The struggle is real. After nearly two weeks of staying at home, we are getting on each other’s nerves. And there just isn’t enough space to seclude oneself, or an opportunity to blow off some steam. It’s been gray and rainy for two days, which makes everything worse.
I even walked in the rain today.
The pressure cooker is composed of news about possible quarantine, daily death rates, and the proclamation that NY will continue this course of social distancing for the next two weeks at least, which means NJ will too. Add this to normal family stuff, and things begin to get a bit prickly. You’ll see. If you haven’t already.
I keep thinking about how I used to teach Anne Frank this time of year to my eighth graders. One of the best activities we did was to take masking tape and yard sticks and measure out each room of the Secret Annex onto our classroom’s floor. Then we would stand in the rooms in groups of two to five. Usually we would do this activity just as (in Goodrich and Hacket’s play) there would be a lot of conflict between the characters. We would speculate how the external conflicts of the time influenced the characters’ conflicts in the Secret Annex.
Now to be clear, I am not suggesting that our reality is anything like Anne and the other members of the Secret Annex’s was. Not at all. God forbid that history repeats itself.
But we often spend much of our lives running about from soccer to music performances to church to friends’ homes to visit family. I have prided ourselves on the fact that we would keep our son’s activity to a minimum as best as we could. We have friends who run about every day, every night…it’s no wonder that suddenly being confined to a house is so jarring.
Now we have to deal with each other.
We’ve been forced to stop and really look at each other, decide who will do which chores, who will oversee school, and who will venture forth unto the wilds of the local grocery store. And all this in addition to fears of getting sick. losing jobs, and worrying about family.
Our little ranch style house doesn’t seem big enough.
But maybe that is a blessing too. It seems as if in our busy lives it is easy to run away from each other. We are always on the go. Some families don’t eat dinner together. Life is a matter of getting from A to B to C to D.
Now we have to slow down. Chances are that you will eat together. You will learn who each other really is once again. And how there is strength in numbers.
Take care readers. Stay patient. Again, I offer this record of our experience to you so you might find some hope. Maybe you too are wishing you had a bigger boat.
Namaste
Meandering Through Midlife 
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