Life on Pause

© 2020 Mackenzie L. White

"Go get your coffee," my friend Cheryl said, bundled in her long, thick winter coat, which she'd pulled over her sweaty running clothes. "Support your local businesses!"

The Hilliard water tower rose above her head from its anchor maybe a block behind her. “Old Hilliard,” it proclaimed in dark blue letters on a white background, a beacon of the area my 7-year-old loves to walk through, sighing, as he holds my hand, “I love Old Hilliard. Isn’t this nice?”

“Should I?” I asked Cheryl now. “Okay.” As we both climbed in our cars, I still debated. The radio came on. I turned right, toward the coffee shop, rather than left, toward home.

On the radio, a woman issued her confession: “I wish I hadn’t gone out Friday night. I knew it was coming, I knew it was going to get bad, but I went out. And if I caused one other person to become infected … I feel better just saying this.”

I reached the stop sign. I turned … left, toward home, an internal debate swinging back and forth in my head, the pendulum I had managed to mostly rid myself of just 10 months before.

But at the traffic light at Main and Norwich streets, red, I paused. I thought of Cheryl’s friendly order, and I thought of all the years I’d spent not really living, and how I finally, finally had been. How, for nearly a year, I had become myself: taking big risks and small risks – small risks that most people, until about a week ago, had never considered. Risks that had now become big ones. I had finally started living, just before life had ground to a halt, a pause that would stretch into weeks, and maybe, some feared, months.

While most of the world was just now stopping to think twice about that doorknob at the doctor’s office, or that keypad at the ATM, or that gas pump handle – these were things that had sometimes terrified me, and at the very least, been at the back of  my mind, for years. I’d carried hand sanitizer or wipes in my bag at all times, wiping my hands after pumping gas, or going in a store, or exchanging money, or touching an elevator button. In short, I'd been living for years the way most people had never considered but were now supposed to in order to stop the spread of coronavirus.

My fantasies for a long time had seemed just that – the idea of actually living, truly living, had become an idea of a life with little worry. The thought of living the way most people did, without the near-constant strain of wondering if I was about to become sick with some unseen illness that could then infect my children – my main concern – was akin to winning the lottery, or finally accomplishing my longtime goal of publishing a book. It could happen, I could imagine it.

But, in the case of winning the lottery and no longer hyperventilating at the grocery store because we had $68 in our account, it seemed a far-off dream that would bring utter happiness and relief if it miraculously happened. And as for publishing a book, I believed it could happen, I believed I would make it happen, and the thought of no longer being strangled by worry, I imagined, was about the same as how I would feel as a published author: a sense of accomplishing something that had seemed nearly out of reach.

I had self-diagnosed myself with contamination OCD years before. I’d gone to a doctor, who had agreed with me without really saying so, and I’d gone on Zoloft a short time before my husband and I would start trying to get pregnant. So, just weeks in, I had gone off the medicine, waited the mandated timeframe, and then immediately become pregnant with our oldest son, now 11.

I’d tried various things throughout the years, including a short stint with Prozac, which I’d thought had made me even more exhausted than normal. I was falling asleep in the afternoon, unable to fight the extreme tiredness.

Of course, I also was marathon training – getting up early, not going to bed until late, running crazy amounts of miles.

Really, all along, I still was doing lots of things, and most had no idea about my internal struggle. Very few people knew it was impossible to "just not worry," no matter how hard you tried. And trust me, I did. I was living my life - but only kind of, sort of. And for a couple years, anywhere with crowds, even places I loved, gave me anxiety I had to swallow so my boys, so our family, could have experiences I wanted us to share, even as I felt relief once we finally got back in our car to head home.

When my oldest was a toddler and preschooler, we'd gone everywhere and done everything. But by the time my youngest was a preschooler, I had cut back on trips to the zoo and library storytimes, finding it too exhausting to worry about the unknown substance smeared on a book cover or hordes of strangers touching merry-go-round poles and animal statues, even though I constantly had to tamp down the guilt I felt: They were missing out on things, and it was my fault!

Last May or so, I'd gone back on Zoloft, at its smallest dose. And then, I'd started living. Buoyed by a series of epiphanies that had instilled a sense of optimism I hadn't felt in years, I still sometimes thought about the worries I'd had before, but they were so much less than they had been.

