Our baby sister, Sherill, has been rushed to the hospital. As her legal guardian, I immediately think to go there. Debbie reminds me, “Freda, we can’t go there.” Right, no one is allowed! The hospital is restricting visitors.

Everywhere I looked, I saw rainbows.

Not every house, but many, had children’s drawings of rainbows taped to the front gates or the inside of the glass window panes.

In April, my bones began telling me that the COVID-19 crisis isn’t something we can hope to put behind us; it’s something we must deepen into. This demands that we mourn the loss of beliefs killed by the crisis. Those beliefs served us for a long time, so they’ll haunt us like hungry ghosts if they’re not honored with a proper funeral and burial.

I discussed my feelings with a friend. Thankfully, I’m in a very safe space during the lockdown, but I know there are people who are stuck with homophobic parents, roommates, and landlords. My friend and I thought, “Let us start a virtual support group.”

I think of my mother, deceased now for twelve years. I am glad she is not living still, to be in the path of the relentless virus decimating the elderly. But I think of her, child of the Great Depression, sustained through lean years by stale, government-issued dried cow's milk she described as rancid.

As my return date to the U.S. approached, a connection in Europe was no longer safe. Some suggested I delay my return, but most just wished me well. My friend V. handed me a tiny cloth pouch bag containing a mauve colored garnet stone which I didn’t know was my birth stone. My friend A. gave me a horseshoe that he had found on a Himalayan trail.

One time, on the bus ride home from school, I looked out the window and saw an adorable older couple taking a walk and holding hands. I pointed them out to my friend next to me; she replied, “Aren’t those your grandparents?”

I took a closer look; she was right.

My plans for June were drawn well in advance: I would finally take the “Camino de Santiago” with my son. He was named after the pilgrim saint, so reaching the holy city of Compostela, in Spain, was a mandatory trip. More than anything, it was an opportunity for deep sharing.

Amidst this constant certainty, I told myself that I could only have one fear. The fear I chose for myself was snakes. Everything else was surmountable. If my plan gets delayed for a few days? Fine, no snakes. If I fall in the river? Fine, as long as there are no snakes. If I wake up with a chicken on top of me? At least it is not a snake!

We are now ready for you to leave us, as our healthcare workers, mass transit workers, grocery store workers, port workers, rubbish collectors, and all other essential workers need respite.

The last time I remember being struck with the deafening noise of silence was when I had just come back to my studio apartment in West Oakland and sat on the coach after a three-month stint teaching …

I get a call. The getting a call is usual, as the shelter gets call all the time for new admissions for people experiencing homelessness who are positive for COVID-19 and need a safe place to recover. But the content of the call was unusual.

I am quarantined with a teenager. It is just she and I, the dogs, and the cat. This teen is my daughter, my friend, my binge-watching TV companion, my work out buddy, and my therapist.

There’s a laugh that’s not really a laugh. You know what I’m talking about, right? When someone laughs but you can hear the cry in it?

Quarantine creates monsters. There is a feeling of numbness in the feet and hands because the routine breaks creative spirits, and brings monsters to life.

The aroma of 2020 was beautiful. Many saw themselves achieving their goals and aspirations. “Huu ni mwaka wa bwana na lazima tutabarikiwa” (This is the year of the Lord and we must be blessed), many said. Plans were made, but COVID-19 happened, and everything, for many, came to a standstill.

The lockdown has brought down noise levels, and so like others across India, I find myself catching unique birdcalls. But what has been most special has been the Muslim call to prayer, the azaan, several times a day. A few days into the lockdown, my partner and I figured out that there was a syncing of our routines with the azaan.

We used to hike in the hills of Northern California. I remember as a little girl he would race me up to the top. When I became a competitive cross country runner, he would take me to the trail the week before a race, and we would run it together, noting the areas where I’d need to pace myself, the turns and corners to speed up at, or be cautious of.

My strongest longings are for home. Being from a family of displaced people that faced the partition of India in 1947, the idea of home became central to my sense of safety and belonging. It became a motif of the will to reconstruct life after the trauma and pain of losing home. 

