Yesterday, my Iphone registered eight hours of screen time, mostly from texting. When it was up to four hours a day last week, I started to feel uneasy, looking for ways to reduce my screen usage. Now it has doubled. Just like the virus in Boston. In one day.
“I’m finding her to be a little all over the place,” says my spouse Janyce.
“I know, but that’s also what makes her accessible,” I say. “It’s pretty short, only ten minutes.”
It’s Friday morning and we’ve finished eating breakfast at the dining table next to our computers. In a few minutes, both of us will officially log-in to work. My laptop is positioned at one end of the table, cued up to play one of the ten-minute video meditation sessions that I like. Janyce and I have both been instructed to work from home since the Governor called a state of emergency in Massachusetts, and Janyce is sitting up straight in the chair across from me with her eyes closed.
“Let the shoulders relax, chin is tucked a little bit,” says the instructor on the screen.
“She usually recommends that you keep your eyes open,” I say to Janyce and reach over to my cellphone.
Outside it is obscenely warm and it has started to rain in heavy pelting bands, only to let up moments later with an eerie calm descending on the backyard. The robins have arrived en-masse for the best worm pickings and seeing them there now, darting around in short bursts with their heads cocked to the ground listening, one yanking on a long worm like a rubber band stretched to the breaking point, I’m almost lulled into thinking that everything is still the same. That spring is coming.
“Lengthen the back of the neck,” says the instructor on the screen.
I fumble around to shut off my phone without averting my gaze ahead. The panic in my throat is constant now. It was my idea to try to center us both for the day, but I didn’t tell Janyce the truth. That I needed to do something, anything, to quell the resentment I am already feeling first thing in the morning. I don’t want to be on my computer screen all day long, toggling back and forth between email, two separate slack channels, and logging in to zoom meetings. Already my cellphone usage is worrying me.
Yesterday, my Iphone registered eight hours of screen time, mostly from texting. When it was up to four hours a day last week, I started to feel uneasy, looking for ways to reduce my screen usage. Now it has doubled. Just like the virus in Boston. In one day.
“Lips and teeth can be slightly parted,” says the instructor on the screen.
On Monday, I pulled into the driveway at 5pm, shooting my ex-husband Jim a frown as I drove past him standing on a stepladder replacing the lantern on our lamppost. I mouthed the words “I’m sick” as I passed by and swung the car into my regular parking spot. My coat and bag landed in the backseat of the car as I exited and trudged into the house and through the kitchen, removing clothing as I did, and crawling directly into bed. “I don’t know if you have a fever,” said Janyce, looking at the digital thermometer while standing over me. “I don’t trust these digital thermometers. Can you get me one with mercury?” I said. “Kris, they don’t make thermometers like that anymore,” she said.
The dog climbed tentatively up his steps at the end of the bed and dropped in one motion onto my leg and I reached over to pat him.
“Wait, I think we have a candy thermometer,” she said. She returned with a giant glass tube and handed it to me to place under my tongue, my mouthed stretched into an O shape, cheeks aching while we waited. “Okay that definitely looks like a fever,” she said. “But we are going to try the digital one again in an hour.” An hour later, the digital thermometer registered 100.
“Please enjoy your own silence,” says the instructor on the screen.
Months ago, Janyce and I began our day sharing passages with each other from books we were reading. I didn’t feel the need to ask Google to play NPR every morning, our sunlamp would shine brightly in the bedroom in the early morning hours while it was pitch black outside, and we had plenty of time for exercise and a leisurely breakfast. Now Janyce reads my copy of Pema Chodron’s “Start where you are” in the bathroom and I scroll through my phone, texting about five different people at once, and listening to the news. Our routine started to change gradually. But the morning I woke up with a violent jolt in bed at 5am to accounts of tornadoes ripping through Nashville where my son lives might have been a turning point for me. It might have been one bit of bad news too many, might have electrified my nerve endings to the point where they are not shutting off anymore, just like the radio isn’t shutting off anymore, nor is my constant need to read every version of virus predictions from every article from every news source imaginable.
“Please enjoy your own silence,” says the instructor on the screen.
A good friend of mine said to me today in a texting chat we were having:
“How do you react when you come to the end of your knowledge? Because this is how one should think about this next stage,” she said.
“Wow. good question,” I said. “And it sounds like a Buddhist slogan.”
Pema Chodron says to start where you are, that “Tonglen practice (and all meditation practice) is not about later. Simply letting go of the story line is what it takes and it is not that easy. With all the messy stuff, no matter how messy it is, just start where you are.”
It’s Saturday morning and I am looking out the window. Janyce comes over to me, handing me a second cup of coffee, the dog trailing behind her and whimpering a little. He can feel the tension in the house, and his instinct is for all of us to be together in one bed, or maybe out on a walk in the woods.
“I think we should all get outside today and take a walk at Del Carte,” she says. I take my cellphone and put it in the other room to charge it, but not until I have texted my mother back. Last night she finally answered my question, “How high is your fever?” with a reply at 10:45pm of simply the numbers 99.6 and I’m seeing it for the first time now. There it is. The fear in my throat is back this morning, after only a few minutes respite watching the sun rise on the stately trees in my backyard.
“I think that’s a great idea,” I say to Janyce. I take a deep breath and vow to give myself a little more time before calling my mother. I acknowledge what is there for me, yet again this morning, and I don’t judge it, don’t try to push it away, don’t try to make it mean anything at all. I’m just going to start where I am.