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.

3 of my favorites:

FAMOUS
Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,   
which knew it would inherit the earth   
before anybody said so.   

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   
watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   

The idea you carry close to your bosom   
is famous to your bosom.   

The boot is famous to the earth,   
more famous than the dress shoe,   
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.   

I want to be famous to shuffling men   
who smile while crossing streets,   
sticky children in grocery lines,   
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   
but because it never forgot what it could do.

FOR MY DAUGHTER ON A BAD DAY
Kate Baer

Life will rough you up. Throw you to the

shore like a wave crashing– sand in your

hair, blood in your teeth. When grief sits

with you, hand dipped with rage, let it

linger. Hold its pulse in your hands. There

is no remedy for a bad haircut or ruined

love like time. Even when death is coming,

even when the filth rises in the back of

your throat–

this is not the worst of it. And if it is?

Listen for the catbird calling. No matter

the wreckage, they still sing for you.

IF—
Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!