I was grateful that when I looked in the freezer I found some Italian sausage. I put that together with other veggies that we had, making sausage and peppers over pasta—good comfort food. Thinking about it, having the Italian sausage in the freezer is representative of a kitchen with lots of food in a comfortable house. We are fortunate and privileged.

We had just graduated out of college and entered the workforce. I was facing anxiety. How will I find work? How will I pay my student loans? So many things were going on in my head. It’s an anxiety provoking time. We don’t know what’s going to happen afterward, because the economy is bad, and the job market will be affected.

I made the kids put on boots and sunglasses, and we stepped out onto the patio, still glossy with rain. “We’ll take turns,” I told them. “First Izzy, then Teddy, then Mommy. Throw the cup at the ground as hard as you can, and you can yell anything you want when you do it. You can even swear if you want to, you won’t get in trouble.”

On Monday, I was back in London when the Prime Minister announced the emergency measures. I can’t travel to see her. She can’t leave the flat. Someone else has to buy her food and leave it outside the door.

Oh, yes. You already know: these corner delis have EVERYTHING. Breakfast sammies, Philly cheesesteaks, chicken or lamb or falafel over rice, an eclectic selection of healthy snacks and unhealthy indulgences, and random but essential items you should always have extras of around the house …

He had contracted a super-bug in the hospital and it was for our protection. All he would have seen was the masked family members around his bed near the end. I’ve always felt bad about that and yet now in this time of COVID-19, I am thankful that at least he had loved ones around.

I had been monitoring her slow descent for months, watching as her muscles grew weaker, her eyesight dimmed, her pain deepened. “Why doesn’t God just take me?” she asked again and again.  I had no answers.

Touching by word and deed

taking care of the neighborhood

Reminiscing randomly and

realizing the beauty of today

I take my mother to church. She is 91. I know how important it is that I go with her-- imperative is a better word. Church has been the comfort of her life, and also her cudgel. My mother doesn’t wash her hands before she eats, but she always prays.

Our town is small, but it’s a very tight community. One woman made masks and put them on her front porch so that people could come and get them.

People around our neighborhood started becoming fussy around the doctor. We were worried not only about him, but about his grandmother. Slowly people started losing their minds. There were threats written on the wall of his house.

I monitored the Facebook groups for airline employees. Flight attendants’ posts from Jet Blue, United, Southwest, Delta, American. Not feeling well. Sick. Trying to get tested. Exposed. Quarantined in hotels. Alone.

With the help of YouTube, I sharpened my skills to get ready to make my first pattern after a break of 17 years. The whole process was very nostalgic, from fixing the fabric in the hoop, to drawing the pattern.

As a library staff member, I came to work, I was at my desk, and I thought, “I’m going to walk around the library, to move around and see all the books.” It didn’t help. Every nook and cranny that usually has a patron in it, the children’s room … they were all empty.

I was upstairs closing the bedroom shutters when I first heard the sound. What was it? I ran downstairs to find my husband and the boys standing at the open front door. The clapping was loud and rhythmic. They joined in.

Here I have seen strangers become friends; I have seen people come in for a chat after a rough day at work; I have seen young performers practicing their art. We developed a sort of community– they became a part of my life. We exchanged conversations and swapped life stories.

I’ve noticed during this physical distancing period that despite being alone in my apartment and within my busy mind, there are daily moments that demand a quieting of thoughts to make way for collective emotional expression (grief and gratitude).

With my body shaking, I returned to my room, before trying to reach out to the instruments of justice. Alas, 8 p.m. is probably too late for NGOs, and COVID-19 too urgent to address cases of domestic violence.

wet rinsed morning
wipes the face
the wind whispers
tide at the door

listen

This virus, whatever else it’s doing to us, is defragmenting the world and defragmenting me. Two years ago, I wrote a poem about a conversation with the God of death. In it, he had come to take me away, but I say, “Please let me stay back, because I have a lot to do.”

Clarity, confusion, ignorance, observation, springtime birds returning from wherever they wintered, anger, divisiveness, uncertainty, left versus right, fear, awareness, experiencing longer than normal wait times, short supplies, long lines, masks of every shape and size, solitude, loneliness, pain, every possible learning experience …

I was heartbroken, after seeing a post of Seven Sisters from Southdown National Park: ‘They’ll still be there, in the same spot, when we can all get outside again safely’. I’ve been planning to go there, waiting for this perfect spring weather, trekking its edge for hours. Now, I might not get the chance to see its beauty before heading home to Indonesia. I might not have the chance to do things that I wish for.

