I’ve been home for over two weeks now and my “childhood home” is starting to feel like just ‘”my home.” When it comes to a gym, I’ve traded the Lower East Side F45 studio for a cramped basement with various bands, dumbbells and other at-home-fitness-accouterments alongside fishing poles, deer hides and 50+ VHS (yes, we still have a VCR).
I’ve traded a bedroom door for a pull-up bar with a blanket draped over it (it’s a long story.)
I’ve traded Central Park loops for running routes around my neighborhood that I first ran as a high schooler. My entrance to Central Park is now the location of a tent hospital for the overflowing Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City’s Upper East Side.
On Long Island, refrigeration trucks park at hospitals where the morgues are beginning to overflow, but I still find myself laughing in the sun with my family on the back deck.
Normally, the word duality would seem a little too nebulous for me. But lately, it’s come to make complete sense.
I wake up in the morning and there are a million things I could, and perhaps should, do. And part of me wants to. I could read a book, clean out drawers full of old clothes, workout, finally catch up on those blog posts I never got around to writing, start that Michelle Obama guided journal, work on my yoga practice, etc. etc.
But those grand plans and long list of activities live simultaneously in a body and brain that just wants to sit on the couch with a cup of coffee (a cup of brown liquid that’s become the most calming and grounding part of my day). I scroll though Instagram, I scroll through Facebook. I check CNN, I watch another press conference with Andrew Cuomo (I really need to know if he has nipple rings). The tightness in my chest and throat slowly regains a hold so I open TikTok to “relax.” I find myself laughing at videos, and then I feel guilty because my mom is at work, living out a nightmare.
I swipe on Bumble and almost forget that I can’t actually go out for a drink with any of these people. I go for a run and everything feels so wonderfully normal for a short while that walking into the house and seeing the hand sanitizers lined up on the kitchen island feels like a crushing blow.
I see the N95 facemasks that people have donated to my mom and my heart swells with gratitude at the same time I imagine myself throwing them all on the floor and stomping on them because none of them are smalls – none of them will help protect my mom.
I read OpEd pieces written by doctors and nurses in the New York Times that are absolutely horrifying. I try to cry but I can’t because I’m emotionally paralyzed. Paralyzed by the sheer volume of thoughts and feelings living inside me at any given moment.
My mom and I meditate outside. We watch an episode of Gossip Girl. We drink tea and eat chocolate Entenmann’s donuts and I can almost convince myself that everything is normal. That she doesn’t come home through the back door to immediately put her clothes in the basement. That she doesn’t keep her sneakers in her car so they don’t come in the house. That she isn’t sleeping in a separate room. That I can’t hug her.
My dad and I talk endlessly about our next meals. He drives down to the beach to look at the water. He drinks Bud Light with ice and we yell at Trump on the TV. He works out on the Nordic Track and interrupts during American Idol just like 2006. And I can almost convince myself that everything is normal. That he doesn’t stay in bed all morning because he’s depressed by everything that’s going on. That he just wants to hug my mom and I, bur can’t. That he doesn’t have 250 teachers looking to him for answers that he just doesn’t have.
It finally came to me last night, this weird feeling that I couldn’t quite place since I got here.
This is the last time I will live in this house. This is the last time I will have so much time with my parents. It’s an absolutely terrifying realization and it’s also an incredible opportunity that I’m scared of messing up or not appreciating.
I feel like I have the gift of knowing that some day these will be the days I cherish and look back on. The terrifying thing is not knowing if I will look back on this time in 40 years, or 10 or in a few weeks. I guess you never really know when the good old days will be the good old days. But I’m glad to at least know that these are them.
And I’m trying to cling to the details and the little moments. I’m trying to write down the lyrics to the songs we remember and stories we crack up retelling. But every time I go to write them down I feel a little stab of fear and sadness, a reminder that we won’t always be singing Raffi together after drinking a bottle of white wine (“I think it was a smaller bottle…”).
I’m not sure how to wrap this up with an inspiring line, I just know that writing this was the first time I’ve been able to cry since I came home. I don’t feel any weight off my shoulders, my throat still feels tight and I’m still scared and angry. But I also got to see my sister yesterday. I laughed a lot last night with my parents. We FaceTimed with family friends. I’m grateful at the same time I’m scared. I’m content at the same time I’m bored. I’m embracing duality because it’s a reminder that we are complex people living in complicated times.
