March 23, 2020 (a look back at the first week of lockdown…)

William does not bore easily.

Six months ago, I would have been sad to look out the kitchen window and see boy playing by himself. I would have thought there was something wrong with him–or with us–that he didn’t have a playmate. Now I am so grateful for the time he has spent banging around outside alone. Or with dog. Turns out being a social misfit has its perks, after all. I am glad he knows how to build a decent fort and scale trees 40 feet in the air, tend a fire pit, make a K-turn in our driveway. Yes with a car. When he gets bored he hauls the tractor out and cuts the grass. Last week he mowed twice in one week. And weed wacked. From time to time I see him pass by the window with tools, and he’ll be taking care of something he’s seen Bill do, prune a tree branch or poke away at the eternally broken dog fence. If he asks for the car keys I know he wants to move the cars. What? You don’t have someone to move your cars?? We consider it a household chore, as important as any. Boy needs to move the cars. Around the driveway. We have a big driveway, but he can’t get far. I know he wants to practice his K-turn (and L-M-N-O-and-P turn) or parallel park. Sometimes he stakes out for the backyard, circling the house like we are circling the wagons these days: going nowhere. 

Today he makes wonderful go of it outside, even though it’s 48 degrees with off and on rain. That’s okay. He’s “off and on,” too. He walks dog twice. He plays his newly invented game: house ball. Boy has a tennis racquet and is hitting a ball he found in the woods up against the side of our house, think… thunk… think. First on the side of the house, outside the garage, and then toward the back, near the window-lined sunroom.  So, along with righting pictures knocked cock-eyed or picking up small objects and replacing them on the wall shelves they’ve been thumped from by the repetitive contact of a tennis ball, I worry for my windows. Could turn out to be a  very expensive “goal.” And windows and Will…they go way back (See no post I’ve ever written b/c it was too awful an experience). Just as I’ve warned him all week as he scaled trees and set up hairbrained stunts on his personal trampoline: DO NOT GET HURT! “Whatever you do, son…” (and if you also have a teenage boy stuck in a lockdown you will know that “whatever” encompasses a wide array of activities, some involving flammables and all of them questionable.) “Whatever you do….You do not want to be anywhere near a hospital.” Strange logic made suddenly wise, given all the news reports and video footage of the rising cases and the desperation of the medical world. Today I warn him not to break anything. On our house. Pleeeeeeze. Reasonable request in any day, never mind these quarantine days, when the last place you’d want to be is Home Depot.

This “solo time” is enhanced by Youtube and whole programs dedicated to “fails.” These are (ah, why?) video footage of every type of accident out there, from skiing stunts to skateboard or scooter tricks to forklift accidents. Again, I ask why. In the other breath I realize we are this month locked into our own sort of fail, where life in all its grand plans, purposeful connection, and lovely routine is disastrously derailed. Part of the gasp factor with a good “fail,” if I may, is that the original intention is present at the time of the ill-fated launch, lift, flip, turn, or jump. What the executor wanted to happen is contained in the clip of what actually did, and often the gap is so very wide–hence the humor (or for me, as an adult watching it, the horror). Who needs a Youtube clip when we are living it? Will is one project and hairbrained scheme after another, pure industry and intent with often disastrous results. Today he is lashing together paracord and bungees to hang the “world’s longest hammock.” He’s within 60 feet of the record. He’s also so pestered pecked at and nagged at by his sisters who are out here as well in the backyard, that he actually listens to me when I tell him the hammock is fine but those extender cords will not support his weight. Across the “equipment” littered lawn he looks at me frowning, wheels turning, sudden lightbulb: “True!” a smile, making eye contact while I can see the wheels turning: think think think…“But they will if I use 2500 pound trucking cables!” –and he disappears into the garage for his improvement.

Early on, our neighbor gave Will a bounce-back net. For baseball, I guess. He had that sheepish, “wife-told me-to-get-it-out-of-here” look on his face, and he helped Will pull it out of the leaves and debris and haul it over to our yard. That occupied an afternoon anyway, of boy pitching a baseball in to the net and practicing his catch. Then it was tennis balls, then soccer balls, then it tuned into a physics experiment–tossing a football into the net to see at what angles the thing would rocket away. Then things that probably shouldn’t be thrown: tennis racket, lawn chair, cat (just kidding but funny image anyway). Though I feared once again for our house windows, I started to see how handy it was to have a device on the property that everything you hurled at it came bouncing back. I thought I must go out and pitch in Sophie’s senior year. Or her graduation.

Like any family of multiple children, I think, when one is “up,” the others are down. So this lock-down for our new three (we were 1 1/2 going into it) is a doozie, and a parents’ minefield. Mood swing city. Struggling with my own processing of the quarantine and what it will mean, I realize that my first priority is these three displaced young adults. Screw my own oxygen mask. I try to think, What will help? What will soothe, smooth, soften the blows raining down like meteors from the sky (and as about expected as well). Misery and despair blanket our days. Life fail. All played to that heartbreaking soundtrack of a tennis ball hit against my home for want of a friend: think, thank, thunk.

The dog, after months of either unchecked freedom or life on a temporary chain on the back patio, is learning to respond to his new, finally-installed electric fence. It’s been broken for months. In a tidy parallel, then, his circle is reined in as well, shrinking his exuberance as his radius brings him closer, and closer to home. His exploration radius collapses on ours as the girls retreat to their rooms, boy, alone to the backyard and we to our screens for the days’ woeful dismantling of the known world. After another week of Zooming we realize there’s only so far you can get in a tiny tile. I can tell for girl, even her social media life is shrinking, like the pilot light going out in the robot’s eye as it finally concedes defeat. Though I can see the good in it, this world-shunning, life-cancelling move, it is sooooo painful. After a year of so-much-too-much-on-all-the-time living and the fallout from that, it will take some time. Good thing, because we have that in reserve–unlike masks, hand sanitizer and wipes, we will not be staying up late to make our own. The time threatens to swallow us whole. 

Still, the week has its silver linings, for those of us watching. Each day they do chores. The old dreaded “chore chart” from years ago make its unwelcome re-appearance to the bulletin board in our kitchen and a college girl, having made a life in the brand new world, is relegated once again to her post at the kitchen sink. Hey, I take full credit for the job training that went on here all those years. These days the lists are longer, what with all this truckload of time. Along with the take out the trash/recycling and laundry chores, I add some bold new others: “Walk dog.” “Cook w/ Mom.” “Write a note to So-and-so.” Then a leap: “Puzzle with Mom.” “Help Dad in garage.” “Play a family game” (whoo boy). 

Sophie is finished, dutiful daughter, and is halfway back up the stairs before I think to ask her for one more “little” thing. Girl craves me-time like air. Wilts quickly in person. Now more than ever, needs much “alone time” in her room. Not this: “Hello daughter. Just one more thing before dinner. Could you possibly… I know…but could you go out and play badminton with Will?” She has not ventured outside all day, has not yet tried the newly set-up badminton, and may have forgotten she has a brother. She is indignant, refusing. But she goes, complete with stomp and door slam. I tell you what. Ten minutes later I’m taking a pot off the stove and look out the window and there they are, whacking the birdie back and forth. I watch the investment grow, in their body language then their smiles. Then I can hear them, laughing, shouting at one another. When I call for dinner they come in red faced and rowdy, challenging the other to the next game. My weary momma’s heart does cart-wheels of joy unseen as I serve up yet another family meal. Who woulda thunk that? I’ll find you a friend, my son.