Yesterday I blogged about the uncertainty of Summer 2020. Our trips have been cancelled and summer camp is looking like a bust. I wrote about how I am trying to get comfortable during the uncertainty. Personal growth! Transformation! Yeah! And I am still trying to do that today.

But.

I had another idea.

What if I just accepted the inevitability of the worst case scenario and then made plans for that? What if I harnessed my desire to plan ahead to help me deal with the Covid-19 uncertainty?

So first, I thought about the worst case scenario for Summer 2020:

• Nathan will be back at the office
• The kids will not have any school or camp
• Fun things like the zoo and aquarium will be closed. We might not even have play dates with friends.

Of course, this is not actually the worst case scenario. I am creative. I can think of plenty of shittier situations!

As is so often the case, my challenges (parenting during a pandemic) arise from my blessings (my healthy radiant children). But even though I know I am blessed to have Pippa and Julian, we are all still going a bit crazy after spending over seven weeks sheltering-at-home. Pandemic parenting is no joke.

Since we started sheltering at home, I have been trying to live in the present moment. Today I realized that might be a helpful mindset in ordinary times, but these are not ordinary times. By focusing on the here and now, I have allowed myself to wallow in a big pit of denial. It’s a perverse type of bargaining: if I just enjoy today, and focus on the here and now, then surely this will be over in a few weeks.

But my pre-pandemic mindset is not serving me today. Instead of having my hopes constantly crushed, I need to accept the current reality. My kids will be home with me all summer and our ability to go fun places will be very limited. And also: the 2020-2021 school year will probably involve more distance learning.

That’s a lot for my brain to digest. But it’s also a relief to finally accept the present, albeit shitty, reality. Maybe later I’ll be pleasantly surprised when things are better than I expect.

So that was Step One: I considered and did my best to accept the Summer 2020 Worst Case Scenario.

Then I moved on to Step Two: plan for the Summer 2020 Worst Case Scenario.

I opened a new document on my laptop and wrote a two page list of things we can do to stay happy and busy over the summer. This was comforting. I also wrote down my self-care absolutes: daily journaling; blogging; and one hour for revising my fantasy novel. The kids will be allowed to watch television so long as they leave me alone to write.

Speaking of television: I will be ignoring all the screen time recommendations. This is a pandemic. I am not trying to win some expert’s approval about how much time my kids spend watching Netflix shows.

And: we will make zero efforts at this distance learning bullshit over the summer. We will read when we want to read. That is easy. We are a family that loves to read. If Pippa wants to write, she will write. If Julian wants to practice his ABCs or count, sure, we will do that. But I am not going to enroll the kids in online classes that create more work for me. The coming school year might be full of all sorts of shitty distance learning, so I need as much relaxation over the summer as I can possibly get.

It is the first week of May and normally, I would already have a good idea of what our summer was going to be like. Actually, I had it all planned out months ago, in January: a long weekend in Las Vegas for our annual reunion with my dad’s extended family; then a few weeks of summer camp for the kids; Fourth of July week in Nebraska; and then more camp for the kids. Somewhere in there, we would have a couple of free weeks as well for lazy mornings and fun outings.

Unfortunately, that thing we call “normal” left the station weeks ago.

Las Vegas is not happening. We have decided that after all we have been through, it would be irresponsible to visit a destination like Vegas. Plus, most of our relatives already said they are not going. It’s not much of a family reunion if your family is not there.

Nebraska is also not happening unless things change dramatically. We just do not feel comfortable flying and then exposing not only ourselves but our extended families to Covid-19 germs.

Summer camp is the big wild card. Pippa was registered to attend two different camps. Camp #1 cancelled its entire summer program a couple of weeks ago. Camp #2 is still apparently all systems go… but that could change at any moment. Julian is slated to attend summer camp at his preschool, but who knows when schools will be allowed to reopen.

I am getting a lot of practice at living with uncertainty.

It’s not easy. It’s not comfortable. But I do not have much choice in the matter, do I?

My brain wants to plan ahead. That’s not my fault. It’s biology! Our cave ancestors had to plan ahead to make sure they had enough to eat and did not get eaten by a saber tooth tiger. Shit, even squirrels plan ahead! That’s why they bury nuts — they are saving up for winter. If squirrels are planning for winter, then of course I am going to have some biological instinct to plan for summer.

For me, planning ahead is generally an act of self care. I have to write or I lose my sense of self. I learned that the hard way when I was committed to a psychiatric hospital for postpartum depression. A turning point in my recovery was when I finally set pencil to paper and started to write. I can miss a few days of writing from time to time, but I have learned to plan for my writing time to make sure I feel like my most authentic radiant self.

But right now, planning ahead more than the current week feels like a special kind of torture. It reminds me of all the things we have lost. It’s a bit like rubbing an open wound. Just don’t do it!

