CONFLICTING LOYALITIES & SUPPORTING ISOLATED PARENTS DURING QUARANTINE

My Mother, Rapunzel 

After a rather harrowing journey to the supermarket, I am on a march to my mother’s house, laden with eggs, flour, and butter.  She lives 15 minutes away.  Initially, this living arrangement felt like a flimsy marital buffer, but now it feels too far.  It’s 6:00 p.m. and a pleasant but eerily quiet Monday evening.   My neighbor is bringing his garbage to the curb.   We didn’t expect to see each other on these emptied streets and we both come to a lurching halt.  Our eyes lock – first communicating fear, then softening to empathy.  I step off the sidewalk and onto the street, we say a wary hello and I keep walking.

Last week I was groomed and perched in my ivory tower.  Between student meetings, I was contemplating equally pretentious-sounding paint colors for our front porch: Mizzle or Pigeon?  Should the driveway have pavers or natural stone? Can we afford a pergola?  Who could anticipate that a week later I would be coveting hand sanitizer and frozen spinach?  It was beyond the scope of my imagination that I would now be wearing a blue bandanna across my face and doing a Crip Walk to the Wholefoods to get my captive mother baking supplies.  Talk about moving down a few rungs on Maslow’s hierarchy. It feels as if Mother Nature is giving the world a gut punch, and we are globally doubled over and united by a humbling dose of fear.

“I’m outside,” I say into my thrice disinfected phone. I am standing on my mother’s driveway looking up towards her third-floor window, squinting in the setting sun.  She looks down, forlorn, an almost 75-year-old twice widowed Rapunzel (but with cropped graying hair).  “How’s it going,” I ask.  “Oh great!” she replies.   Even from a 45-foot distance I can see that she is visibly saddened by our strange encounter.  It only serves to highlight that she feels held hostage.  A couple on a walk see me and awkwardly cross the street. They give a quizzical look that turns to sympathy when they see my mother pressed up against her third-floor window.  “This won’t last long,” I tell her.  But, this sentiment rings hollow.  I circle around to the front door, drop off her supplies and I find a loaf of her freshly baked bread. “Don’t eat too much, it’s a laxative” she warns, – her concern about my bodily functions still miraculously intact. I circle back for one last wave, hang up and trundle home to my husband.  My heart pulled in two directions.

We have watched the distressing realities experienced by a growing number of countries from what first felt like a safe but sympathetic distance.  Now, humans everywhere are faced with tough decisions about allegiances.  Do our priorities rest with the people who raised us and who now find themselves suddenly vulnerable, or our new chosen families?  Darwinian order provides some natural and more obvious organization for parents:  feed the kids, then drop off Lysol-wiped groceries to your parents and wave from a safe distance across the street.  That said, parents who are also still children don’t have it easy. The care-giving load during the sudden press of the pandemic is exponential when people find themselves instantly sandwiched between the unattended needs of housebound children and the growing needs of their isolated and frightened folks.

I don’t have children but also find myself in a quandary.  I have a husband, my mother and two cats.  Where should childless people’s priorities fall?  I was hoping to not have to choose. I’ve been with Eric for three lovely years.  My mother has endured me for the other 40.  When the news first spread about this pandemic, I thought, “at least we can weather this storm together.”  Yes, we might ultimately drive each to the brink of sanity, but we would have shared meals, some levity and the knowledge that none of us is alone. 

It’s turning out though, that tough choices must be made. My husband’s small family business depends on his occasional onsite ministrations. He cannot self-isolate (or co-isolate) and we are now trying to figure the lesser of evils:  my mother trapped at home alone for the duration, with the disheartening cocktail of CNN and cabin fever?  Or spending time with her and my husband and risking some level of exposure?  

I admit that holing up with my mother and camping out in my old bedroom, seems like a regressive choice, but I find myself haunted by the look she gave as she waved goodbye from her third-floor bedroom. Emotionally, it feels as if I am leaving her stranded. Intellectually, I know that her physical isolation is for her own safety. But, the psychologist in me reasons that humans are emotional creatures and health is a mind-body phenomenon. I could not possibly have anticipated feeling so torn about these realities a mere two weeks ago when I was “agonizing” over paint colors and a pergola. What an unfathomable reorganization of priorities.

Frankly, as an introvert, I feel better equipped for solitude than most. In fact, I could thrive in this situation if it didn’t come with a pandemic.  I see the possible environmental and psychological benefits of working from home.  Parts of this quarantine feel restorative.  My house has never been cleaner, and I have not had this much free time since I was a kid.   I am disconcertingly happy to remain un-coiffed, cancel all social gatherings and write warm supportive emails or texts from the comfort of my home. (No Zoom happy hours, please.)  But I have the choice of contact – there is my husband to see at the day’s end. 

My less introverted mother has no such options. She is dispositionally a Jack Russel – a temperament that is ill-suited for quiet repose or forced hibernation.  She likes to be walked regularly and vigorously.  A few weeks ago, she proudly announced that she “hit 30, 000” referring to the steps on her Fitbit.  (She takes tiny steps at an accelerated pace, and likely reached this number on her hike to the kitchen.)  She has always darted with a purpose and destination.  “It’s seniors discount day and I NEEDED pecans,” she protested, when I admonished her for going to the store.   She needs not only a high dose of exercise (and apparently pecans), but my intelligent mother also requires a steady supply of mental stimulation.  The days of boisterous canasta games, lectures, and movies are gone.  Now, she is white knuckling the remote and the void in her life is being crammed with a constant stream of cataclysmic news. 

“I’m here,” I say today (Wednesday).  She descends from the third floor, greeting me from a distance. I am also greeted by the smell of fresh cookies.  She has been baking with urgency and fervor and my pants are noticeably tighter. Today we compromise, and Rapunzel and I walk in a nearby cemetery, maintaining the prescribed distance (six feet apart).  She even makes this walk purposeful as she susses out a potential “final resting place” (six feet under).  She itemizes prized belongings, anticipatorily advising me to not to sell her Royal Copenhagen dishes in a garage sale and gives me explicit instructions about how to navigate after her death (a habit she has been perfecting since her 50’s).  Then we enjoy a good talk about our lives, our shared losses, our feelings about the world and our hopes for its future.  She talks about feelings about being a parent; I speak about my feelings about not being a parent.  We scuttle along smiling stiffly at others, while trying to stay upwind. For today, we enjoy this close conversation at a safe physical distance.  We circle back to her house and I drop her off.  Her small strides are less heavy, as she summits the porch steps.  I wait until the door shuts behind her. Slightly less anguished, I walk back home to my husband. I hope that tomorrow it will be safe to do the same, to once again walk Rapunzel and continue to benefit from the love, comfort and calories.