One day early on during the shelter in place, I was helping a provider, as an interpreter in Kiswahili. The first question the client asked was, “Why hasn’t the bus come to pick up my children and take them to school?”

One particular day, when the news about the death figures got particularly overwhelming, I imagined my window to be a patient, body still warm in the newness of death, and the fistful of sky visible from it became a hurriedly-stitched hospital gown providing a morsel of grace to the dead.

The framing of the pandemic as a war (in many countries) has echos of HIV, where the enemy is then identified as the infected person, not the virus. This has already played out in some areas in South Africa, with people being forced out of neighborhoods. Similarly, some provincial Ministers of Health are threatening (and enforcing) forced isolation for those who test positive.

There’s a stark feeling of scarcity in the air these days.
Not enough masks or PPE.
Not enough hospital beds or ventilators.
Not enough tests.
Not enough toilet paper.
Not enough time slots for grocery pick up.
Not enough competence in our current leader.

I concentrate. Turn on NPR. Scroll through my newsfeed. Open news article after news article. The John Hopkins coronavirus map. Day by Day. The pieces forming, coming together. So far still to go. Social Distancing our framing. Boundaries created. A world in turmoil. The picture, blurry in my mind. Waiting for completion.

I have never: cleaned, washed, pruned, planted, and painted so much all in the confines of my yard and house.
I now know my neighborhood, like never before.
The Jones, with their quaint cottage,
Old Man Rogers, his place no more,
The Stantons, what a mess,

In India, when the whole country was put into lockdown, an ambulance was not able to pass through our village, because we were so afraid someone would open the doors and we would be infected.

Even though traveling is not advised, I book a ticket to Phoenix, Arizona, where my sister lives. She has two babies, seven months and two and a half years old. Being with her gives me the energy that I need.

Death … an encounter that she couldn’t control with her effervescent charm and iron will. Death, it didn’t come when beckoned. Not even when cajoled, nagged, guilt-tripped.

I felt so happy, but also a little bit of stress, because I was concerned about my sister's health and her baby during this pandemic.

The family on X2 can't decide what they want. Every moment of their indecision I am more convinced: one of these strangers has infected me, a customer or a cashier or, god-forbid, a cook.

When Ramadan came, I was calling everyone my group to check on them and see how the treatment adaptations were working for them. One day before Ramadan ended, a woman who I had called asked me, "Are you getting paid for doing this?" I said, “No, we're volunteering.”

Eventually, we decided to embrace the best of both worlds: yes, let’s go out and enjoy the hot and humid start to the season, but let’s also be vigilant about wearing our masks, bringing hella hand sanitizer, and keeping respectable distance from strangers on the train.

I am slowing down and sinking in to ecstatic time. There is no other place to dwell, than in my own body. This I know! It is not only a turn inward to the quiet, intuitive soul; but an echoing wail to humanity. In between, the birds sing louder.

PAUSE- As the Earth stands still, ahh ... breathe, rest, technology amuck, people frenzied, afraid and stuck, paralyzed, mesmerized, robotic, no feelings– non-thinkers, they are testing now, waiting, COVID-19 …

Our hearts turn heavy at every piece of news of a passing friend, relative, or stranger, whom hospital authorities decide must be buried with the special protocol.

I’m trying to reach out to her and be her safe space, but being rejected repeatedly is so profound– I feel deeply grief stricken at not being allowed to be her mother, by her not allowing it.

“Shelter in Place.” It’s actually a gentle phrase for such a harsh time. So much loss in the pandemic: loss of health, of loved ones, of jobs, of homes, of connection, of personal freedoms and simple joys …

My family used to always complain that I’m never at home, I never spend time with them. So I thought, “OK, I will spend time with my family now.” But from the day lockdown started, I have been busy over the phone, I have been doing Zoom calls, I’m constantly busy, I’m talking to the kids I work with.

I would like to say this about emotions: there are some sounds in our minds that we can never forget. The sound of an ambulance is among them, for me. It reminds me of 1995. That was the year when we started to feel the end of the war with Azerbaijan, which happened when the Soviet Union fell apart.