Just last summer, my boys and I spent nearly every afternoon at the pool. We turned brown in the sun, despite constant sunscreen applications. I bought new swimsuits and wore them again and again. The concerns that had made pool trips sporadic for the two years previous – the discarded Band-Aids on the concrete surrounding the pool, the kids peeing in the water, the stain on the cement that looked ominous: a leaky diaper, maybe? – faded into the background. Did I think of them? Sure, but I could push them away and enjoy a summer afternoon, the feel of the sun on my bare stomach and my face, the way the water glinted and shimmered, my boys laughing behind swim goggles, their bright orange and blue swim shirts and shorts making them easy to spot as they hurried up the steps to the slide, the “Sandlot”-style feel of the small neighborhood pool – an atmosphere that even a remodel had not taken away. It was a rare day that we saw no one we knew at the pool. Instead, I would often see a friend and would stand in the water, one eye on the kids, as our short chat became a lengthy conversation and the boys complained, as the whistles blew for break, that I was “always talking to people” and hadn’t played with them enough.

So I would play Marco Polo and tag. I would hold one boy in each arm and spin in circles, the water buoying their weight that was quickly approaching my own. We would have races and breath-holding contests, bringing to mind childhood days at Tuttle Pool with my brothers and our neighbors. But unlike at Tuttle, where nameless lifeguards blew their whistles if you so much as moved, the lifeguards at Hilliard were our swim lesson teachers who remembered our names, our friends’ high school seniors, our neighbors. Along with so many other things, it made Hilliard shrink to the size of a small town. When you couldn’t go anywhere without running into someone you knew, it was a blessing much more than a curse. It was community in the best possible way.

So now, as I paused behind a truck as the light turned green, I debated in my head. If I went to New Grounds Coffee House – a place that had become my local, work-from-home office as a contractor and his employee had ripped apart our bathrooms just weeks before, our bank account finally, finally buoyed by two full-time incomes and, sadly, an inheritance after my husband’s grandmother had passed away – would the debit card they handed back to me carry COVID-19 germs? What about the coffee cup? Would the teenage girls making it take the proper precautions? How did I know they didn’t have it but not yet know it, that they were unaware carriers?

They were fears I had squashed and nearly obliterated the past 10 months, as I had finally, truly lived. And the act of getting coffee, while I’d done it before, had become a part of my newfound freedom, as I’d cleared enough debris from my mind to again appreciate the little moments that create our days.

While substitute teaching in a long-term language arts assignment at a local middle school, I had quickly developed a routine of stopping by New Grounds on my way to work. I would go through the drive through, or, if the line was too long, would park and scurry inside, the world through the windows still dark despite the fact that I had run with friends, showered, hurriedly dressed for work, grabbed Costco egg bites to eat in the car, hugged and kissed my boys, and made it into the coffee shop before sunrise. I’d had a full morning, and as I approached the school, the coffee cup warm in one hand, the otehr on the steering wheel, the sun would be just coming up, splashing swaths of purple and red and orange across the sky above fields surrounding the district’s newest schools in an area not yet completely overrun by McMansion subdivisions and countless apartments.

This morning, after my run with Cheryl, at that traffic light, now green, I debated – and then turned right. Then turned right again at the next, onto Cemetery Road. I went through the roundabouts that made life in Hilliard sometimes feel like a game of chicken: Would that car pause? Would this one go left, as it was supposed to, or straight and nearly sideswipe us? I went all the way to New Grounds, and into an empty drive-through line, unsure whether to feel better that there was no one else – less germs! – or worse – why was no one here?

I ordered my honey lavender latte, not asking for skim milk – this was a treat, after all, more than ever, dammit! – and pulled up to the window, two cars filing into line behind me, which made me feel a bit relieved. The girl took my debit card, and I pushed aside thoughts – neither girl was wearing gloves, and were they touching coffee cup lids with the same unwashed hands that had just taken money and counted change? – aside. I took my debit card back in one hand, my coffee in the other, set my debit card on the dash insert, peeled off my mismatched winter gloves and dropped them on the passenger-side floor, and wiped my hands off. They were moves that would have been deemed ridiculous before, but were now deemed as necessary to help stop the spread of a virus unknown to anyone before December.

I pulled up to the street, took that first sip – and wanted to cry. The action, the taste of the familiar drink on my tongue, was akin to a smell that floods you with memories and feelings you’d thought were forgotten. I thought of how life had been just a short week or two ago. I longed for being able to meet up with friends, to go to my neighbor’s house for her famous empanadas, to sit at her table and decipher the Spanish flowing between her and her sister. I missed group runs, the hours we would spend afterward in a coffee shop or at a restaurant table. I missed never even considering whether running with more than one or two other people would be dangerous. I missed taking my boys to playgrounds. I missed the moments of (almost) oblivious enjoyment I had cherished the past 10 months.

