Friday 5: Twenty-four months

1. In what way have these past two years made you better? I was somewhere around six months pregnant at the start of the pandemic, so I’ve gained a lot of the traits that come with becoming a parent. A more nurturing side of me has emerged. I think, too, that a lot of us have become more considerate of people and health issues they might be facing–although not all. But it’s easier to accept things like mask and vaccine mandates when you have a kid at home you’re trying to keep healthy and you consider that every other person you encounter might be in the same situation or might have a loved one that’s immunocompromised or might be themselves. Which isn’t to say that before I had a kid, I would’ve completely disregarded those things! But I’m more aware of it.
2. In what way have these past two years made you worse? I’m more frustrated with people. I don’t have the bleak outlook overall that some people do, but being pregnant during the early days of a pandemic when there were still a lot of unknowns and some people were (and still are!) adamant that it was overblown or a hoax entirely or that their personal freedoms were more important than health, you feel like you’re relying on everyone around you to do the right thing, especially because during pregnancy, your immune system is weak, not to mention the obvious concerns of getting sick at all, and newer variants in particular are posing a greater danger to the baby. I learned real fuckin’ fast that I couldn’t count on anyone outside of my direct circle and that people who are determined to disregard the advice are gonna find whatever reasons they can cling to that allow them to do so. I’m more judgmental, I think, too, and the (really infuriatingly dumb) ways this whole thing became political have me making assumptions about people. Like, we went to see Henry Rollins last week, and I did wear a mask the whole time, but knowing that he leans very left politically, I figured much of the audience was like-minded and therefore vaccinated. On the other hand, I’m skeptical of my own community.
3. In the first six months of the pandemic, what was your most effective form of escapism? Being pregnant, I was super tired, so I slept a lot, so there’s that! I’m mostly kidding. I did what I usually do–read, write, dick around on the Internet, watch TV, play video games. I was playing a lot of Horizon: Zero Dawn at the time, which I have yet to finish on account of having a kid now, but I feel like my memory is just big chunks of playing it and scarfing down cherry Icees, which was my major craving, and Impossible Whoppers, because if my husband’s going to Burger King to get a cherry Fanta slush, might as well get a meal, right?
4. What remains part of your life from those first six months? The baby I was pregnant with! He’ll be two at the end of June. And in case it’s not obvious, many safety precautions. We’re still masking, and I fully intend to mask the kid when he turns two, or at least attempt to. And then I, a devout critic of e-readers, got desperate to borrow books and dug out my dad’s old Kindle, which I still have. It’s not part of my regular reading material right now, but I plan to travel with it. Also, if you know of any sites interested in a personal essay about my acceptance of said Kindle, send ’em my way!
5. What do you envision for yourself in the next year, and how are you feeling about it? Ha, what an appropriate question to get today. So every year right after New Year’s, I do a post revisiting my resolutions and setting new ones, and I said that this year had the potential to be pretty big. Correct! My husband lost his job in the summer of 2020, two weeks before our son was born. It was already on track to happen and we knew it was coming, but COVID likely didn’t help. Because the company was moving operations to Mexico, my husband was eligible for benefits through the Trade Act, which includes collecting unemployment while going back to school. He decided to get an MBA. He won’t officially be finished until May, but a company got in touch with one of his former co-workers, who sent them to my husband. After a couple interviews, he got hired, and with a high enough salary that I can take over the childcare duties that have largely been his responsibility. And so today was my last day! I was offered a position as an independent contractor when I submitted my resignation, which I accepted, so I will be picking up occasional work as my schedule allows. So basically, we’re heading into a big transition that is truly a new chapter, as they say. Without being stuck at a desk for eight hours a day, I hope to be a better, more present, attentive, and mindful mom–one of the things I struggle with is balancing work, parenting, and leisure time. When you spend eight hours working, you want some downtime, and you get very little of it with a toddler. So my hope is that without that large chunk of time being occupied, I’ll feel less like I don’t have time for myself and will be more focused on my kid, first and foremost, but also actually enjoying the time I do have. I’m excited. Without getting into a long spiel, I feel like we’ve got it all wrong and that parents aren’t supposed to be separated from their young children nearly all day, every day, and that our attitudes towards work are doing our children a disservice. I also feel very, very lucky, and the fact that I am truly privileged to do this in every sense of the word is not lost one me. And, of course, I hope he’ll be able to get vaccinated and head out into the world in the way I dreamed of when I was in the early, pre-pandemic pregnancy months. There’s so much I want to show him that we just haven’t because it’s not worth the risk to me, and I hope to reach a point where I can let go of that.

From Friday 5.