Alone or Together, It’s All a Challenge in a Pandemic

Trying to find balance in quarantine

“I’m gonna lose it if we don’t eat soon,” I said.

It was almost ten in the morning. My brother Jack was scrolling through his emails. My mother was playing a game on her tablet.

This was a typical scene at my mother’s house. She gets up at seven, putters around for a while, works out for half an hour, then spends an hour watching the news, playing computer games, or shopping online.

My brother, a night owl, likes to work late and get up at nine to a slow-starting morning.

Neither of them likes to eat before ten.

I, on the other hand, like to get up as early as I can force myself out of bed, take my walk, and head immediately into the kitchen for food. If I don’t eat by nine, I start to feel sick and I get extremely grumpy.

“Can I just make my own breakfast? I really cannot wait another hour.”

“You know how I feel about eating together. When people live together or are staying together, you take care of the group first. I don’t want everyone making three different meals and three different messes every time we get hungry.”

I’ve heard this argument a million times since I was a teenager. Back then, she preferred to eat dinner at eight-thirty — monumentally late by my body’s timing, since I have always been ravenously hungry by six, without fail — and I’d beg her to let us eat earlier or at least let me have snacks. But no, we all had to eat together.

I retreated to the guest room to spare us all from the inevitable argument that would follow if I stayed in the same room with them for any longer without eating.

“You can go home if you have to do things your own way,” my mom yelled after me, somewhat testily. (Seriously, we have had this same argument for decades and both of us are tired of it.)

“I’m not going home yet! I love being here!” I yelled back, in an angry voice.

In early April, realizing that social distancing and quarantining were here for the long haul, I decided to talk to friends and family members about potential visits with them in the near future.

How could we do this in a safe way? Was anyone willing to take the risk, so long as certain precautions were in place?

Specifically, I wanted to see Jack and my mother and stay at the ranch for a while, so I could be back in the woods, and more than anything, I wanted to go to my sister’s house and see Alex for the first time since mid-March.

Both Alex and my mother are considered “vulnerable,” so I knew this would be a tall order. But I was delighted that both Mom and my sister agreed to a visit, so long as I fully quarantined for 14 days beforehand. No going anywhere. No visits with anyone. Nothing.

It wasn’t a pleasant hoop to jump through — going to the grocery store has been the only excuse to leave my house that I’ve had in a long time — but for these people, for these visits, I would do just about anything.

Unfortunately, my sister cancelled the visit at the last second, which broke my heart (another story for another time), but my mother, knowing I had quarantined, said, “Come stay with us!”

I only planned to stay a week, but I packed for more…just in case.

When I arrived and my mother came running out the door to hug me, I knew I would never want to leave.

It took me a very long time to understand the long-term ramifications of this pandemic. I don’t think I was mentally strong enough to really grasp what was happening when it first began. I’d assumed that so long as I stayed home except for visits to the grocery store, I’d be able to go back and forth between family members, just as I always did. And for some reason, I thought it would be over by summer.

I never dreamed that it would prevent my family from gathering together, indefinitely. I couldn’t have imagined that going to stay with my mother — something that has been such a normal part of my routine — would suddenly require such caution, such planning. I sure as hell never dreamed that I might be separated from Alex for who knows how long.

Living alone has been a joy for me these past few years, since I bought my house. It’s not always easy, and sometimes, it downright sucks, but mostly, it’s been incredible. I had no idea, though, how hard it would become when all my options for socializing were removed.

Suddenly, living alone, being alone all the time, was becoming unbearable.

I felt a little bit guilty for that, knowing how many people were struggling to keep the peace with their family members, stuck together 24/7, day after day. I knew there were so many who would love to be in my situation, just as I would love to be stuck with an annoying spouse or endlessly screaming children.

Come annoy me, fellow humans! I wanted to shout. I don’t want to be alone anymore!

So I made the ultimate trade-off: my freedom for the company of others. (Just for a little while.)

“Do you have to do that?”

I looked up at my mother, as I was setting up my laptop near the loveseat in the living room. It’s such a routine for me when I come to visit that my mom even bought me a small table for this purpose. “Do what?”

She made a motion to my computer and then to the television set.

I understood right away. This is another one of our endless arguments. She hates it when I bring my work while I’m visiting her (which I always do, because as a freelancer who’s still just getting started, I have to work seven days a week). She wants to sit and talk or watch movies with me, without any distractions.

“You know I have to work, Mom,” I sighed. “I know it annoys you, but unless you want to start paying my mortgage, you’re gonna have to deal with it.”

“It’s just so annoying that you always have to work. What’s the point of visiting if you’re always working?”

“Mo-om,” I said, drawing the word out into two syllables. I felt so incredibly annoyed.

But later that evening, we were laughing while cleaning up the kitchen and when I dropped a plastic cup, the sound of it hitting the floor upset the dogs, who ran in, barking madly.

My mom flattened herself against the cupboards, just behind the part of the refrigerator that sticks out into the room ever so slightly.

“Shhh,” she said, winking conspiratorially at me. “If we don’t move, the dogs won’t notice us and they’ll go back to their beds and stop barking.”

I started laughing. “They’re not T-rexes, Mom. They can see you even when you’re standing still.”

“Dammit,” she said, in mock disappointment. Then she dug in a jar on the counter, pulled out two biscuits and threw them to the dogs, who eagerly snapped them up. One of the dogs started barking again, and my mother’s mood turned on a dime, as it often does. “Shut it!” she yelled.

Then she turned to me, one eye slightly narrowed and said, “You don’t load the dishwasher the way I like. You’re putting the knives in the wrong compartment.”

“Oh my god,” I said, my own mood shifting immediately from amusement to frustration. “Who cares where they go, so long as they get clean?”

“I have a system!” she snapped.

And we were off on another argument.

It’s been two weeks and a day since I arrived. My time here is coming to an end. I didn’t intend to stay so long, but certain events conspired that made it necessary for me to stay a bit longer. And honestly…I’m glad.

I don’t really want to go home.

I mean…I do. But I don’t.

I miss my garden. I miss my independence. I miss eating breakfast before ten. I miss the silence and total lack of chaos.

But I also don’t want to return to the silence (as paradoxical as that might sound). I don’t want to return to the life where I can do anything I want and no one will notice or care. I don’t want to be without the people I love (no matter how much we annoy one another). I don’t want to have to wait fourteen days between every visit with each person I care about. And I don’t want to be away from my woods.

I love being here with my mom, even when her mood shifts from easy (and hilarious) joking to full-on temper tantrums in the space of .03 seconds. I love being around Jack, even though he inherited our mother’s temper and is more likely than not to erupt into a loud string of expletives in any given moment.

I can put up with late breakfasts and erupting tempers and criticisms about how I don’t load the dishwasher correctly or how I don’t chop the vegetables finely enough. I love being here! as I recently yelled to my mother. Dammit!

But it’s almost over. It’s time to go home.

For better or for worse, this pandemic “put a pin in us.” Living with family members, roommates, or going through it alone, this is where we have to stay for a while.

Alone. Together. And nowhere in between.

© Yael Wolfe 2020