Pause

Chapter 35

Pause

In mid January of 2020, before anyone in the U.S. really understood what COVID was, Jeanette and I sat alone inside Baycreek  talking about The Handmaid’s Tale.

Back then we staged at night. The shop would be dark except for lamps scattered throughout the displays, casting little pools of light over furniture and signs while we worked. We’d spend hours moving things around, tweaking displays, fluffing pillows, trying to create spaces that felt inviting before customers ever walked through the doors.

That night we finally sat down at one of the dining room tables surrounded by half-finished displays and started talking about the show.

What bothered both of us wasn’t really the story itself. It was the idea underneath it. The realization that life can look completely normal right up until the moment it doesn’t anymore.

I remember telling her that the whole thing felt less fictional than it should.

“Maybe we should get passports,” she joked.

I laughed and said, “I’m serious.”

At that point she looked at me sideways.

I had been quietly following stories about a virus in China for weeks. Most people weren’t paying much attention to it yet. It wasn’t leading the news every night. It wasn’t affecting daily life. It was just this thing happening somewhere else.

But I couldn’t stop reading about it.

“There is something going on over there,” I told her. “I think it’s going to end up here.”

She looked genuinely surprised.

“Here?”

“Yeah. Here.”

“Well,” she laughed, “I guess we’d better figure out a boat.”

Living in Northwest Ohio on Lake Erie, Canada never feels very far away. Suddenly we were sitting there half-joking about passports and escape plans while surrounded by furniture displays inside a little market in Michigan.

The conversation sounds ridiculous now.

At the time it felt ridiculous too.

But underneath the joking, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was coming.

I’ve experienced that feeling enough times in my life that I’ve learned to pay attention to it. Sometimes I pick up on shifts before I understand what I’m really feeling. It’s like feeling the pressure change before a storm arrives.

And sitting there at Baycreek that night, I felt it.

Something was coming.

I just didn’t know how big it was.

A few weeks later I brought it up to my dad.

By then other countries were beginning to shut down. The stories no longer felt distant. They felt like they were moving toward us.

“Do you think this could actually happen here?” I asked him.

He thought about it for a second.

“Rach,” he said, “as long as I’ve been alive, I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

That got my attention.

My dad wasn’t dramatic. He was difficult sometimes. Opinionated most of the time. But he was practical to his core. A businessman. A planner. The kind of person who worried about real problems, not imaginary ones.

“If I were you,” he said, “I’d make sure you’re prepared for a couple weeks.”

Not forever.

Just a couple of weeks.

Enough food. Enough toilet paper. Enough snacks for the boys. Enough medicine. Enough freezer meals. Enough to stay home if we had to.

Hearing him say it made it real.

So I went to Costco.

I cleaned out the freezer first so I could refill it completely. Meat. Frozen food. Drinks. Paper products. Medicine. Everything we would eventually use anyway.

I kept telling myself I was being practical.

Still, it felt a little like doomsday prepping.

I remember Jeanette thinking I might be overreacting.

Then she went shopping too.

Just in case.

And then suddenly it was everywhere.

That was the strange thing about COVID. One minute it felt distant and abstract. The next minute it was all anyone was talking about.

Schools shut down on March 13.

I had already decided I was keeping the boys home.

By then I was terrified for my oldest. Normal viruses had hospitalized him before. Ordinary illnesses had knocked him flat. While everyone else argued about whether COVID was political, overblown, or media hysteria, all I could think was that a regular flu had nearly taken him down more than once. I wasn’t interested in finding out what this would do.

For one of the only times during our marriage, my husband didn’t argue with me.

“If you feel this strongly about it,” he said, “keep them home.”

Over the years he had learned to trust my instincts when it came to our son. Neither of us really understood why those instincts were so strong. We just knew they were usually right.

The email came that evening.

School would be closed the next day.

A few hours later Ohio issued the shelter-in-place order.

And what I remember most is the relief.

Not fear.

Relief.

I didn’t have to defend the decision anymore.

I didn’t have to wonder if I was overreacting.

I didn’t have to choose between protecting my son and being seen as dramatic.

The choice had already been made for me.

The entire world stopped.

For the first time in years there was nowhere to go, nothing to schedule, nothing to juggle.

No school.

No work.

No plans.

Just home.

Two weeks to slow the curve.

None of us knew then that those two weeks would become months, or that the world we were living in was already disappearing behind us.

We thought we were pressing pause.

What we were actually doing was stepping into an entirely different chapter.

And like so many chapters in my life, I could feel it changing before I understood what it would become.

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