For years, in the Before Times, I’d made peace with the thrum and flow of the weekends, when everyone was home, which meant bigger meals, more cleaning, and all the family noise and talking and interruptions… this is fine, I would think, because this is family, and the busy-ness of four people under this solid roof, where there’s food in the pantry, and my willing and able hands are ready to love and care for us all. And come Mondays when everyone returned to school and work, I had time and space to do my own work, in the quiet of the day, starting at 8am and ending as the children return home in the late afternoon. I would straighten beds, and wipe surfaces, and sweep the disarray of the weekend’s upending, and I’d set it all right for the week once more.

I hardly recognize my hands now, as they have never looked quite this old.

And whenever the days felt like too much, or too crowded for me to enjoy my home space, I made plans with friends to go out somewhere for a glass of wine, or eat something together — an escape from the demands of domestic life for a little while.

Of course, we don’t do this anymore.

And the weekend never ends now. Come Monday, I roll out of bed reminded that we’re living a perpetual Groundhog Day of our own — same as most people everywhere on the planet, as we stay home, trying to feel as okay within ourselves as we can. Flatten the curve. Flatten ourselves, trying not to desire more than what we can actually have. 

Practice gratitude. Find the joy.

The children, though at times are bored and restless, remain mostly buoyant and find things with which to fill their time. They are resilient, I think, as I try to delight them with treat, like a fancy sandwich, or a chocolate, and there’s so much baking now, and you can have whatever you want at any time of day, my darlings. I say yes to as many things as I can possibly agree to, without allowing them to become feral. Or completely nocturnal. (I might be losing this battle.)

My husband is quite happy to stay at home these days, still earning, and being highly efficient. He muses how he’s never been home for more than a vacation’s-worth of time ever in his working life. His fingers scratch at the whitened beard he’s grown, not needing to shave daily anymore. We should have lunch as a family some days, he says, pleased about this new found family time and dynamic. I pick at imaginary lint on my shirt, with what I hope looks like a smile on my lips, but really, I’m concentrating as so my left eye won’t twitch.

I make my bed in the morning only to find my daughter in it an hour later, enjoying the soft, white billowiness. This is fine. I push the counter stools back under the kitchen island several times a day now, instead of once in the morning. Nothing ever stays. The fridge handle is sticky at 11am. The bathroom countertop is always wet, and that bowl is in the wrong cupboard again, and who keeps putting this knife here. The dishwasher’s been running for exactly nine minutes, and there’s already a fresh smattering of plates crusted with yesterday’s whatever in the sink. The ones that missed their chance. 

Every day is Groundhog Day. But Mondays are the hardest.

This is fine, I say to myself. I can’t remind them of every single infraction, lest I become a shrill harpy, bent on making everyone miserable. I don’t want that. That’s not me, is it? Maybe this is the new me. The one who says yes to everything, but says no to everything else as we live this new life of all this flattening.

I most definitely feel flat.

With a sad face my small one says, every time she asks me something, I seem mad.

“I’m not mad,” I say, trying to be as patient and as truthful as I can. The Now Times have me slower to process my own mind with everyone home all the time, leaving me with no space for myself in the quiet, which is how I do my best thinking. I’m too often resisting the urge to reply WHY ARE YOU EVEN TALKING TO ME RIGHT NOW YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE.

But of course I don’t say this. What I now recognize as resentment chipping away at my insides, I feel ashamed at the very idea, because oh, what an ugly word, and I think I am better than this, and I love my family with my whole heart, of course I do… and yet, there it is, sitting on my chest, grimacing. Sucking on it’s yellow teeth.

I smile at my daughter instead, and make a mental note to speak with more kindness and softness, because she is just busy being her perfect little-kid self, and nothing is wrong or bad about that. I offer her something sweet from the stash of candy I have hidden, expressly for the purpose of in-the-moment assuagement (I knew without a doubt there’d be needs for such, aplenty) and put my makeup on, and consider what to make for dinner even though I have no appetite, and try my best to appear as normal on the outside as possible, when really, I am withering and doing internal wall-slides at the realization that I’m the least well-adjusted of us all.

I don’t know if I can be any flatter than this.

And now we are all slowly, and hesitantly unfurling as the lockdown restrictions lift… school is done, and I think this will feel different when they go back in the fall, if that is even a reality, and I wonder how to fill the long summer of uncertainty.

I think this as I wipe down the bathroom countertop, slick with water, for the third time since morning, and it’s only 12:30pm. It is somehow always, always wet.