Email: A First-World Pandemic Saga

The clock on the kitchen stove reads 11:34. Plenty of time. 

A voice. 

“What does your mom do?” 

“She writes emails. All day.”

“She gets paid for that?” 

I feel my blood pressure rise. It’ll take five or six episodes of Cosmic Kids Yoga to get it back to normal. But then again, all they ever see is me trying to type an email. Telling them, “Give me a minute to write this email!” About fifty times a day. Little do they know, it’s the same email. I don’t write emails. I write email. 

“I think that’s all she does. Do you like chocolate better on strawberries or bananas?”

“I like Empire apples.”

A shadow falls over those dark eyes. The ones that are shaped like the artist let his pencil fall just a shade past where he normally might stop. Like he wanted to draw a crescent moon laying on its side. Her father’s eyes. The others all have round eyes, like me. Her brown crescent moons draw together. “I didn’t ask you about Empire apples.” 

The edge in her voice might have been convincing if she could pronounce her r’s. The neighbor’s kid chides her. My heart sinks. She doesn’t know her r’s sound different to other people. They sound like r’s in her head. To me, they sound like New England. Like home. To her speech therapist, they sound like her lazy mother doesn’t practice with her enough. I don’t know who is right. I just know that my neighbor’s kid just squashed that precious spunk. That little spirit that I love.  

The eyes soften. So forgiving. “But, I love mangoes! And the fair. Have you been to the fair?” 

My round eyes, set so far into my head that the bags under them extend halfway down my cheek, dart back to my screen, where, apparently my life’s work lay in front of me. A half-written email.

A new voice. 

“My butterfly is swimming upside down!”

My head doesn’t move, but my gaze tracks to the right. My well-rested, cherub of a four-year old also has bags under her bright, beautiful, blue eyes, which makes me feel oddly better. It’s not just me. It’s genes. My mind mulls that over. Am I responsible for the bags-under-eye genes? Or can I blame my own mother? 

“The butterfly! I forgot to give her swim lessons so she is upside down!”

Eyes dart to the email, then to the butterfly. As reported, said butterfly cannot swim. I look at the jar, knowing I should feel bad for the little creature. But instead, I see the petals of the wildflowers that I planted. Not on their stems. Not in the garden. Picked. And floating, with the doomed butterfly. 

“Butterflies don’t like water, sweetheart. Don’t put them in water.” The neighbor’s kid turns his attention from fruit and fairs and starts laughing at her. Her round blue eyes start to water. Not for the first time, I wonder why I volunteer to watch him Tuesdays. Ah yes, of course! We’re in week fifty-two of a global pandemic! And everyone is stuck. How could I forget?

“Can you dry her off?” Somehow the tears make her eyes all the more beautiful to me. Refreshed. Clear as a Vermont lake in July. Which reminds me: Out-of state travel is still limited. Crap—I need to cancel the cabin! And then tell the kids that vacation is cancelled again this year. I’ll use the word delayed, I decide. 

My screen goes to sleep.

A new voice. 

“I wanted peanut butter and jelly for lunch.” His voice cracks. I wince. How can his voice crack? Isn’t he still a baby? His eyes are green. And round, with only a slight bag under them. But that might be because he reads all day. Non-stop. I let him. I let him read in the mornings before virtual school, during his five-minute stretch breaks, at the table, late into the night. He would rather read than play with the neighbor’s kid—the only other kid in our bubble. I’d rather read too. So, I let him. But in the back of my mind, I know that’s just his way of escaping. Of not having to interact with other people. But, I let him anyway.  

We took standardized tests last week. God, that was awful. Online, standardized tests. Every four seconds, another virtual kid asks a question that the whole class has to hear. The kids who are taking the tests in masks from daycare are getting yelled at in the backgrounds for crying. My two school-aged kids are lined up next to each other at the kitchen counter. Elbows touching. Headphones off so I can hear the instructions as I try to triage the kitchen and prep dinner. They are crying too. Both of them. Crescent moon eyes and green eyes shedding tears on plump and healthy cheeks. I hate standardized tests. Do we really have to do this? This year?

