Yesterday we celebrated the cat’s birthday, and not because we’re going stir-crazy during a pandemic, but because we always celebrate the cats’ birthdays. And I baked the cake from scratch, which is more than I usually do for any of my human children. We only had one cake mix in the house, and it was a chocolate one, and I’d already gotten my mouth set for yellow cake with chocolate frosting. So I went to the post about good chocolate cake, and found the comment I was remembering from Adi, who was answering another commenter’s question by asking if this King Arthur yellow cake recipe would work. That’s the one I made, even though it took FOUR of my precious, precious eggs (the cake mix called for three eggs, so the recipe was really only one extra egg).

It was good! I’ve made two or three different yellow cakes from scratch before, and what I remember about them is that they were stodgy and flour-flavored, which is why I (temporarily, as it turns out) gave up making cakes from scratch. This one didn’t make me swoon or anything, but it was non-stodgy and, most importantly, a good transportation device for the frosting. The flavor wasn’t “Yellow” like a box cake, but it also wasn’t “Flour” like some of the other recipes I’ve tried; I would describe the flavor as “Cake.” Overall I still prefer a yellow cake mix, but I was pleased with this yellow scratch cake and I saved the recipe for future cake-mix-less occasions.

I notice right now I have to do a fair amount of thought-triaging. The biggest pile is the one for “I am going to have to wait to worry about that.” Types of thoughts that go there: trying to plan for fall when we have no idea what that will look like or what will happen/change between now and then; wondering how college is going to work now; wondering if certain businesses will go out of business because of this; wondering what will happen if certain industries collapse entirely; worrying how the world will manage the recurring isolation schedules if we can’t find a vaccine.

I know from long experience that “Just don’t worry about it!” is not an option—but I have had some success with “I am going to have to wait to worry about that.” Like when I’m lying awake two hours past bedtime and my brain decides NOW is the moment to work on our household’s fire safety plan, and it supplies me with a dramatic vision of how it might go in the case of a real fire. If someone said to me, “Just don’t worry about that!,” that would be unhelpful and also invalid: every household needs a fire safety plan, and a certain amount of worrying is what leads us to make good plans and notice things that need fixing (like how long has it been since we changed the smoke detector batteries). Buuuuuut…do I need to worry about it RIGHT THIS MINUTE? In the middle of the night? Instead of sleeping? I can’t do what I really want to do, which is to call the household together and show them the escape routes and remind them where we would gather, and then add the right kind of smoke detector battery to the shopping list and get them the next time I go to the store and then replace them—so right NOW I can go to sleep, and I can worry about this in the morning.

Or, I remember sometimes while postpartum, I would suddenly learn something new, such as that in our school system the kids choose an instrument in 5th grade. I’d start worrying about whether we should force the child to do it or let it be their own decision. But even I, world-class fretter, would soon think, You know, we don’t have to think about that RIGHT NOW, when the baby is three weeks old. We CAN’T even really think about that right now, because so much is going to happen and change between now and then, and so many necessary factors are unknown. It wouldn’t help if I told myself to just not worry about it, but it DID help to think that TODAY’S worries could be the cradle cap and the umbilical stump and the nursing latch, and the band instruments decision could WAIT until more information was available and the fretting could be more productive/useful.

Society/plans/systems have been DERAILED for the moment. We can’t figure out right now what will happen if the kids can’t go back to school in the fall or what will happen if certain industries collapse: “school in the fall” and “industries collapsing” are band instruments in 4th grade, and the baby is still only three weeks old.

I am having a lot of stress dreams of this sort: (1) I show up to babysit someone’s child, then suddenly realize this means we’re essentially combining our household bubble with theirs. I decide it’s not worth backing out of my commitment at the last second and I just won’t babysit again after this—and then the parents’ large group of friends shows up and I realize they’re not social distancing AT ALL!! and so I say I can’t stay, and they make fun of me and roll their eyes at how ridiculous I’m being. (2) I am hanging out with a friend, and suddenly remember WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO!! (3) I am at the library where I work, even though the director has specifically instructed all non-scheduled employees to stay out, and I am there by mistake, and she will know I was there because there are cameras, and in fact maybe I am the reason she had to send that email about staying out!! (4) I am back at work after the restrictions have been lifted, and I can’t remember how to do anything!! HOW DO WE DO MAGAZINE DISCARDS?? (I have not yet been involved with magazine discards, which is why my dream self couldn’t figure it out.)