We woke up on Thursday morning to the announcement that President Trump was closing the U.S. to all outside travel, and to a world turning upside down.

I was adjusting my camera phone as I listened to my client's birth story during her initial postpartum visit. I was hoping my anger, frustration, and anxiety were not obvious.

Just at the beginning of the lockdown, at the beginning of March, when the government announced that we would be teaching from home, it was a huge change in the minds and lives of everybody.

My story starts with an “almost” apology. Six months ago, we chopped down a massive tree. It was an invasive, exotic tree that bullied all possibility of a garden out of our new apartment’s little patch of earth. Not a way to make friends in the apartment block.

My first step was to call all my beloved friends and relatives, to be sure they were okay and to know how they were coping with this situation. Then, my bedroom was gradually transformed into an office and a gym. My family and I were working and studying from home.

It was so hard for me to stay in the house,
All of my energy inside of me,
It was so full and so tight,
My walls almost tipped over!

Monday, March 16, 12 noon: Schools are closed, shelves are empty, people are hoarding flu supplies, and everyone is out of toilet paper. When the shelter-in-place order comes down, I call my son and tell him it’s time to choose. Gabe has been enjoying his first year in college in Portland and was considering riding out this whole coronavirus thing on campus.

There’s a ray of sun that visits me every afternoon through one of the windows of my office, at home. I discovered it during the first week of the lockdown.

Now, I can’t imagine my life without the sunshine of these children coming to my room through my notebook screen, every morning.

My brother Omar was working for Amazon delivering packages,. He knew he was at risk of contagion, so he told my mom at the end of March that he would not visit her until COVID was over. My mom did not like it, but she knew it was for her protection.

Babies are born anyway
Life pushed forth
even with the rest of humanity
having ground to a halt

Learning to believe, trust, or ignore news headlines is something that common sense can’t digest fast enough. Feeling isolated and restricted isn’t healthy. Grieving families call me to request flowers to represent their presence at funeral services that they are forced to avoid.

“Time is out of joint,” and I am experiencing time differently. Now, I don’t believe that I, or any of us, can truly live in the present. I think that we simultaneously live in the past, present, and future. My past, what I have done and experienced and learned, provides the framework, the lens, through which I view the present.

At first, not only me but a lot of people thought, “This is not that serious,” and me and my friends were even joking about it. But day by day, I started to realize that the situation is getting worse and if everyone thought the way I thought, it would result a chaos.

I was moving full tilt in one direction and surprise! I learned I must
immediately surrender to a new reality.

Before the pandemic, we rarely paid attention to this. Now, we watch it over and over, enjoying the moment.

I started to feel naïve to think that I could ever take this pandemic "by the horns" and believe that I could thrive amidst the tragedy and chaos.

I was with my dad when he bought these. He wanted a pair of red shoes for playing pickleball. Never one for flash and yet he wanted a sense of savior faire.

She is alone. Her gait is brisk and light-footed, almost floating and soaring above the ground. Her tattered fur is dusty tan and creamy vanilla.

Pain, like love, can be an intense and long-lasting relationship. Pain, unlike love, is not something we wake up hoping for.

My prayer is that we will come out of this as fully-healed people who have known loss and caught our breath …

We were essentially trapped in our own house, not only by the pandemic, but by the ice as well.

I stop, mesmerized. The curb in front of the mill house has been lined with old bottles and jars. Some whole, some broken. Each claims a spot, catching the morning sun.

Testing took forever, and a positive result came back on January 6th– just in time to watch the Capital get over-run.

While he tends to rush and take off with other riders, I, somehow, manage to calm him, and he goes over the jumps smoothly.

I’ve overheard enough of his screaming matches with my brother to know how he reacts to anything that taints his ideal picture of how Black men should be.

Jon offered to check one more area for trees. Shortly after, he called me on FaceTime to show me what he had found, but the reception was so poor it was just a green blur.

Affecting us one and all
waiting to get
that dreaded phone call,
”Yes, I've been in contact, too,
and now taking this test is my next thing to do"

Where do the toddlers sleep and play, if their mothers have to break curfew to work in the parks at night, risking arrest in order to feed themselves and their children?