The only mercy of the online test is that you get results right away. The one with crescent moon eyes, who can’t say the letter r and writes all her letters backwards scored a fourth grade reading level. A huge sigh of relief. I’m not a total mom-failure. She can read. The green eyes scored a number that was not on the chart. That’s because the chart stops at twelfth grade. I guess all that reading and avoiding human interaction has its advantages. He’s in the sixth grade. I guess that’s why his voice is cracking.

“I wanted peanut butter and jelly for lunch,” the squeaky voice says again.

I run my finger across my touchpad. The screen lights up and the email comes back into view. “I made you peanut butter and jelly for lunch.”

“Yeah, but there’s jelly on it.” Off the charts in reading, perhaps, but not in other areas. Like tying shoes, opening Ziploc bags, or apparently, understanding basic recipes. “I only like peanut butter on my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

The cursor taunts me. 

Hey Jake, |

Another voice. One that wails. 

“Baby’s up.” 

I lock my computer screen. I’m not sure why. A habit from last year, when we worked in offices. When kids went to school. Socialized. When I went to work during the day, and not at night. When butterflies were land animals and kids went to fairs and peanut butter and jelly, by definition, included jelly. When my life’s work was more than email.

The baby has gray eyes. Large and round. He has lines under them, not bags. It’s because he is just so fat. His rolls have rolls. He eats every ninety minutes. I’ve had lots of babies, so I know about how babies eat. But my baby is seven months old. And he still eats every ninety minutes. I get scolded for spoiling him. For picking him up when he cries. For feeding him on demand. All from people who haven’t had to write an email while babies scream. From people who have never met him, except on FaceTime. 

I’m an expert at typing with one hand. This is helpful because it allows me to at least hunt and peck while I feed a baby, hold a funeral for a butterfly, scrape jelly from a sandwich. 

Another voice. 

“Are you still writing that email?” My husband’s eyes are brown. Sideways crescent moons like my seven-year old. No bags. Somehow he won that imaginary game of “rock, paper, scissors” last year. He sends his email from a home office. With a door that closes and kids for some reason don’t think to open. He sends his email on a normal schedule that runs from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon with no interruptions. 

I send my email from command central, which is also the kitchen table. I have interruptions. And then when four o’clock rolls around, I get to go to work until midnight. I do important work. But no one remembers that. Not even my office. All they know is that for fifty-two weeks I’ve been coming in at night and just checking in during the day. I hear rumblings about how people with kids are getting special treatment. It is special indeed. Fitting two days into one. But at the same time, I understand how ridiculously privileged I am to be a mom by day, a full-time worker by night. That my family gets to keep a bubble. That others aren't so lucky and have to risk exposure. But there are days when I wish I had a wife to offload some of this to. Some sort of a backstop. I imagine it is glorious. 

“Yes. Still writing that email.”

“I thought you just had to write a quick note? Have you done the nursery school homeschool lesson yet? Who is helping the kids with assignments?”

My blue eyes, with their elderly lady bags, glance back to my screen. 

Hey Jake,

I’m going to miss the noon meeting. Will check in tonight.

“Me,” I say, standing up, baby still attached to boob. “I’m helping the kids.” The clock on the kitchen sink reads 12:21. I send the email anyways. 

Another voice. 

“So your mom really just writes emails all day?” 

Crap, I forgot the neighbor’s kid was still here. My eyes dart down. Yep. Full boob is out. The baby giggles. 

“Yeah. She must write a hundred a day.”

“And they pay her for it?”

“Yep.” The pride in her voice is overwhelming. I feel like crying. 

“I want to be like your mom when I grow up! Lots of money for doing nothing!” 

I could use some Cosmic Kids Yoga right about now. I send the kids out to play. It’s raining and they are supposed to be in science class. One of them is wearing boots—the neighbor’s kid. They seem to have their shit together. My kids? One has mis-matched socks. Two of them have no shoes on at all. But their eyes—brown, blue, green, are all laughing.