I seem to have wrenched my shoulder/shoulderblade. It happened when, I am not kidding, I lifted my hairbrush to brush my hair.

Cleaning the house at first had a feeling of can-do spirit, but now that we’re on the second round of it (cleaning the same sinks again, vacuuming the same floors again), the thrill has worn off. I’ll say this: I am very glad we’re still paying the cleaners, not only because it felt like The Right Thing To Do in our situation, but also because I WANT THEM BACK AFTER THIS. (I wince as I proof-read this paragraph. The privilege! The whining! Yeek.)

We’re still taking near-daily walks. We go when it’s nice out. When it’s rainy, we say we really ought to go anyway, but then we don’t.

I’ve been tentatively placing more non-perishable grocery orders from Target (like, the kind of orders from the online site that come through the mail, not the pick-up or store-delivery kind), in an attempt to reduce how much I have to put into my cart at the grocery store, and to reduce how often we need to go there. I am conflicted about this and taking it order by order rather than trying to make sweeping household policy decisions. Food and other supplies must come to our houses in some way, and it is so hard to know what’s best. And I am seeing it framed so radically differently from person to person—everything from “Oh, so I guess it’s okay to RISK THE DELIVERY PERSON’S LIFE to save YOUR OWN!!!” to “We MUST support/protect these companies/employees/jobs by ordering online!” I’m still sort of waiting for us as a society to settle into what is the Right Thing To Do, but currently we’re still in the stage of hearing constant hot takes about how every single possible choice is wrong, which is unhelpful.

The kids are continuing to do their classes online. I don’t call it “homeschooling,” and I will tell you why: parents who do actual homeschooling (meaning they choose to do that instead of sending the children to school) have to figure out how to teach the information, and they have to develop lesson plans, and research/acquire supporting books/materials, and develop/find assignments and projects to support the lesson, and then grade those assignments and evaluate whether the information has been sufficiently learned, and then follow up with reviews of those lessons later—just the way teachers do. And my mom is a teacher so I know all that behind-the-scenes stuff is a MAMMOTH amount of work (especially with a whole CLASS of kids, with different learning styles), and it’s what teachers go to school to learn how to do. And I am not doing ANY of that. The kids are doing school at home, but they are not being homeschooled: the teachers are still doing the schooling. It reminds me of when my ex-boyfriend was telling me he was a stay-at-home dad, and I was surprised/impressed because I wouldn’t have thought he was the type—and then it turned out what he meant was that he had a job he could do from home, and he was doing it from his home office while a full-time nanny cared for his baby. The term “stay-at-home parent” means something, just as “homeschooling” means something: being at home + being a parent doesn’t necessarily make a person a stay-at-home parent, and having kids at home + having them do school from home doesn’t necessarily mean they’re homeschooled. Even though I think we can all plainly understand that having kids do school from home can involve a significant increase in involvement and work and hair-tearing on the parental side of things.

Paul’s sister has made the emotional journey from posting on Facebook about “These IDIOTS panic-buying and freaking out over something less fatal than the flu!” to posting on Facebook about “These IDIOTS going out on unnecessary trips and not wearing masks!”

I am getting more concerned about food supplies. The few weeks before everything shut down, I was buying a few extras of things we normally buy, just in case—and I am ALREADY a person who has tends to have back-ups of things. So then when the advice came out to grocery-shop no more than once a week, at first I was able to go longer than that, and even the second trip a week later wasn’t URGENT. But this is because we were using up a lot of the non-perishables I’d bought before things got more serious, so now the week’s worth of groceries doesn’t stretch so far. And shopping for seven people looks dramatic even in normal times when people aren’t looking as judgily at other people’s carts. (I think we need those little dressing-room tags that show number of items, but to hang on our carts to show how many people we’re shopping for.) I normally go twice a week to reduce the drama, and also because food for seven people doesn’t fit comfortably in the fridge/freezer/cabinets.

