The Farm In Quarantine

Day 8,742 of Quarantine:

Actually I have NO idea how far we are into this crazy mess. Let's see, the kids last day of school was March 16th. The governor of the great state of Illinois declared a state wide Shelter-in-place order that Friday to go into effect the next day at 5 pm, so if my counting is correct, we've been in lock down for about 14 months. Right? Maybe closer to 37 days, 3 hours, and 14 minutes since we officially shut down. Yikes. I know we've had 6 Sundays of online church. I know I've packed lunches at school instead of serving kids outright for 1 day short of 6 weeks. I know my hair has grown at least 2 inches, my nails not at all, and my eyebrows...well, let's not go there.

I feel caught in the middle of a whirlwind of anger, fear, chaos, and and odd new sense of normalcy. Grief makes many of us lash out. Right now it feels as though the entire world is grieving something. People are swinging so far left and right that it's making my head spin. This week, I realized just how toxic social media (Facebook) had become for my mental well being. I've got friends on both sides of the political aisle and I was suffering from whiplash reading their posts. One side is decrying the evils of buying anything from China ever again, forgetting that the USA has little to no manufacturing capabilities to meet our daily needs. The other side is shouting that if anyone sets foot out of their house before 2021, it is tantamount to murder. The blatant falsehoods posted, the anger purposely stirred, the misinformation being doled out from every corner has left me spinning and spiraling. I finally came to the conclusion (many, many years later than I should have), that I cannot function in that head space. I've moved my FB app to the back of my phone and only allow myself a few scant minutes a day to check on the people I love most, and to visit my memories for good giggles and a few tears.

Lately I find myself firmly set in the middle and have found it a lonely place. I've become more politically moderate the older I've become. It's strange to me to read conservative posts and feel so disconnected from them when that has been my stance for so very long. I am still morally conservative, but cannot align myself with the nonsense that has take over the GOP. Neither can I toss my firmly held beliefs to the wind and side with the Democrats. I'm not quite Libertarian, so there doesn't seem to be a place for me in this new landscape where everything is polarized and political.

Perhaps I shall start a Utopian commune here on the farm. The only problem with that idea, is that I don't really want anyone else coming to live here. Can we be a Utopian commune of 6? And we should probably shuck the idea of a utopia since we argue too much amongst ourselves.

At the moment we're actually a commune of 5. BabyGirl has found her freshman year of college tossed out and replaced with online courses only. That's fine and dandy for anyone living in the land of fiber optics. But us poor, backwoods, DSL users are in a world of hurt. The boys are a freshman and junior in high school and Bitsy is in 7th grade. That means 4 laptop/chromebooks logging in to sloggingly slow speeds as they fight for bandwidth to watch assigned videos, work out complex math problems, and discuss the Civil War and reconstruction with a distant history teacher. Luckily we are not the only family in our area with connectivity issues, so the 3 younger FarmHands can get paper packets for portions of their homework. For BabyGirl, that is not an option. It's hard to dissect a cadaver on paper. It's even harder to take college level speech when you can't upload videos. So she has flown the coop temporarily.

BabyGirl brought a boy home 2 1/2 years ago or so. Mo has been a staple in our lives every since. His family (mom, dad, 2 sisters, 2 brothers-in-law, niece, nephews, and one on the way) has accepted BabyGirl as one of their own. For this I am ever thankful, but especially so now. She has gone to stay with his family until the end of her school year. He's a townie with that highfalutin', fancy, fast fiber stuff that she needs to get to her projects and hopefully finish out her year with a bang. As much as I miss her (she's been gone 8 days), I am glad she has options to keep her afloat. We video chat every few days and she keeps me informed about her life.

Husband's job is more essential than ever right now. But working for a Big Box Store warehouse means he is in contact with the entire world for 12-16 hours a day 3 days a week. So far, our little neck of the woods has been fairly safe. 2 cases thus far in the county where we live and he works. None in the county where I work. We're not sure if our regional isolation is to be credited with this, or if the shelter-in-place order has kept us COVID-19 free, or if this is just the calm before the storm. My prayers are that the first 2 are the reasons behind it. My fear is that it's the third.

This is not a world most of us, shy of the SHTF preppers, were prepared for. My vocabulary and conversation have changed greatly. The terms we use in every day life are like something from a dystopian novel. Late Night hosts are casting from their homes (or so I assume, I don't watch). Blue collar workers, the medical community, and minimum wage workers are suddenly on the front lines. Working-from-home has become the norm for many. Random Acts of Kindness are suddenly newsworthy in a world strangely devoid of kindness on many fronts.

My word for 2020 was Gratitude. It's hard to find things to be thankful for in the midst of a pandemic keeping me from the people I love, my grandmothers, my uncle, my parents, siblings, nephews, and dear friends. And yet, there is still an underlying sense of gratitude in every day life. Husband and I are both employed and would be paid should we have to be off. That is no small thing in this day and age. The kids are healthy and strangely used to being "stuck" on the farm for long periods of time, so they're adapting well. We have outside space- acres, miles of it- in which they can safely roam. Our rural area is, thus far, unaffected by this virus for the most part. Our stores still have the things we need, and we have the capabilities to keep nearly 2 weeks worth of supplies on hand.

And even though we cannot be there in body, I am more thankful than ever for a church home that is exactly that- a home to me and my children. There we are loved. There we are necessary. There we find peace, comfort, and support. Our church family is deeply missed right now, but we are still surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. Someday we will meet together again. Someday we will sing, and weep, and praise, and take communion, and worship as a congregation. Until then we will be the church in our homes and to each other.

I pray anyone who still stumbles on my little corner of the Internet is well. I pray you are all supplied with your needs. I pray your mental health is robust and if not you have the means to reach out for support. I pray this virus is soon a memory we can share with our grand kids.