It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. We’ve gone from “maybe we can still take our California vacation” to “we can’t leave our apartment.” Every day, in the space of a couple hours, I ricochet from “we’re going to die” to “everything is OK.” It helps that I’m really busy with work, so my mind isn’t constantly catastrophizing. I’m trying to stay centered and calm, but it’s SO HARD. Everything feels so upended and discombobulated.
A few years ago, when Eliot was in the throes of shingles, every night I would talk him through a meditation, trying to get his focus off his pain. This is completely different, but the coronavirus anxiety is definitely shingles-level. So last weekend, Eliot and I collaborated on a meditation, using some quiet acoustic music that he had put together and a script that I wrote. The goal was to record five mediations so we could listen to one every night during the week, but we ended up doing only one.
Finally, in week three, I’m sort of figuring out my new routine. I take a shower before waking up Astrid. Then after breakfast I do my shoulder exercises before “going to work” (aka sitting back down at the table). I used to go to yoga after work, so I’m trying to stop work at 5 and do some yoga with Astrid. Then I make dinner, we eat at 7 and watch Jeopardy at 7:30. Weekends are more fun. No work or homework!, which is something completely novel. Speaking of which, we’re reading more. I bought a ping pong set from Amazon and our kitchen table changes from my weekday workspace to a weekend ping pong table.We bake cookies, go for long walks, play board games...do all the things that I wanted us to do as a family on weekends, except homework always took precedence. Thank you, Covid-19! It’s crazy that it took a pandemic to bring us a little balance.