What is an item you find you’re fretting a lot about? (Other than toilet paper, because I am so, so, so tired of hearing/thinking about Toilet Paper: The Official Mascot of the Pandemic.) The item doesn’t have to be the one that is literally the most important item to have (earlier on, my fret item was “Little Debbie snack cakes”), just any item you notice is generating a lot of personal fretting. For example, my answer is eggs, and we could survive indefinitely without eggs. I like to eat them every morning for breakfast, but I don’t have to, I could eat something else. I like to be able to bake, and a lot of recipes include eggs, but I don’t have to bake, and I could find recipes without eggs, and/or I could find egg substitutes. I like to make Breakfast For Dinner, but I don’t have to, I could make other things, or I could make breakfast things but not include eggs. We have two vegetarians in the household and eggs are a good source of protein for them, but there are other sources.

So it isn’t as if my Fret Item is an important prescription, or formula/diapers, or some other thing crucial to our wellbeing. And yet, I really want to have plenty of eggs, and I think multiple times a day about how many we have left and how I might acquire more. I think about how nice it will be, later on, to just go to the store without wondering how many eggs they will have or how many I can buy. I AGITATE about eggs, so eggs are my current Fret Item. I am wondering what your current Fret Items are.

[Update: Paul found a farm stand that had eggs, and bought me two dozen.]

I am interested in the hair-related decisions facing us worldwide, and I know I am not alone in this. The home haircuts! The home dyeing! The decisions about what to do with the greys, if you normally dye them! The BANGS! I am so interested! I am especially interested in PANDEMIC-RELATED EXPERIMENTS (i.e., seeing what it looks like if the grey/natural grows out).

Elizabeth says more than half of her (high-school-aged) friends have already done a blue/pink/purple type color, but she may be exaggerating. I nearly cut my own hair, but then had the kind of perfect hair day that typically happens the morning of a haircut, and so I didn’t follow through. Then I discovered my hair was now long enough to braid it without the prickly braid-end bothering the back of my neck, so I’m leaving it alone for now.

We were a single-income family with a lot of kids, and ANY family not awash in extra money has to find the ways they personally find it easiest to reduce spending, and one of the ways we picked is that I learned to do basic haircuts. (My mother-in-law, inadvertently cementing my decision: “Well, WE were poor but I ALWAYS found money for a barber. I mean, let me tell you, I ALWAYS found money for THAT.”) I have a Wahl clipper set I can use for Paul and the boys, and I have basic haircutting scissors I can use for Elizabeth and me. In recent years I have relished having Paul and the boys go to a barber shop instead (the barber shop does a quicker, cleaner, and usually better job, and also I am glad not to have to do it), but last weekend I cut Paul’s hair in the driveway and it was nice to already know how. (Briefly I thought, “Oh! This is something I can offer to my friends and their families!!” Then remembered: “Oh. Wait. No.”)

I’ll be able to cut Edward’s hair, too, when it needs it: he just has a basic boy cut. Rob and Henry both have lonnnnnng hair: I can cut it if they suddenly feel the need to go shorter, but I wouldn’t normally expect them to need haircuts anytime soon, since it’s already been a year or two. Elizabeth has long hair too, and wears hers blunt-cut, and has already grown out her bangs, so that’s easy, and she generally just wants a trim if anything.

But I have been wondering about William. He has in the last year or so developed Style. He gets his hair cut every three weeks or so, and he has a hair dryer and a selection of hair products. I offered ahead of time to see if I could figure out how to cut it: it’s a normal clippers cut around the sides, and I think I could at least make an attempt at using the scissors on the longer top part, if I could mess with it a bit and see how long it is in various sections. But he declined my offer.

Then one morning about a week ago he took my clippers kit and used to it trim his own sides. (He also sorted the clipper guards into labeled baggies: 1-4, 5-8, and “other.”) Again I offered assistance (especially when I saw how he’d managed on the back of his head, and that he hadn’t done the edges), and again he declined. And a few days ago there was a lot of door-slamming and stomping around upstairs, and when he came down he’d scissors-trimmed the top. It looked pretty good, considering!