My biological instincts are sound. If I was a squirrel, I’d have the best damn acorn hoard possible for winter. But now I am living in a situation that is forcing me to live with great uncertainty. And this is what I have noticed so far: when I resist the uncertainty generated by Covid-19, I feel shitty; when I surrender and live in the current week, and accept that I do not have control over all the variables of my life, I feel okay — even, I dare say, great.

This is something magical about being human. The squirrel is going to keep racing around, burying acorns, no matter what its circumstances. But I am not a squirrel. I can pay attention and get curious about my thoughts and feelings. I can connect the dots: trying to plan for Summer 2020 makes me feel anxious and bitter; surrendering to the uncertainty feels better.

And then.

The magic happens.

I can decide to override my biological instinct to plan ahead and surrender to the uncertain flow of life.

I am trying to do this during the pandemic. Some days I am more successful than others. But even on successful days, I have to make a conscious decision to override my desire to plan again and again and again, because damn, my tendency to plan is basically mingled with my marrow and blood.

But I can do it. Slowly, persistently, and patiently. I can change the way I think. I’ll stop feeling the urge to plan for Summer 2020 several times a day (okay, by “several,” I mean “several hundred”). Eventually, I’ll just think about Summer 2020 every few days, and I’ll quickly release my desire to have solid plans for the months ahead.

Unlike the squirrel, I can change my thoughts to help me get better with uncertainty.

And since uncertainty is one of the few certainties of life, that might not be such a bad thing to learn during The Great 2020 Adventure.

There is an old Far Side cartoon that depicts a classroom with adult students and a teacher at the chalkboard. In the front row, there’s a student with a freakishly small head, hand raised, and the caption:

Mr. Osborne, may I be excused? My brain is full.

That just about sums up my current state of affairs.

I have not blogged or worked on my fantasy novel for the last two days because my brain is just too damn full. Right now, my brain still feels too full, but I also feel like I might lose my mind if I don’t write something. So here I am.

I know this is just another fun part of the Covid-19 sheltering at home experience. We have been doing this for seven weeks! It has been seven weeks since my kids’ schools closed, and seven weeks since Nathan’s firm decided everyone should work from home. And still, we have no idea when this will end.

On one level, this is not that difficult. Bombs are not falling from the sky. We are healthy. Our days are filled with very basic tasks: laundry; dishes; cooking; keeping the kids busy; makings sure Pippa does some first grade schoolwork; tidying the messes that never stop accumulating; taking walks; texting friends. The car does not get used every day. My To Do list is rather short.

But on a deeper level, this is one of the most difficult thing I have ever done. (It’s a close foot race between my adventures with postpartum depression and the current situation. I think PPD was worse… but ask me that again in five years when I have some perspective.)

It’s not surprising that my brain is full! My whole life was turned upside down in the space of a few days.

Before Pandemic	Now (holy shit!)
My kids went to school	My kids have distance learning at home
My husband worked at an office in downtown Los Angeles	A chair in the master bedroom is Nathan’s office
I went to the grocery store and got everything I needed, no hassle	&*$% I can’t even
I saw people outside of my immediate family on a daily basis	Who are these “people outside of my immediate family” of which you speak?
I took my kids to places like the zoo and Natural History Museum	We drove to Sonic last week for lunch and it was an event

This upheaval has kicked the shit out of a lot of routines and habits that I took for granted. For example, I had a daily routine to get the kids ready for school that included things like brushing teeth and getting dressed. We don’t have to get ready for school anymore, so now it is often mid-day before I remember they need to brush their teeth. Today, they actually asked me to help them floss! Another example: I used to make ice in the afternoon while packing school lunches. Now: no more packed lunches, no more remembering to make ice.

And don’t get me started on the grocery store! Pre-Covid-19, I parked the car, got a cart, checked my list, put everything in my cart, and paid. Now my brain has to go through high-level acrobatics just to make sure I get what we need:

• Where will I park? Which entrance will be open? It changes!
• Oh, crap, where’s my face mask? Got to put on the face mask.
• Then I get my shopping cart but the store keeps changing the protocol for that. They are doing their best to sterilize the carts, but I swear, it was an obstacle course to get one last time.
• Now it is time to social distance. I can’t just waltz down an aisle and get what I need. I have to make sure I am giving the other shoppers enough space.
• Then I cannot be certain I will be able to get what is on the list. Dairy has been hit and miss. And meat? Well, I no longer write specific items on my list. I just write “meat” and see what the grocery gods will send.
• Waiting in line to pay is another social distancing game. Is this difficult? No. Is it new? Yes! And when everything is new, it freaks my brain out a little.

I am mentally and emotionally drained. I feel like I should lounge in bed, read a book, and give my brain a break. But I have been doing that for two days and I miss the escape of working on my fantasy novel.

I also do not have a lot of patience left for my kids. My brain is like, All systems full, access to patience reserves denied.

I know that I will eventually feel like myself again. I know I need to be patient and give myself rest, grace and compassion.

But damn, this is tough.

Covid-19, my brain is full. May I be excused from this alternate reality now?