There's a tsunami coming, and I can smell saltwater in the air

I haven’t written about the epidemic or the quarantine because I haven’t been able to reconcile it. People keep saying this is our “new normal,” and I refuse to accept that. I suppose “this is the new normal” is what people had to tell themselves when they were suddenly under Nazi occupation, or their country was ravaged by civil war and they have to move into refugee camps. But our situation really isn’t like that. Because on the grand scheme of things, for the vast majority of us, things are still OK. Stay at home! Take your school’s “spring break” a couple of weeks early! Enjoy the family time! Maintain six feet of distance from anyone who is not in your family! One of those statements is not like the others.

Instead of feeling afraid, the transition was more unsettling. I’ve felt like I’m in some creepy “Black Mirror” episode. In the first two weeks, I’d go to the grocery store and see people stacking their carts high, no one wearing masks but an elderly Asian couple, and I would see the store sold out of toilet paper and bleach and meat. I’d nod and make a mental note to come back earlier in a couple of days. But there were still lots of things that were available, like fresh produce. I filled a quarter of my cart with fresh produce. I even picked up some tahini so I could start making homemade hummus instead of spending so much money on those tiny little tubs. We’re not in a crisis! I’m buying tahini and salad bags and LaCroix! You don’t drink sparkling water in a crisis!

I started going to the grocery store early in hopes of getting meat, but even at 7:30 a.m. on March 16, the absolute only fresh meat they had was raw corned beef—there for St. Patrick’s Day. All of us early risers walked around the store, a little fast, but very polite, looking at the shelves and pretending as if some delivery truck must be running late this morning. On this occasion I was at Shopper’s, known for their amazing “colossal donuts.” I got four. I turned to the man next to me and said “if it’s the end of the world, we gotta get donuts, right?” He laughed nervously and took a step away from me. Or at least that’s how it felt.

Then the non-essential businesses started closing. I wanted to return some shoes I bought for Knox that were the wrong size, but DSW Shoe Warehouse was closed until further notice. Rye wanted to buy more cones with his birthday money (shaking my head) and Dick’s was closed to customers, but you could order them online and then have an employee bring them out to you, so we did it. Then non-essential businesses were ordered to close. Restaurants with carryout were allowed to remain open for carryout, and some did, and some didn’t. Some did for a few days a week, and then quit. I’m worried for how many of our local businesses will never reopen.

I am not an extrovert. But I need to get out and see people and apparently I need to be seen. (If you get a shower, do your hair and put on jeans, but no one saw you, did you actually get dressed today?) Sure, I can take three days stuck inside during a snowstorm, I find that kind of relaxing because I hate being cold. And I am so grateful that this epidemic has reached us in spring, where we can see new signs of nature coming alive every day and go outside without freezing. But telling me to stay home is just crushing. My kids get up early, and if we haven’t left the house by 10 a.m., we’re seriously getting on each other’s nerves. And while I would be happy to hole up in just about any room in the house by myself, the kids generally don’t do well together unsupervised after an hour, which is why 10 a.m. seems to be the breaking point. My normal is that two days a week they’re at school at 8:30 a.m., and on days they have homeschool, we’re getting to the gym at 9:50. Then I take an hour to exercise while they in all likelihood just watch Nick Jr., but when that hour’s up, we’ve all had a little reset and we either go to the library or run a quick errand or just head home for an hour of activity before lunch, and before we know it, it’s nap/quiet time.

We already homeschooled so the teaching my kids at home thing hasn’t rocked my world, but I used to have two mornings to myself while both kids were at school, and I really miss that time. On Mondays I usually went to the gym and then went shopping, and on Wednesdays I did a mini gym trip and then met with my book club. My book club is still continuing our book discussions through the video voicemail app Marco Polo, and I’m so glad we’re continuing and see each other’s faces, but needless to say, it’s not the same! It’s great that we have that little outlet, and the book we’ve been reading, “Get Out of Your Head!”, has been really helpful for resetting our thoughts during these troubling times. But we’re conversing in bits and pieces. There’s a rhythm that’s lost. There are some members who get really busy with work or their kids and we don’t hear from them for 10 days and by then we’ve moved onto the next chapter. There are no hugs or “I love that jacket!” or “so how did that meeting go?” before we start each week. There hardly even seems to be “weeks.” For people like me who are home with our children, we’re kind of stuck in a Groundhog Day loop, the passage of time measured only in diminishing toilet paper supplies.

