Day Four: The Fish Debacle

The day started out calm, then moved into stormy waters before sliding back into the calm harbor of night. I woke up early and did my two hours of work before anyone woke up. Then, when the kids did wake up they wanted to snuggle and read The Velveteen Rabbit. Parenting bliss, I tell you. I love having a kid on each side of me while I read a good, classic story.

After the story there was more playing puppy (William) and queen (Taiya) while the rain poured down and the lightening flashed. Then it was time to make our next science video. We put oil and colored water in a jar, then dropped Alka Seltzer in and watched it go crazy. It really is mesmerizing. Taiya’s next series, she says, is going to be videos on the farm.

Then it was time for some “educational programming,” i.e., YouTube videos of Fiona the hippopotamus, and some other shows explaining natural phenomena like floods and landslides. While they watched, I organized my kitchen shelves, finding some long forgotten food items while I did so. I made a lunch for Jeremy and myself that used up a languishing bundle of soba noodles, a half a package of dried shiitake, one tough salty length of kelp from a dusty old package that may be older than William, and two spoonfuls of miso from the container that has been in the fridge for goodness knows how long. This social distancing thing has made me significantly more mindful of food waste, and so I’m trying to use up pantry items that have gone unappreciated in the bustle of regular life, B.C. Before Coronavirus. The soup turned out so good with a little sriracha dashed on top that I’m sorry now to be out of those items. But, I have more random foods to find creative uses for tomorrow. Maybe that kasha that I had for a varnishkes recipe long ago will go well with kelp.

Taiya and William preferred quesadillas, fruit, and pistachios for lunch, but we all sat down together at the table, and Taiya observed that we hardly ever do that. We usually only have dinner all together as a family. It did feel special to be all eating lunch together—maybe we should try to keep that up. Try. The operative word of this whole period of time, I think, is going to be try.

I had a call for work at one o’clock, and it was so nice to hear all of my coworkers’ voices! I have the

unique joy of working with five people I consider friends. We have such good camaraderie working together on our various projects. Suddenly not getting to spend any time with them has been hard! It was great to banter, even if it was more awkward than usual, being done via conference call. I took the call in the car on the farm because we have almost no cell service at the house. When it was over, I took a walk through one of the sodden pastures. The rain had stopped but it was still cloudy, and everything was absolutely saturated. Frogs were hollering, birds calling, cows grazing, water running. It was a peaceful few minutes of my day, and these minutes help my brain so much. I feel my whole mind and body relax, and I can return to the chaos of parenting a much more grounded and happy person.

When I got back to the house, the kids were giddily watching two fish swimming in a big glass jar. Jeremy had taken them to the fish truck, where they had gotten 50 largemouth bass, 100 catfish, and 3 carp with which to stock the farm ponds. They put one catfish and one “big mouth bass,” as William called it, into a jar for us to keep for a day or two. Jeremy left to put the rest of the fish in the ponds, and the three of us all had some quiet time. Taiya and William continued the saga of whatever is going on in Glitter Force, and I just lay down on the couch and had a moment. Jeremy had told me before he left that this thing could last 18 months. I know we’re all just guessing at these kinds of numbers, but that right there took the wind out of my sails. For the first time, I felt overwhelmed by the prospect of being socially distanced for a properly extended period of time. Up until that moment I had been doing a pretty good job of not facing it.

But after lying down, sending a few messages to friends and reading a few news stories, I did what I often do when I’m upset about something—the dishes. I figure, if you’re upset or overwhelmed, and you don’t know what to do, and you just start by doing the dishes (because when you don’t have a dishwasher, there’s always dishes to be done), you may be just as overwhelmed or upset by the end but at least the dishes will be done. But I usually am able to have a good think while I’m washing up, and arrive at a better place by the time I’m through.

In a little while, we checked on the fish again, and for some unknown reason, the largemouth bass was laying on the bottom of the jar, dead. William, once he accepted that it was dead and not napping, sobbed over that fish. Taiya tried to comfort him, saying maybe it was napping after all, but he said through his tears, “But you still have to breathe when you’re napping!” When Jeremy got back from depositing the other fish in the ponds, he put the sole catfish in a different bucket, thinking maybe the water in the jar was too dirty or something. In about 30 minutes, we checked on the catfish, and it was dead too. This was not going well. William again was heartbroken. Once he calmed down a second time, I told them that tomorrow we can bury it and plant some seeds over it, and it will not have died in vain.

I’m happy to report, all ten chicks are still with us and doing fine.

I made a dinner of roasted acorn squash, cornbread, black beans, and avocado. At this point in the day pretty much everyone was wiped out, so we went straight from dinner to a viewing of Frozen 2. Thank goodness I bought the DVD before we became shut-ins. But were we done with the drama? No! We had to get a tornado warning in there before the night was over. Luckily the suspicious cloud activity passed south of us and we didn’t have to hide in the bathroom, but that would have been icing on the rainy-day, dead-fish, social-distancing cake.

So, we made it through Day Four okay. We didn’t get the schoolwork done that we needed to, and I didn’t get anything but the basics done in terms of housework or work-work. But we all are well-fed, warm, dry, and had some laughs. I call that a win. And tomorrow, we get to plant a fish.