And I was flooded with gratitude for the normal, simple constants of everyday life that were now forbidden, or brought about an internal debate: a drive-through coffee, a beer shared with friends in a bustling new brewery, a hug for someone you would see tomorrow, a trip to a new town, a selfie from a café table, a date night eating three plates of bread dipped in olive oil. Drinking from a water fountain, pressing a crosswalk signal button, hosting a birthday party, visiting a relative. So many things that I had not fully enjoyed until the past 10 months. So many things that now seemed as out of reach as they had before, but for an entirely different reason.

I had gained a sense of gratitude and wonder in recent months. I’d appreciated every sunrise I saw after a run, every trip to the library I made with the boys, every breath taken in a forest, the pencil-thin pine trees swaying in a circle above. No longer clouded by worry and the unknown, I’d relished a candle burning on my desk as I’d worked, the laughter of the kids in my classroom as I’d said, “You guys are like puppies: completely food motivated.” The fear that had tapped down my adventurous spirit, that had kept me from being, well, me, had shrunk, allowing me to stretch into myself in a way I had not in years. I started saying yes instead of no or maybe. I wanted to experience everything good. I wanted to soak up life in every way I could, no longer shackled by fear and what-ifs.

And then, Coronavirus. With its memes and mandates. Its death tolls and urges to “flatten the curve.” There was the good: phone calls with a best friend who hates to talk by phone; Zoom classrooms with 20 second-graders talking at once and my own describing it as “chaotic”; exercising alongside him as his gym teacher leads kids through an e-learning boot camp and ends with “I love you guys, I miss you”; my sixth-grader playing violin in the kitchen, following the recorded instructions of his teacher, whose dog appears from behind her, his black head poking out of her basement couch.

At first, I’d woken up in the morning and been surprised by the small swell of excitement at plans made amid cleared schedules: a group of friends gathering together at one house for dinner and wine, our weekends no longer consumed with practices and lessons and errands, with all those things that seemed important on a normal day. We would realize anew what is truly vital, I’d thought: an unhurried board game with family, lengthy conversation around a kitchen island, a hike along a marshy bog full of twittering birds and turtles swimming lazily toward shore, a movie night in living room forts, a run with friends that left us all tired but renewed, parting with hugs after a half-hour-long conversation in a parking lot.

Last Thursday, as I walked up the path behind my youngest boy’s school to pick him up, I passed a neighbor on the phone and heard the words “schools,” and “this is crazy,” and I knew schools would be shuttering their doors. A message from a friend when my son and I had returned to the car confirmed it: Gov. Mike DeWine had shut down all schools for three weeks.

That evening, my mom came over to watch the boys and I drove to Ashland to see Hallie, my best friend from college who had just moved back from Savannah two days before. She had bought a house, sight unseen, her sister and mom assuring her she should do it while sending pictures and videos. I got out of the car and hugged Hallie, who held one of her small dogs in her other arm. Inside, sitting at the card table set up in her dining room, we debated whether we should go out. In a text earlier that day or maybe the day before, I had said, “I just want to live.” And she’d agreed.

But things were changing rapidly. Should we go to Uniontown Brewery? we wondered now. I had been excited to take her there since learning she would be moving back. We had gone to Ashland University, meeting our sophomore year, that initial “insta-bond,” as we called it, resulting in a spring break trip to Myrtle Beach in my red Jeep Wrangler, the Dixie Chicks spilling from the radio. (Just last week, I’d heard “Cowboy, Take me Away,” and I was immediately in that Jeep on a long, flat, blacktopped South Carolina road, the southern pine trees a green and brown blur outside the plastic, zippered windows, Hallie in the seat beside me, both of us singing along.)

We’d graduated together; she’d been a bridesmaid in my wedding; my mom and I had visited her in New York City, sleeping on her Ikea bed while she camped on a living room sofa, walking through rain showers and eating ice cream sundaes late at night, perched on stools that looked out on the never-sleeping streets.

Now, as we sat on folding chairs in her nearly-empty house, we weighed the pros and cons: Was it safe to be in a restaurant with groups of people? We debated. And in the end, we decided to go out.

