Sheltering in place

WEEK 43

This is not the week that I – nor any of us – expected to have. Yet here we are as individuals and society facing our first-ever, government mandated shelter in place of mind-blowing proportions. As I write this, more than half the U.S. population has been told to stay home except for those providing essential services and to make trips to the store, while India just ordered a total ban on leaving home for its 1.3 billion people. This is not a time we will be eager to remember, but I doubt we’ll ever forget. It may become the defining “where were you when…” moment of our lifetimes.

For us in San Francisco, lockdown began at midnight on Monday, March 16, and is expected to last at least three weeks. Ours were the first shelter-in-place orders in the nation, affecting about 7 million people across several Bay Area counties. I’ve not been a fan of our mayor until she made that decision.

Since then, Irena and I have shaped a new daily rhythm. We do some of our familiar routines in unexpected new ways (like standing on lines of tape placed six feet apart at the grocery checkout), and we’re doing some novel activities to break up the day. As I wrote in my post last week, I’m grateful to be together with my wife in a comfortable home, and that all those in our close, and extended, lives are healthy and safe.

I decided to write about my first week sheltering in place. I’ve been taking notes in my tiny, pale-green notebook as I walk the empty streets. I talk to myself and compose sentences on long runs. I share stories and anecdotes with friends by text and phone. None of this has made the dread and uncertainty go away, but I know if I get the words on paper, I’ll be able to remember this time the way I lived it.

I’ll start at the beginning.

On the morning of the first full day of lockdown, I ventured out for a run along the waterfront. Rationally, I knew I was allowed outside – and sun and exercise must be good – but I’ll admit I felt radical and lawless that first morning. I kept my head down, averted eye contact and cut a wide berth around the handful of strangers sharing the sidewalk. On my daily runs and walks since, I now look at those around me, although very few of us share smiles, and it’s easy to get agitated when people come too close. One thing that fills my heart is spotting friends and family walking right beside one another, an intrepid few even holding hands.

On the second day of lockdown, in the late afternoon, I joined Irena on my first Zoom video call to attend an impromptu “quarantini” cocktail party hosted by several of our Burning Man campmates, who we haven’t seen since last August. She and I filled our own little video box in the now-familiar grid everyone has been posting to their social media pages. Like a relaxed neighborhood hang-out, people joined, dropped, re-joined. We talked about nothing in particular. We met dogs and kids, watched friends cook dinner, do burpees on the front lawn and hang in their living rooms. Our faces hurt from smiling so much.

The virtual party continued the next evening when we joined a live set hosted by one of our favorite DJs, who is sequestered in the Bahamas and streamed live poolside. We’ve danced in front of him numerous times on the Playa and in clubs around the world, and of course, watching live DJ sets online is nothing new. But there was something different this time as people logged in to Facebook Live from their homes around the world, sending hearts of love across the screen.

At some point in the middle of the week, things turned more sober as I walked the empty city streets downtown. I stopped to read the many signs in the windows, some with thoughtful messages printed in nice font, others in endearing hand-written scrawls. “See you very soon, be well!” I peered into lunch-time delis on the ground floors of office buildings and saw food sitting expectantly in refrigerated cases. This unnerved me – but not as much as seeing a few restaurants and one hotel with wooden boards nailed over their windows, waiting for the distant hurricane to strike.

As the week went on, Irena and I developed elaborate hygiene routines. After learning that most items at the store are touched by 10 different hands, we began forcing all non-perishable goods into a multi-day quarantine in the front hall. We don’t have enough antiseptic wipes for the packages, and the stores are out of stock. So, there sit bottles of wine, boxes of pasta, tissues, canned tomatoes. It felt like Christmas when the Pellegrino bottles graduated to the refrigerator.

We’ve also instituted a few important daily house rules: Floor exercises and stretching to unwind from all the sitting. An evening walk outside no matter the weather. And, duh, wearing real clothes and shoes for dinner. Off with the sweatpants, hoodies and flip flops, at least once a day.

Surprisingly, sleep has been the big winner. For a variety of reasons, we’ve been able to disable all morning alarms this week, and ever since the city shut down, our neighborhood has become pin-drop quiet, far from the norm. We live in a nearly 100-year-old building, and the sounds of the city seep through every crevice in the original factory windows. Not during lockdown. It’s like we’ve been transported to the deep countryside.

All of this leads me to the conclusion that I live a dog’s life now, more than ever. Despite (maybe because of) the gravity of the situation around us, I wag my tail when it’s time to go outside. I run in circles at mealtime. I move around the apartment looking for spots warmed by the sun. Small things carry huge import.

With one week and a few days of sheltering in place behind me, the novelty of my many virtual [fill in the blank] firsts has begun to wane. But thankfully, the week ended with the same healthy report-card for family and friends. I know statistically this won’t continue, but the optimist in me is rooting for more of the same. Steady would be a great outcome.

Like everyone else, I’m taking this moment by moment, staying present, alert and humble. I continue to marvel at the explosion of creativity across the many communities I’m part of – work, music, clubs, restaurants, Burning Man: The virtual courses, coffees, walks and runs, book clubs, dance parties, livestreams, nightly howls, even remote symphonies and movie nights. The shared humor and silly posts.

Like everyone else, I cannot wait for the all-clear signal so I can begin to put these dark days behind me. But what we’re capable of as humans to stay connected and lift our collective spirits – that I’ll remember.