Before I go on, let me say that I am not meaning to complain. I am so grateful that I AM able to be home and safe with my kids. That I don’t have to leave them in someone else’s care while I go to work, in some “essential” work position, where I would be coming into contact with endless numbers of people who could be carrying the virus and just do not know it yet. (Josh however IS still going to work, four to five days a week, and coming in contact with endless numbers of people who are seeing him because they DO have some kind of a health condition that needs medication.) I feel stuck in the middle of two extremes: there are the people who have accepted the “new normal” and are happily home doing crafts with their kids and truly have a brave face, and at the other extreme there are people who are flipping out over their new circumstances and complaining about everything. Then again, there are also those who are kind of just denying the reality. Personally, I feel like that scene in the movie “The Impossible,” or any movie with a tsunami, and they can see this wall of water coming and they can’t do anything about it, and you’re just waiting and watching it come toward you. 

See that person standing there,
at the edge of the water? That's us.

That’s how I feel during this first week of April. I know when that wave hits, we won’t be complaining about being told to stay home anymore, and we’ll be recounting in our minds just how many people we saw in the past two weeks and who we might have put in danger. So I’m trying not to complain, but I think it’s OK to still feel sad, as long as we don’t succumb to it. As I wrote my sister-in-law earlier in the week, “I’m persevering, but I haven’t adapted.” I also want to say that I am not overcome by fear. God is with me through good and bad, and I have peace even in these dark times. 

While the tsunami is still a few weeks off shore, I hope, I got my first taste of getting wet today. I, like millions of Americans, was just laid off. I worked full time for the Carroll County Times for eleven years, and I have been a freelance writer and columnist for the paper for the past seven years, which made my transition to becoming a stay at home parent a lot easier, mentally. I was still keeping a foot in the door. For the first three years, I wrote a weekly neighborhoods column, a food column and picked up one to two more feature stories per month. It definitely kept me busy, and I still felt like a journalist. With Knox’s birth, I cut back to just the food column, but that felt right at the time too. “Columnist” is a position they often give a journalist who is put out to pasture, and I was happy to accept that. Frankly, I was surprised they kept me going, but figured I would keep writing my weekly column about recipes with different food themes for as long as they kept paying me, and it’s how I’m still “remembered” most in this county. No joke, just six weeks ago I was stopped in a restaurant and asked, “What’s cooking in ‘Carrie’s Kitchen?’”

And now the timing of my dismissal feels like it came out of nowhere. It wasn’t me personally, but with the current economic situation and the huge drop in advertising because businesses aren’t open and events aren’t happening, and all freelancers got put on hold until at least June. But I have my doubts that they will continue outside columnists. And I’m especially sad that I didn’t get to write a farewell column, but then again, I wouldn’t want to write a farewell either in case I do get brought back on. And I’m a little nervous that I hadn’t submitted an invoice in two months and they owe me two months of pay, but I’m 80 percent sure I’ll get that money. Gulp.

My layoff is inconsequential compared to what so many other people are going through, since I made so little, but I’ll admit, my pride is hurt. I can no longer say I work in newspapers. My beloved friend Pat who is also a journalist and has been the victim of economic layoffs in newspapers in the past said at least I already had this blog going. Perhaps losing my food column gives me an opportunity to diversify more on this blog, and that’s true. But darn it, I’m still sad. It’s either the end of an era, or just another example of how another part of my life that I took for granted is now being put on hold.

In any case, today’s sad news at least gave me the impetus to start writing here today, and from here forward, it looks like I will have even more time to do so.

Stay safe, everyone. Keep on persevering!