, and movies. Until then.
-Levi
[1] So says Bilbo to Gandalf in the Fellowship of the Ring
*Song by Phoebe Bridgers
Here is my offer. Come to Utah. Stay at my house. I will watch your girls while you board. I only work Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. That gives you MWF all day, and two mornings. I still
Have toys and a high chair. I did the stay at home role. I know it is a long way, but I put it out there. Think of it as Brittain B&B with childcare. You can even go to dinner with friends, without your children. Consider.
As always, thanks for sharing your vulnerability with the world. I get the stuck sunken place, in a different way as a single person and lone amoeba, but I get it. The sucky thing is, there's no answer to this mire when we have to isolate ourselves, but I send you my "I get it" energy, cuz sometimes that helps to buoy the heart a bit.
Also, I'm doing that 1/2 in march! You have people you're doing it with? I'm walking, but I have a friend who is running it, and some other walking friends. We'll have a lunch hang after the race if you want to join (if we can, that is ::sob::)