On the sixteenth of March, 2020, I started a diary and did not stop for fifteen months.
I was not trying to write anything. I was trying to keep a record while the days lost their edges, when one week was indistinguishable from the next and the children’s school had moved onto a screen in the dining room. Writing it down was how I held onto the dates.
What accumulated is the longest continuous run in this archive. Forty-nine entries, near-daily at the start, thinning as the year wore on. Read together they are a real-time account of a household going through something it did not understand yet.
It is not tidy. Some are three paragraphs written at the end of a hard day. That is what it was.
The Beginning — Spring 2020
- Mar 16 · The Beginning
- Mar 18 · Juggling
- Mar 20 · Struggling
- Mar 21 · Birthday Edition
- Mar 23 · A New Normal
- Mar 24 · The Elephant In The Room
- Mar 27 · Ambivalent
- Mar 31 · Schooling Unschooling
- Apr 3 · Pockets Of Happy
- Apr 6 · Life Goes On
- Apr 9 · Missed Milestones
- Apr 11 · I Am The Lottery
- Apr 13 · Decluttering
- Apr 17 · The Little Things
- Apr 22 · First Lost Tooth
- Apr 23 · Openness When Confronting Mortality
- Apr 29 · Wear Those Dresses
- May 5 · Good Days. Bad Days.
- May 6 · Jugaad
- May 12 · Emotional
- May 22 · Moments
- May 27 · Ceding Control
The Long Middle — Summer 2020
- Jun 6 · Politics, Race, Children
- Jun 8 · Reminiscences
- Jun 8 · Anniversary
- Jun 14 · Longing
- Jun 20 · Direct Hit
- Jun 21 · Doom
- Jun 22 · Glimmers of Hope
- Jun 23 · Bone Tired
- Jun 24 · A Lull
- Jun 25 · It Takes A Village
- Jul 2 · Changing Ways of Life
- Jul 13 · Cleaning
- Jul 24 · Back to School Rumblings
- Aug 3 · Past Midway Point
- Aug 26 · In A Rut
- Aug 31 · Back To School 2020 Edition
Virtual Everything — Fall 2020
- Sep 2 · Birthdays Are Non-Events
- Sep 8 · Virtual School
- Sep 16 · The Demands of Virtual School
- Sep 20 · Baking Away The Blues
- Sep 22 · Rollback
- Oct 9 · Battle Weary
- Oct 14 · Pandemic Pets
- Oct 26 · Dilemma
- Dec 8 · Kindnesses
The Tapering — 2021
- Feb 26 · A Rough Week
- Jun 8 · Yearbooks