And then yesterday evening after dinner he went upstairs and came down with an all-over 1/8th-inch clippers cut. He does not want us to make a fuss about it. Our feeling is that a blonde-haired blue-eyed white boy should be a little careful about choosing to have a shaved head, but he points out that no one is going to see him for awhile, so…okay. This buys him some time so he doesn’t have to keep stressing out about managing a cut he doesn’t seem happy managing. He says what he’s going to do as it grows out is just run clippers around the sides and let the top grow longer.

TELL ME YOUR PLANS: What is your household doing about their HAIR? If anyone regularly dyes their hair, or regularly dyes the greys, WHAT IS THE PLAN? If anyone has a pixie cut, WHAT IS THE PLAN? Is anyone using this time to do something hair-awkward, like growing out dye/bangs/grey/pixie, or growing a beard/mustache, or SHAVING a beard/mustache? (Paul is talking about shaving off his beard/mustache, and I am squinty about it.)

Someone finally wrote the article I wanted to see, about how shortages don’t actually represent hoarding. Many businesses manage supply/demand with little or no buffer—which means, practically speaking, that if even half of households buy one extra 4-pack of toilet paper (which we all OUGHT TO BE DOING, AS WE HAVE BEEN SPECIFICALLY INSTRUCTED TO MINIMIZE TRIPS TO THE STORE), everything collapses. Capitalism thrives in part by making the victims blame each other instead of blaming the corporations (we see this also with recycling/environmental blame), so we see endless dispiriting spitting about “hoarders.” It brings to mind that illustration where there’s a poor person, a middle-income person, a corporation/businessperson, and ten cookies: the corporation takes nine cookies, puts one cookie in front of the middle-income person, and says “That poor person is trying to steal your cookie.”

OKAY SO ANYWAY ABOUT BREAD. I used Jodie’s idea: she said her bread-machine recipe book had a good recipe for Italian Herb bread, and I checked MY bread-machine recipe book and IT TOO had a recipe for Italian Herb bread, so I made that, and it was really good. We ate it with spaghetti; and also, in honor of my childhood I made little iceberg-lettuce side salads with thin-sliced carrots and a few tomato pieces and Italian dressing. SO GOOD.

You probably already picked up on this from the sugar in the coffee and yesterday’s spaghetti/bread discussion, but I have stopped eating keto/low-carb for the time being. I kept it up for 11 days of quarantine, wondering the whole time how sustainable it was and how long I could/would keep doing it, and one evening while making dinner I was just DONE with it. I COULD keep going, but I didn’t WANT to, AT ALL. I wanted to eat the dinners I was making for everyone else, and I wanted to enjoy cooking/eating/baking instead of resenting it, and I didn’t want to have to worry so much about the egg/meat/cheese supplies. So. On that front I am having a wonderful time. Everything is so DELICIOUS.

Here I am about to go into the grocery store, wearing a bee-patterned mask made for me by our dear @am_DoingMyBest:

I think my grocery-store-timing math was the same as everyone else’s, because there was a line to get in and the lines to check out were so long they stretched into the aisles. NOT GREAT. But they had both block and shredded cheese again, and they had eggs and milk and butter and chicken and ground beef and ground turkey, and they had one-per-customer flour. Still no toilet paper, but they had some paper towels and some tissues. They were surprisingly low on everything in the section for storage bags, storage containers, and trash bags.

There is so much conflicting information about whether we should be wearing masks, all the way from “YES, for heaven’s sake!” to “It’s worse than nothing!”—with “Save them for healthcare workers!!” all over the whole spectrum. But I will say this: when several times another customer got WELL WITHIN 6 feet of me (as when one woman LEANED UNDER MY FACE to take a ground beef, MY DEAR BY ANY CHANCE HAVE YOU BEEN KEEPING UP WITH THE NEWS LATELY), the mask gave me some comfort. I felt as if it also acted as a symbol to others that I was someone who could be trusted to do my best to keep 6 feet away from them.

I am making spaghetti for dinner tonight and I am already looking forward to it. I want to make some sort of bread to have with it. I have flour and yeast; I have a bread machine. I have also made bread by hand before, but it has been…let’s see, two decades. I could make just, like, bread in the bread machine, and then I could mix garlic and butter to spread on slices of it. Or I could figure out how to make dinner rolls, or a loaf of the kind of bread usually used for garlic bread? That might be fun. What would you do, if you were me?

