There have been a few occasions recently when I learned of people going through a challenging life event — the kind of event that will result in them measuring time as “before” or “after” it happened. It’s intimidating to know what to say in those situations, and humbling to know that there is nothing you can realistically do to materially help assuage their pain.

That said, and while I won’t claim to be any kind of an expert, I do think I’ve stumbled into some practices that have worked:

1. Put it in writing.
   
   I always reach out via email or text as a first pass. This serves several functions:
   
   A) It gives you time to craft the right tone, which can feel clunky in sensitive situations.
   B) You can explicitly state that they do not need to respond to you at all if they’re not up to it.
   C) Because it’s not live or in real-time, they don’t need to “perform” a reaction for you (including appreciation for your outreach). They can focus on what you mean to convey, which is to…
   
   
2. Suggest specific ways you can help.
   
   None of these “let me know how I can help” banalities — give them a “menu” of pre-vetted ideas and make it easy for them to green-light things, and get the ball rolling that way.
   
   Examples:
   A) Sending care packages of activities for kids – either to buy their parents a little time to mentally breathe, or simply give them something novel to do during the sometimes torturous waiting period. I love the “mess free” coloring kits or epic bubble bath supplies for this one.
   B) Ordering an Instacart delivery of groceries, or DoorDashing dinner on set days of the week so they can remove the mental load of meal planning or stopping at the store amidst the early stages of adjusting to a new trauma.
   C) Offering to come let the dog out periodically or watch their kids for part of the day. Make it so they don’t need to return home while they may be busy with hospital visits or prepping logistics to accommodate a new situation, and try to bake in a way for them to have their spouse with them so they have their own support on-hand, too.
   
   
3. Make it about you.
   
   Even in their lowest moments, it’s hard for people to accept help when they know they can’t reciprocate. I address this head-on by reminding them what’s in it for me: the privilege of being helpful in a moment someone needs it.
   
   Here’s how I phrased it to a friend recently after I tossed out a couple of ideas: “please let me help if these things would be at all useful – or if anything else comes to mind. Imagine if the situation was reversed and how desperately you’d want to do something to feel like you lightened the smallest bit of load for your friend in a difficult moment.”
   
   Here’s how I phrased it to a relative stranger who will never be in a position to “repay” our exchange: “it’s not often we get to feel like we can personally ‘pay forward’ the many kindnesses we all rack up in life, so I appreciate you letting me feel like I can play a small part of your fresh beginning.”
   

Be good to each other.

Prior to the pandemic, I made an event of a grocery run for me and a child (or two, or three). Our local grocery had a selection of free cookies and strong coffee, and the boys would indulge in the former while I indulged in the latter. They liked selecting the cereals, or granola bar flavors, or cake mixes. They animatedly “drove” the race car shopping cart and, in one particularly disgusting moment, discovered some kind of partially consumed beefstick in the cab of the vehicle and… you know, finished the job. (Before you wonder what I was doing that I didn’t intercept that activity, I refer you to an entire post devoted to Steve the Wine Guy & other members of our grocery’s cast of characters).

When COVID hit, not only were we no longer comfortable having the boys join me in the store, but we wanted to minimize total time spent of exposure overall. I therefore planned for 2 weeks of meals at a time — breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks without any additional care to help prepare in our snippets of time between parenting and work — for our family of 5. What did this practically mean?

1. I suppressed minor panic attacks when I would arrive to empty shelves of items featured on my list: bread, meat, Spaghettios. I contemplated showing “proof of children” when they rationed things like gallons of milk or packages of chicken.

2. My cart was so full — so comically full — that after the first few runs, I deployed a new strategy of checking out and loading up the car after the produce + meat + bread sections, then coming right back in and doing another round through the aisles + dairy + frozen section.

3. How does one store all these precisely planned & purchased groceries once they’re finally offloaded in the back hallway? Enter: “the Panic Pantry.” Highly perishable, fresh food was stored per meal plans in the kitchen refrigerator and pantry. The basement’s Panic Pantry was where I stashed less perishable foods, staples we’d dip into in a pinch, even bunches of bananas bought while they were still green so that — by the time we consumed all of the fresh fruit we had bought upfront — we still had fresh fruit even starting day 7+. By the time we were on days 11 – 14, we were having meals made of thawed meat, frozen vegetables, and boxed carbs like rice or pasta.

At some point, over a year after everything began, I had to bring a boy with me to the grocery again. We went back to fitting our groceries all in 1 cart as we planned for only 1 week at a time. And we finished our last snacks from the Panic Pantry.

In two years, we never went hungry. We never had any noticeable nutritional deficiencies. I have a lot to be grateful for with respect to how we weathered the pandemic as a family. But I’ll be honest, it breaks my heart a little bit that only J remembers what a big deal those free cookies once were.

Two years ago today, I started working from home. Well, more precisely: two years ago today, I went back into the office after we had gotten an email the night prior suggesting we all stay home. I thought, “oh wow, if I’m going to be at my home office for the next couple of weeks, I don’t want to be stuck without a proper keyboard.”

After what was anticipated to be a short period of collective sacrifice to “flatten the curve,” we all have 2+ years’ worth of reflections on this life-changing chapter. I’ll document some in the coming days, mostly for my own sake remembering how bizarre much of this was.

For me personally, the first few weeks of “shut down” were spent vacillating between private existential fear (in the most literal sense) and – eventually – clear-headed resolve.

My dad worked in an Emergency Department amid PPE shortages, and then went home to my mom. The cases were ticking up in our area, but I waited a few days before calling to ask him how the hospital looked. Prior to that, I knew I wouldn’t have been able to get through the conversation without crying. Reports from Italian doctors kept me up at night.

My children were 4, 2, and 8 months. Their young immune systems felt impossibly fragile compared to this invisible threat – novel to our entire species. I took every step I could to mitigate risks based on the daily, shifting understanding of the virus: I wore gloves pumping gas, I scrubbed our groceries, I left packages in the garage for days to reduce surface contamination. We sent our nanny home with pay and somehow (actual definition: “in one way or another not known or designated” — because I truly could not tell you how we managed this) kept working our full-time jobs while taking care of our children who were too young to consider YouTube a babysitter.

It was during one particularly overwhelming, private moment that I had a revelation: preemptive worry is pointless. There could indeed come a time when worry would be warranted, but that time was not here yet. Preemptive sadness and anxiety would not help me now, and would also not reduce any sadness and anxiety later. Realizing that, I turned a mental corner of resolve and, perhaps, a generous dose of repression.

With my newfound philosophy, I turned my attention to the base of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs & optimizing my grocery runs like the highest-stakes military mission. This, as you will soon come to appreciate, warrants its own post entirely.