Parenting in the Time of COVID-19

You know those jokey memes that say something like, “Check on your friends with toddlers. They are not okay.”

Well, very suddenly, it’s not a joke. I am not okay.

Are you?

If, a month ago, you’d asked me what I thought I’d be blogging about right now, I would have guessed a lot of different things. But never, not in a million years, would I have told you I was going to be writing about life in the midst of a global pandemic where an estimated 60% of people on earth will be invected by a mysterious, highly contagious virus; millions will likely die; the economy will have nose-dived; businesses will have shuttered; toilet paper will have disappeared; and we can’t leave our house.

I struggle to explain the paradox that is being both obsessively (unhealthfully) attuned to news about the pandemic and strangely disassociated from the life I am currently living. I can tell you a lot about the pandemic we’re currently experiencing, but I can’t process a single second of it.

Here’s what life looks like right now: Sona is continuing to work, per usual, but in a significantly more taxing–and more dangerous–environment. She’s in the medical field, and like with all folks in the medical field right now, it’s all hands on deck. She can’t work from home. Her hours haven’t changed. She’s gone every day, working in a place where people are daily being diagnosed with COVID-19, and then she comes home to us, worn ragged.

I’m on Spring Break. Go ahead–you can laugh. It’s disturbingly funny to think about what this week would have meant for me BCV (before coronavirus): catching up on the to-do list I’d been compiling in anticipation, writing the chapters of the memoir I’d been putting off, engaging in all sorts of frivolous self-care, relishing some “me time.”

But it’s ACV, and instead, I’m barely getting by.

While we’ve been mostly self-quarantined and social-distancing for a week, we didn’t make the final determination to pull the boys from their school, which is still open and for which we are still paying nearly 4k a month, until Monday. I know a lot of people think it should have been an easy decision, but it wasn’t.

As soon as my extended Spring Break (go ahead–laugh again) is over, classes at my college resume, and I’m in the position of offering quality online instruction to 80+ students who never signed up for–and likely are quite unprepared for–online instruction. It generally takes me weeks to build an online class. Now, I have days.

With Sona still working her normal hours, that means that I’m tasked with working my full-time job, which is in no way business as usual, and being a full-time mom to a high needs 4 year old and a typical 1 year old. So, we left them in school a couple days longer than we probably would have otherwise, giving me a couple days to get a jumpstart on my work.

This is all to say that I have only really been home with the boys for a day or two, although we haven’t left the house much in the past week. And even still, only a couple days in, I’m kind of breaking.

I try to be very open and honest about mental health on here. It’s important, I think, to work against the stigma of mental illness, especially for women. In January, I wrote pretty openly about how I felt like I was finally turning a corner, coming out of what I now realize was a pretty significant depression during the last quarter of 2019.

Now, I am worried that things are starting to cloud a bit again. Today, I’ve felt myself really working to clear the cloud cover, and I haven’t been so successful.

Do my eyes look a little pink? Well, that’s because I woke up with double pink eye, which I contracted from Elias, who also has double pink eye, along with a stubborn 100+ fever. He hasn’t eaten for a few days, and he’s been as clingy and trying as any 1 year old with those symptoms would be.

And Finn? Well, after several months of occupational therapy, which was really helping both him and us, he’s tailspinning. What’s going on is a lot for us adults to take, but it’s a lot for kids, too. As much as we’ve tried to put on a brave face and maintain some sense of normalcy for him, everything in his little world is shifting, and he’s perceptive enough to know that something is up. Yesterday, he asked, “Do people with the virus die?” I have no idea what prompted that question, as we certainly haven’t talked mortality rates around him, but he’s no dummy.

So, his anxiety is peaking, too. He’s baby-talking, walking on tip-toes, hitting himself, and just generally displaying a lot of the behaviors that had virtually disappeared. He’s also a lot harder to manage, and I want to be the patient momma he deserves, but it’s really difficult when I’m running on emotional empty myself.

A lot is being said about the impact social distancing will have on all of us. We’re going to have to be vigilant–about our own mental health and about the mental health of those we love. It’s easy to get lonely. But I have to say, I think the only thing lonelier than being by yourself is being the only adult with little kids. I’m spending all day trying to pretend that I’m not feeling what I’m feeling. It’s one long, unending performance, and it’s exhausting.

Parenting during the time of COVID-19 is devastatingly difficult.

It is trying to put on a brave face and feeling guilty when your mask slips.

It is making schedules and thinking up art projects and trying to assume the roles of teacher, coach, and therapist.

It is worrying whether there will be milk.

It is cooking three meals a day. Cleaning up toys constantly. Never getting a second to stop.

It is having to constantly calculate risks: Work or daycare? Park or stir-craziness? iPad or worksheets?

It is losing every single thing that makes you feel like yourself, again: podcasts in the car, reading for pleasure, relationships outside of your home.

It is never having a single minute when you aren’t on duty. And often, you are on duty as both a parent and an employee.

It is the typical mom guilt–the feeling that you never are giving anything enough attention–amplified times a thousand.

It is wondering whether your wife should sleep in another room so that you don’t get sick.

It is wondering whether, if you both get sick, someone will be able to step in and care for you children.

It is worrying, more and more, what the lasting impact of this will be. How will this shape what it means for them to be a child? What will they remember? What won’t they get to experience?

It is watching what you say and then missing honest conversation.

It is wanting to be the superhero for them but not having anyone be the superhero for you.

It is, I’m just going to say it, damn-near crippling.

And I say all this while acknowledging that Sona and I are among the privileged. We have our jobs. We won’t lose our home over this. The very foundation of our lives won’t fundamentally shift.

Even still, I’m not okay.

As a T1D, I’m immunocompromised. I have an alcoholic father with dementia who I am solely responsible for and who is completely dependent on me. I have a wife whose coworkers are being testing for COVID. Just in the past 24 hours, I’ve had to email an editor asking for an extension on an important book project and have had to back out of a work project, which burdens others quite a bit. We have no dependable family nearby, not that we could see them if we could.

It is a lot, and if I feel the way I’ve felt the past few days for much longer, I’m going to reach out and try to get some help.

And that’s, ultimately, why I’m writing this now. Not because anyone needs to hear how hard things are. We are all living it.

But this is for the other mommas out there, more than anything. Because it is the mommas who end up bearing the brunt of it–always.

I see you, Momma. Are you okay?

I want you to know that you can answer that question honestly. I want you to know: I’m not okay either.