I just wrote a really long post agitating about how to continue paying Paul’s barber as we are continuing paying the housecleaners, and I deleted it all because it was dull and yet stress-generating at the same time. We’ll just…figure that out somehow, no need for four lengthy paragraphs of hand-wringing.

I am also getting increasingly agitated as we get closer to the time we will need to go to the grocery store. But I don’t need to write all that out: we’re all in that boat. I’ll just say that my main concern is that I’ll wait to go, and then the store will be out of some of the things we need, which sounds like it is the case for everyone. Then I’ll have made the risky trip, and not even be able to check that risky trip off my list, and have to make an additional risky trip. It isn’t as if the virus gives out exemptions: “Oh, you couldn’t get eggs? Well, you went more than a week between grocery store visits, and it’s not your fault you couldn’t get what you needed, so here’s a pass for one additional exposure-free trip.” EVEN THE FIRST TRIP WASN’T ON A VIRUS-FREE PASS.

Anyway. Someone in my house is opening the door of the microwave to take out their item before the timer goes, but then not clearing the timer, so that the poor microwave sits there hour after hour scrolling “PRESS START” in its little message field. I live with savages.

Book recommendations feel weird right now, with limited/uncertain methods for acquiring books. But have you ever read anything by Sarah Addison Allen? I had two of her books in my last pile of library books. First I read Garden Spells, which reminded me of Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman, which I also liked. But then I read the sequel, First Frost, and liked it considerably less. If I were still going daily to the library, I’d check out a few more books of hers to see whether they were more like the first book or more like the second one.

We are in the weird Calm Before The Storm phase right now, and I hope that tired cliché won’t keep you from picturing all the additional clichés that make it such useful imagery: the weird oppressive feeling to the air, and the sky being the wrong color, and how it gets much darker than it should be for that time of day, and the wind starts to act weird and scary in little preview doses, and you know something is going to happen but you don’t know how bad it’s going to be. We are all going to lose people to this pandemic, and for some people that has started: they’re in the first edge of the storm, and it’s already begun for them. But right now, I don’t even know anyone who has been diagnosed with it. And my house is still in the “Oh, it’s kind of nice to BAKE again!”/“Oh, it’s nice to have the KIDS all home!” part. So it feels kind of interesting right now, with little practical/interesting considerations like how to cut hair and how to get exercise and who to keep paying and how much online shopping to do and how to stretch the groceries (and how to go to the GROCERY STORE without ending up in the HOSPITAL)—but with the looming unknown impending bad stuff right ahead of us, and the accompanying feeling of dread. I am trying to hit the right balance between “not borrowing tomorrow’s trouble” and “not being oblivious.”

Paul complained this morning that he keeps getting ready to take a shower and then someone else gets in right before he gets there. I suggested that, since he gets up fully two hours earlier than the next person, he solve this by taking a shower as soon as he gets up. No, he says, he hates doing that. Okay, but: waiting for everyone else to get up seems like an actual recipe for how to keep experiencing the apparently recurring frustration of other people getting into the shower when you want one.

Speaking of shower behavior, Rob takes voice lessons at college, and it turns out he likes to practice while showering. Another pertinent detail: he often showers in the middle of the night.

Hi, how are you enjoying isolation with your loved ones?

I can’t let this go yet. Just picture this. Paul gets up. He does whatever he wants in a quiet house for two hours. Then, when everyone else starts getting up for the day, he wants a shower THEN? I mean, fine, that’s an okay thing to want. But after passing up two hours of available shower time, COMPLAINS THAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE IN THE SHOWER WHEN HE WANTS ONE? Like we’re getting in his way? No.

(I was mouthy to his face, as well as behind his back.)

I am additionally frustrated this morning because I can’t log into my Swistle Facebook account. Months and months ago, I tried logging in but I’d forgotten my password. Instead of just letting me reset my password, it tried to make me do a security check where I had to identify five friends it showed me pictures of—but of course on a blog-related account I don’t KNOW all my friends’ names, and/or I know people by their blog pseudonyms! So I failed. It told me I could try again later, but every single time I’ve tried to log in since then it’s just said it can’t verify my identity right now and I should try again later. There’s no contact button, there’s no help button, there’s no way to get any sort of further assistance with this issue. I can’t even delete the account! All I can do is let it live on, forever locked! And if I DID get another chance to verify my identity, I STILL wouldn’t be able to pass that test!

