This is what I know right now: as a California resident, I am practicing “safer at home” until May 15. Even if we are allowed to start going places in mid-May, Pippa’s school year is effectively over. She is doing distance learning for the rest of first grade.

It is tempting to think beyond May 15.

Will the “safer at home” order be extended? Will some of the restrictions be lifted? When? When? WHEN?

But when I start down that line of questioning, my anxiety starts to heat up. My skin tingles unpleasantly and my blood races.

That’s when I force myself to take a deep breath and stop thinking about the future.

Full disclosure: it is so tempting to wonder about life beyond May 15. It feels like if I wonder about it long enough, the answers will magically appear. But no amount of speculation on my part is going to result in the answers I seek. All I will manage to do is make myself feel crazy.

I’d like to know if my kids will be able to go to summer camp. I’d like to know if we’ll be able to visit the zoo and have friends over for pool parties. And I would really, really, really like to know if my kids are going to attend school during the 2020-2021 year, and if so, what their school year will look like. And I want guarantees! Give me the freaking answers, written in blood, notarized and witnessed by Lucifer himself.

But all I can do is ground myself in the present moment.

Right now, we have enough.

Right now, we are healthy and safe.

Life is always uncertain. Shit can and will happen whenever it damn well pleases. Right now, though, the uncertainty of life is just a little less subtle that it usually is. Uncertainty is usually an itty bitty mouse lurking behind a curtain. If you did not think to look behind the curtain, you would not even know it’s there. But with Covid-19, uncertainty has morphed into some huge beast that shredded the curtain and started rampaging all over the world. It’s kind of impossible not to notice it.

Right now, we are all living with the same awareness of the uncertainty of life. That’s actually pretty cool when you think about it.

It’s also pretty shitty. We are all living with a profoundly unsettling amount of uncertainty. But the uncertainty is rampaging out there, in the future. It’s not here in the present moment. So if I want to stay calm(er), I just have to breathe and focus on right now.

Inhale.

One day at a time.

Exhale.

One moment at a time.

Inhale.

One breath at a time.

Exhale.

When the time is right, the answers will come.

And someday, we will be able to talk about the pandemic in the past tense. It’s okay that I don’t know when that day is, and it’s okay that the uncertainty is making me uncomfortable.

This pandemic is like a crash course in the uncertainty of life. When this is over, I am going to have so much perspective. Flat tires? Pimples? Unexpected traffic jams? Bring! It! On! At least when this is over, I am going to kick ass at shrugging off the smaller uncertainties of life.