Petty Mothering in the Time of Cholera

the shallow depths of quarantine

My daughter and I managed to evade covid for nearly FOUR. YEARS. I won’t lie, part of me felt sort of invincible at this point - perhaps we were just genetically (despite not sharing genetics, but rather through a mutual shared divine feminine power) immune to the SARS-CoV-2 RNA virus, altogether. We just “didn’t get that” sort of thing. Last winter we watched as the men around us fell: Rowan with no symptoms whatsoever yet forced to hang around the house for 5 days anyway, Tyler buckling under fatigue and Paxlovid, hidden away in his ADU hovel, as I left toast on higher and higher stairs for him, more confident with each passing negative test.

However, last weekend, on our way out the door to a Truly Perfect Day* — *KID definition only, of course - calling to mind that perfect meme going around —

of a visit to an indoor trampoline park, a kids birthday party, a playdate, and a promise of an ice cream parlor as a reward for finally not waking me up in the middle of the night 700 times, I suddenly realized my daughter had all the classique Covid symptoms. I figured before exposing ourselves to upwards of 100 people, we should probably just do a quick test. Zoe’s Covid line flashed bright red before her control sample line even appeared, and there mine was too: faint to the non-Lasik’d eye perhaps, but definitely there.

Reader, you’re simply not meant to spend this much time with someone within the confines of one house. Over the next 8 days, Zoe and I became the most insufferable old married couple. She had one day of fever/cold symptoms and I had 2-3 really rough days of fatigue and achey body cold symptoms - it definitely could have been worse, which meant that the majority of the week was spent feeling fine yet being utterly unable to join society outside of these walls.

In 2020, I went into this hell with gusto - with a 1 and a 2.5 year old in tow. I can proudly recall day 3 or 4 of Quarantine Part I (Taylor’s 2020 version) where I created a DIY home obstacle course, taught Rowan letters by sight, introduced a train whistle, and didn’t even turn the TV on until 5pm. This quaran-time round, I made Zoe wait until 9am to turn on the TV and made a strict rule about turning it off by bedtime. And yet, after a couple days of this extraordinarily lax TV policy, she showed herself incapable of actually handling that much TV. Around noon on day 3 she fell apart, wailing “I NEED to go on a scooter ride! I need to leave!!” Unfortunately that day coincided with my worst symptoms, when walking 3 feet to pee may as well have been a triathlon.

She did, imo, purposefully annoying shit. She asked for a yogurt snack and when I went into the living room an hour later, found half of it still in its cup and the other half smeared on and all over, I am not exaggerating, 12 different surfaces including the wall, couch, pillows, floor, fridge, and TV console.

Why???!

Additionally, my daughter has a petulant streak that my son does not possess - he genuinely wants to be compliant, whereas my daughter…doesn’t care? This makes it easy when sick, tired, and underfed to lose my Dr. Becky lead with gentleness parenting overarching rainbow guidelines and become petulant right back. In order to get her some exercise I took her on a secluded, masked hike, but she found a way to argue with truly every single thing on the way and during the hike - over the sweater, shoes, water bottle, snack, direction we went, keeping her mask on around others, truly whatever it was, she took umbrage. By the end of the hike, I was over it, and I said as much - we had a long discussion about the behavior and why it wasn’t cool or fun, and how it made it really hard just to have a nice time together if the whole time needed to be spent arguing.

Of course, as soon as we got home, the arguing began anew, this time about bathing, bedtime, and brushing teeth, so by the time we were in bed with books, I was spent. I opened her Disney Princess storybook and obliged reading each title to her, but I was mad, so I read them all in a real *tone of voice*. When I got to one called “Merida and Mum’s Day” I really let the pettiness that had been building up inside me for the last week (4 years) rip.

“Well I certainly know which story I DON’T WANT to read, and that’s this one,” I harumphed after reading the title.

“Why??? I want you to read that one!” she screeched.

“No, it’ll make me too SAD. Reading a story about a mother and a daughter having a wonderful day together?? Why would I do that when we have had such a very BAD day!!!!” I declared, all but standing in pinstriped breeches and pointing my finger towards the heavens in a court of law.

“I WANT THAT ONE,” she insisted, fondling her stuffed octopus tentacle.

“Hmph!” I aggressively flicked to page 127. I pointed out Merida acquiescing to what her mother wanted to do on their special day together within the first paragraph. “Woooooooow,” I sang angrily. “Look at that. Does it say Merida whined about every thing here? Or that she yelled at her mother every few minutes even though her mommy is just trying to have a nice day with her?”

“No…” Zoe responded, her eyes narrowing, fully realizing the gross behavior her mother was exhibiting yet too young to call her on it.

Things went on in this fascinating, extremely appropriate way for another page or so before the red-headed Scottish royals came upon a rowan tree, which delighted both of us. We had that, in common, at least - not being presently mad at Rowan, enough to have the tree call up some fond associations. When I closed the book, I held her face in my hands and apologized.

“I’m sorry I’m behaving like this and using this tone. It’s not very nice. I’m very frustrated that we had such a hard day,” I acknowledged, remembering Dr. Becky’s stressing that repairing, ideally in the moment, is crucial to a positive relationship with your kid, even if and when things go south.

“I’m sorry too, mama,” Zoe admitted. “I’m sorry I yelled at you so much today.”

We agreed to have a better day tomorrow. Minutes later, she was snoring while holding my hand in her tiny one, and it all melted away - her behavior, my trifling bullshit.

Tyler tested positive for Covid the following morning.

“We’ll get through this together,” he reached his hand out, to hold mine.

“Will we…?” I mused, given that now he was going to be the sick one isolating and I’d be the one “out there” with the kids.

“Oh. What I mean is, we’ll be together when this is through.”