Anyway, if you’ve tried to friend that account in the last few months, I’m not ignoring your request, I just can’t see it or get to it. And now the blogs, which are linked to that account, are telling me they can’t access it and I need to refresh my connection, so presumably they are going to stop automatically publishing there like they’re supposed to do. I know all this is a small thing in the face of a pandemic, but it’s the kind of thing where when I am already amped up about the more important thing, the less-important thing is A STEP TOO FAR.

I was reading Off-Kilter by Life of a Doctor’s Wife, which feels very reflective of how things are right now: the odd rebalancing of what’s what, the trying to be grateful for things that are deep-down blessings but currently driving you crazy (AHEM THE CHILDREN), the frets about the future and about all the people we know, the ethical struggles like whether ordering something online is good for the person who can’t afford to quit or bad for someone being forced to keep working.

Two of her questions particularly seized my attention: When would she start putting sweetener in her tea again, and when would she eat the Easter candy. The question about sweetener in the tea, or in my case sugar in the coffee, is one that feels symbolic to me. When are we going to grant ourselves the little graces and mercies that could make it a little easier and more pleasant to LIVE (we hope) THROUGH A PANDEMIC? Which plodding daily deprivations, so normal in our normal lives where five pounds of body weight was a huge consuming issue and dying of a virus was a remote one, could be lifted during this time of freshly renewed perspective? “Oh, I am so glad that in my last ten days of good health I kept up my commitment to Low Carb Living!!” It doesn’t have to literally be sugar in tea/coffee, but for me it was, and for me the answer was “this past Thursday.” March 26th is when I started putting sugar in my coffee again.

When to eat the Easter candy feels less symbolic, though still something that I too have been thinking about. My answer, if it is interesting to anyone else, is that we are not eating the Easter candy until it is Easter. I want to have it to look forward to, and I want to feel like we’re Doing Easter even though we won’t be doing it the usual way.

Another question we’re lazily trying to figure out at my house is “When did our quarantine/isolation begin?” My last day of work was March 13th. But then that weekend Rob and I went to pick up his stuff at college, and Sunday afternoon when we returned home is when I felt like we were shutting the door behind us and now we were In. So that would be March 15th. But Paul still had to go to work several days that week, and he will continue to need to go periodically into the office. Still, the kids were all home, I was home, we were deliberately not going anywhere or seeing anyone, and Paul was showering after work like he was re-entering a bubble, so that all felt like it happened Within the Quarantine, so I think probably our self-isolating started the afternoon of March 15th. When did yours begin?

It’s a bad idea to brightside/silverlining other people’s woes, I KNOW that, and I want to avoid it. And I think it’s way too soon to be talking about the good stuff on the other side of this. But on the other hand I have had a brightside/silverlining thought about other people’s woes, and it’s about the good stuff on the other side of this, so you can see the bind I am in. And it’s more like I thought of a specific example of something that I think is going to apply across the board to many, many situations, but I really think this one example that doesn’t apply to me is the best way to talk about it. So I am going to attempt to say it without sounding like the jerk telling you your problem has an upside when you are still in the throes of mourning the downsides, or like someone rhapsodizing naively about good stuff as if oblivious to the fact that the bad stuff has barely begun to happen, or as if unaware that not all of us are going to be there to appreciate the good stuff. But I have been posting some anxious stuff, and I am going to continue to post anxious stuff, and I don’t want a Nothing But Anxious Stuff rule.

Here is the more general thing, and it’s a little long but I’ve got time and you know how to skim: There is something my wider-scope peer group of humans (like, not just my specific generation but including at least half a generation up and basically everyone after) is really good at, and it’s Compensating For Perceived Losses. You know how there is a sad cultural story about how children with December birthdays get skimped/cheated? Their birthday gifts are wrapped in Christmas paper and are clearly just a couple of their Christmas presents set aside at the last minute because everyone forgot! Maybe they don’t even get a cake because there are so many treats already, and they don’t get a party because their parents are too flustered and busy with Christmas prep! Yes, it’s a great and pitiable story, and we can probably picture some of those Greatest Generation types doing that sort of thing to their kids, with their dear old “Oh, suck it up. You know what I got for my birthday when I was your age? AN ORANGE AND A SPANKING” attitudes.

