My youngest daughter, Emily, comes home from school with dirty hands. A visible line of grime, from pinkie to wrist.
Her pockets are heavy with rocks. She and her friends have invented names for the different kinds. Chalk rocks are her favorite, with a pointed edge for drawing in the dirt.
*
Jacob is sick again. It’s just a cold, but there’s no such thing as just a cold with his body.
He spends 5 days in bed, watching the first days of spring being celebrated out the window.
*
On Saturday, the kids go on a neighborhood egg hunt, and someone I half recognize from college introduces herself as a neighbor.
She asks me what I do now, and I return the favor.
I’m the health reporter for CTV, she says. It’s an interesting time to be covering that front.
I nod, my expression hidden by my mask and say, My husband is immunocompromised, so it’s an interesting time for us as well.
Although interesting is not the right word for it. I never talk about any of this with friends if I can help it.
*
On Easter Sunday my kids run wild through the woods with a friend.
Because of the Pandemic we stopped attending church. Even before then I’d become wary of faith that wanted walls to confine it.
I’m wary of walls period now, careful to adjust my mask, to stand next to whatever ventilation exists in that space.
We used to spend all day like this, my dad says, gesturing at the kids, climbing a tree. It’s a shame people can’t live like this anymore. That we need fences now.
I grew up with fences, too, I want to tell him, although he already knows that, he was there.
*
On Reddit, most people, if they refer to it at all, talk about the pandemic in coded language. To them it has become an Italian sandwich they consumed years ago.
*
On Easter Monday, I walk with the kids and my parents on the beach.
When we first arrive the open-air community center has two groups using the same space and the same music. A ballad from the 50’s I barely recognize is playing. One group is doing ballroom dancing, the other is practicing Tai Chi.
We walk for a long time as the kids keep accumulating rocks and gifting them to us.
Emily really wants me to put a large conglomerate in my backpack, but I instead carry it in my hands, hide it behind a bush when I think she’s forgotten it.
Her back pockets are full of rocks.
Rock bottom, I joke. And she laughs, running across the beach, searching for more.
*
I show Jacob the pictures later, but all they really capture is the vastness of the sky.
I’m lonely, he says, but I know you’re exhausted.