A card that says “I love you more than coffee,” a Mary Oliver poem I wrote out long hand to feel the words, notes and poems from students past, a tiny, crocheted baby yoda in a mask.

I don’t feel like I am a teacher at all anymore. I am now a mental health expert on the brink of mental distress herself. The words grit, resilience, and trauma-informed fill my head.

They tell us that nearly everyone by now knows at least one person who’s contracted the empathy-loss virus. A few have contracted the more virulent compassion-loss virus. Some of us know more than one whose soul has already died from the disease.

He rushes past, barefoot, sanitizer in hand, to take his favorite seat in our living room. Sometimes, he surprises us with homemade chicken soup, fritters, Bacalao, and Jamaican breakfast. Everything I’m not supposed to eat.

I know how it feels to not want to be inside of your home. I know how it feels to stop before entering the door and wanting to cry because you don’t want to go in.

When I was in 8th grade, my homeroom teacher called me a social butterfly. I thought she was complimenting me until I looked closely at her face.

After that conversation, it was back to the usual radio silence, and it made me feel like I had killed the mood.

My grandma was somewhat of a social butterfly. She loved having parties and church functions at the house, but due to COVID this came to an abrupt stop.

As the weeks ran on, we quickly ran out of Clorox wipes and Lysol, and I grew tired of managing online homeschool for our children, working from home, and attending full-time classes, all from our little apartment.

As reality has become so hard to bear, I've found joy in technology. I've never been more appreciative of a chance to FaceTime family or get in a call with friends.

At first, I felt guilty for enjoying the experience, but that pleasant feeling was short-lived. Every bit of news we got brought me lower and lower.

It's impossible to explain or to understand really, but the connection via satellite is bouncing all around us all the time. We can't see it; we can't feel it; it's just there.

As Father's Day came and went during the pandemic, I found myself reflecting on my family's unique (or, more accurately, not so unique) American-ness, which is rooted in immigration.

The world tilted. One day I was telling my husband, “Don’t worry if other people on BART are wearing masks, just wash your hands.” Shortly after, the County orders came out to cover your face when going outside.

I can see them thinking, Oh no he’s trying to sell me something, how can I get rid of him?

The walls that once held me close and sheltered me from external threats became strangers that wouldn’t leave me alone.

I couldn’t find formula or diapers for my newborn, we had just lost a family member dear to my heart and I didn’t know what to do next.

I wondered, What am I doing here? In the middle of a pandemic, stuck in my room, and trapped in bed, I worried about living past this.

I couldn't sleep, and I prayed that the test would be negative so that I could sit for an exam that was scheduled in three days.

… the sound of my voice in my small room paled in comparison to what I was used to hearing when we sang as a full choir.

After recalling the scenarios I had watched, I was in their shoes, but I was lucky enough to be having a mild disease.

Before the pandemic, I am living paycheck to paycheck. I am working just to survive. It is an awful situation.

At times while working, if Naina screamed or cried, I immediately dialed my mom, asking, “What happened? I heard her crying.”

Early morning at 5 am, we left for our destination. It was an eight hour journey by road. We didn’t sleep the previous night.

The messages sit in the text box, the cursor blinking for seven minutes, before I delete them, one character at a time.

The PAUSE is bigger than COVID … but, the COVID PAUSE has bred love, connection, and renewed appreciation for our time in the Zelienople woods.

At the beginning of quarantine, the lack of traffic meant less time commuting and more free time, so my friends and I decided that we would start working out together over Zoom, to get in shape.

Five days later, my sister had a lot of difficulty breathing. When the paramedics arrived, she was terrified, and said, “I will not go to any hospital, I will rather pass at home with my mom.”

The moment I heard the squeaky sound of my boots on the airport floor, I felt chills run down my spine. The place was eerily still– one of the most populated airports was empty.

Together, we helped her knock on doors, asking each family if they could open their backyard door to let our neighbor look for her dog.

Before the pandemic, we didn’t have a close mom-daughter relationship. I never told her much of what was going on in my life, and when she asked, I seldom shared anything.

The dread of knowing that if I get sick again, I will enter a depressive episode due to the excessive and unrelenting fatigue I've felt throughout this past year, horrifies me.