But at this point it’s a legend, part of our human mythology just like That One House That Gives Out Full-Size Candy Bars on Halloween, where now MANY of us who grew up with that legend want to be That One House, so the kids come home with a dozen full-size candy bars. I’m sure there are still people who have sad stories about their December birthdays, because there are always people who have sad stories about any topic you can think of. But the overall culture is no longer there, and MOST of the current December children benefit from The Legend of Sad December Birthdays. Giant half-birthday celebrations to make up for the tragedy of a December birthday! Deliberately oversized December celebrations! One of my friends with a December baby won’t put up her tree or any decorations or even DISCUSS Christmas until after her daughter’s birthday, just so that there is NO overlap whatsoever and the birthday remains FULLY SPECIAL. Kids with non-December birthdays might start to feel a little jealous of all that fuss and attention.

Here is my point: I think we are going to end up feeling a little jealous of the 2020 high school graduates. Not in all ways, and I want to make it clear I know there are some very serious ways in which things will be irreparably ruined, without leading us to dwell right this minute on some of the things that are going to happen between NOW (when we are feeling sad about their lost proms and graduation ceremonies) and LATER (when my theory is that we will feel a little jealous). The Jewel lyric that has gone through my head a thousand times: “Not to worry ’cause worry is wasteful and useless in times like these.” So I want to skip to the part where human beings are clever and creative and good at coming up with compensations. I don’t know what it’ll look like, but I can picture some options. Imagine the 5-year high school reunions with the theme: “PROM AT LAST!” and everyone coming to it instead of avoiding it, and dressing up and renting limos and having a wonderful time. Imagine Class of 2021 inviting Class of 2020 to a combined prom, and combining their funds to get a fun venue. Imagine a delayed graduation ceremony, or a combined 2020/2021 graduation ceremony, with the screaming and cheering and rejoicing.

The thing is, I have been to four high school graduations: my own, my brother’s, Rob’s, and William’s. And they are SO BORING. And it’s usually HOT, except sometimes it RAINS, and the seating is so uncomfortable and the whole thing goes on forever. And the speeches are wincingly trite and boring, and you’re not allowed to laugh. And then they read alllllll the names, and so slowly, and there are so many of them, and there are only a few you’re interested in.

But not Class of 2020’s graduation, when it finally happens. That is going to be AMAZING. The principal and the valedictorian are not going to be sitting there beforehand struggling with their speeches, trying and failing to find a way to make something that happens every year seem fresh. We are going to cry and hug and scream and cheer, and we are going to really appreciate being together instead of resenting being packed in so tightly, and we are going to do that human thing where we catch sight of each other and our hands fly straight up with joy, and the newspapers will all be there taking pictures and writing stories about the Class of 2020 finally getting their graduation ceremony, and the whole thing is going to turn into a giant symbolic celebration of coming through tribulation.

Same with prom. I went to prom in high school, and I do consider it a landmark worth visiting, and I wished my two older boys had wanted to attend, and I hope at least one of my younger kids wants to. But we all fought with our boyfriends/girlfriends in the weeks before, and some of us broke up right after, and some people didn’t get to go because they only wanted to go if they could go with a date, and it was a lot of money and anticipation for what turned out to be a Hotel Conference Meal followed by the same school dance we could have had in the gym for free, and it was fun to see everyone dressed up but overall it was a letdown.

But not Class of 2020’s prom. That is going to be AMAZING. They are going to play all the songs they would have played if it could have happened on time. Depending on how delayed it is, some people are going to wear the dresses they would have worn, and it’s going to be hilarious. Possibly they will be over 21, which is going to make for a very different party. And whether it’s delayed months or years, they are going to really appreciate being together, and they are going to scream and cheer and DANCE, and they are not going to be shy about it, and the newspapers will all be there taking pictures and writing stories about the Class of 2020 finally getting their prom, and it is going to turn into a giant symbolic celebration of coming through tribulations.

We may be a little jealous. And won’t we be so GLAD!