We went in the back door and walked through the packed bar area, through the restaurant and out another door to the hostess station. The server sat us at a table with no one immediately near us, and we chose flights of beer, me jumping out of my seat several times to walk to where I could see the specials printed on a tall, rectangular chalkboard by the front door.

We ordered the massive soft pretzel and pierogis (Hallie) and chicken on Naan (me). We got pretty tipsy and laughed so hard my abs ached. And after, walking into a night that I deemed warm and Hallie chilly, her blood now used to Georgia winters, we decided to walk.

We walked all the way to campus, a constant stream of conversation following us in the night lit by a nearly-full moon, the Big Dipper above us. We reached the main intersection on campus, and I laughed at the electronic sign broadcasting headlines and important dates. It was a sign that had created a huge, seemingly-unending controversy when I’d been a reporter at the town newspaper right after graduation. Residents had worried the scrolling words would create a distraction, I told Hallie. I’d written so many stories about it, and now, here it was, the worries of distracted drivers mainly forgotten and replaced with ones of drivers reading Facebook and texting friends while behind the wheel.

Across the street, I dropped my bag on the ground and scaled another sign – a high, brick one with tall letters spelling out the university’s name. I spread my arms wide for a picture, then realized that getting down would be the hard part. I made Hallie come around to the back of the sign, where a bed of mulch and fallen pine needles would cushion my landing – “Good Lord,” Hallie’d said as she’d rounded the sign, apparently afraid I would be stuck there all night, and then she’d assured me that yes, the ground really wasn’t that far away. Finally, I pushed myself away from the wall and landed gently on the ground, Hallie relieved and me bubbling over with laughter and conquered risk, and we’d begun the walk back to Hallie’s car, parked in a downtown lot, and reminiscing about the hardware store, the movie theater, the strange grocery store with its dented cans and discount prices.

In the morning, we had coffee from the pot her mom had deemed a necessity and purchased for Hallie’s arrival, and I got in my car as the sun was coming up, stopping for gas on the way out of town, holding the handle with a wipe and wondering just how cautious I should be: Where was the line between living and safety?

And then, things got worse: schools had already closed and now restaurants shut down except for take-out; gathering at a friend’s house wouldn’t be happening anytime soon; I lost my job as canceled events meant disappearing revenue; Broadway closed; movie theaters went black; celebrities posted on Instagram about using gloves to open Amazon boxes, wiping down the contents, leaving the boxes on porches.

There have been bright spots and moments of laughter, everyone trying to make the best of the weirdest situation we have ever encountered, all of us players who can’t yet escape. We make jokes about there not being enough wine for this, we share memes about no one ever again asking stay-at-home moms what they do all day. We navigate homeschooling - unchartered waters for many, a return to known waters for me – with jokes and tears and, finally, small successes.

Jimmy Fallon does his late-night show in the middle of the day and posts it to Youtube, his wife behind the iPhone camera, his adorable little girls alternately helping with the show and interrupting unbidden.

We text friends and wonder just how we found ourselves here and when it will end, while holding tights to plans not yet canceled.

Back home after running this morning, I leave my muddy shoes on the porch and walk in, shivering and holding my coffee cup. In the new shower, I turn the water as hot as I can so I will stop shaking. The cardboard coffee cup sits on the shelf of the niche we’d had our contractor create.

The bathroom is by far the most Zen room of the house, and I’ve half-joked to my family that I plan to move in here. The wood-look accent wall, the opposite wall painted a “Peaceful Blue”, the white subway tiles and blue and gray glass accent tiles somehow achieve what I had hoped – the feeling after a day spent on the beach, as afternoon slides into evening, and you head toward the house, small hands in your own, your skin tingling with sand and salt water and smelling of sunscreen, your body tired in the best way possible.

I sip my coffee from the local shop – a once-treasured ritual now fraught with uncertainty – and stand under the water, which I let run much longer than necessary to prolong the chill I’ll encounter and the world outside the paisley curtain. I wonder how long life will be like this and try to focus on the moment, purposefully taking deeper breaths than normal and looking around at snapshots of the room: blue glass tile, brushed nickel shower bar, whitewashed floor – gratitude finding its way through the fear.

After, dressed in sweatpants from college and a Captain America hoodie I stole from my boys, I dry the tile walls, remove my coffee cup and clean where it sat with a disinfectant wipe, just in case. And I continue another day in this new normal that feels anything but, and I hope it never does.