Rachel, Who Is My Neighbor—We got through, Closer as a family
"I have another story question," I say to Rachel, moving to the second part of our conversation. "Tell me the story of life in your house during 2020. Or, because we're getting further from that, 2020 and the pandemic."“Let's see," Rachel says."We were all home, we weren't working and we bought into the whole stock-up-on-groceries-stock-up-on-toilet-paper thing. The funny thing is, no one really cooks in our house,” she laughs. “We stocked up on all this food that we never really touched. We still ate fast food!”“But when the toilet paper thing happened, I started to panic.” In her panic, Rachel called her son at Camp Pendleton and said, “Hey, maybe you should start looking for toilet paper and stuff on base in case we need it.” He sent her pictures of the empty shelves at the commissary and her panic grew. “‘Oh my gosh!’ I thought, ‘Their stores look just like ours! What are we gonna do?’ But, you know, we got through it, and it did make us closer as a family.”
Closer as a family
How many of us will say we got through it, and closer as a family when we tell our pandemic stories? And how many of us will not reach for those words in our accounts?Rachel continues, “My son couldn't come visit. They didn't allow him to leave base, so that was a bummer. But what made us closer is we started playing a lot of board games. Board games, card games, puzzles. We were doing things together that we stopped doing when the kids were little.”I ask what the family favorites are. Rachel tells me, “We were playing all the classic games.” On her list: Clue, Sorry!, Monopoly. But, she tells me, “My younger daughter likes to read all of the rules, and she plays by the book. So we were homeless and lost all our money and went bankrupt and everything. She just had no mercy!”
Her smile hints that this is a good memory. “We had a lot of fun doing that—dice games, card games. That was a good part of it, you know? We were home.” The word home is said with the colors of remembered togetherness. Rachel says, “I got sent home in March; I remember it was Friday the 13th and it was a gloomy day. That was the last day of work. They were like, ‘Shut it down.’” I remember that Rachel works at a high school. “Can you tell me what you do?” I ask.“I work in the office. And that was it! I remember it being a gloomy day and I'm thinking, ‘Oh, my gosh! What am I going to do?’ You know, food wise, what am I going to do?"
Essentials
Beyond food, a wide range of essentials (that I didn’t have to think of) mattered to Rachel. “My grandson was living with us and that's when there were no diaper wipes and diapers were running low. Luckily, he didn't need formula. My daughter always overstocks. But then I started thinking, ‘But what if we run out?’ We never did, we were good in that area. But, you know,” she says, reprising her earlier words, “I think it brought us closer.” Rachel continues. “You know, we tried to do the whole diet thing. That didn't work out!” She laughs her wonderful laugh. She’s lost me. “What?” I say.“We tried to do the whole Keto diet thing. Me, my daughter and her boyfriend. That lasted like a month. Then we bought into the whole let's-buy-weights-and-workout-equipment. That was costing a fortune because they were jacking up the prices even on Offer-Up.”My small, “Oh, oh!” doesn’t break Rachel’s momentum. She goes on. “They were selling free weights for outrageous amounts of money. Now you can pay $10 for little three pound weights, but you would have paid $60 back then. It was ridiculous! But we were home and we were like, ‘Let’s do something!’ That was a little nutty.”
A gift of trust
“So,” I ask Rachel, “you paid the outrageous money?” She nods. “Yes. We bought those because we thought we were gonna work out. That didn't last very long. I guess we followed and did what everybody else did.” My heart leans towards this honesty. What is it that frees us to talk about decisions we later question, even regret? I receive as a gift the trust and bravery that make this vulnerability possible.“But it was...it was okay. We survived. We were good. We did end up getting COVID at the end of 2020.” I am surprised. “You did?” I ask, blinking as I try to keep up. “I did,” Rachel says. “I got COVID.” “My oldest daughter and my husband got it—the three of us. My younger daughter and her boyfriend tested negative. I didn't have the fever, or the sore throat. But I lost my taste and smell. I was freaking out. ‘What if I never get it back?’ I couldn't smell stuff, so I started running around the house trying to smell everything. Smelling the candles, smelling the spray, smelling oils, and I'm like, ‘Oh, my gosh! I can't smell!’ Then my daughter's like, ‘I can't either!’ “I call my son on FaceTime and he says, ‘I don't believe that you can't taste!' And I said, ‘Watch!’ So I got hot sauce, and they know I don't eat hot sauce, and I poured it on my tongue and I'm like, ‘See. I can't taste it. Oh, no! Wait a minute! I can still feel the burn!’” Her reenactment makes me laugh and I have to ask, “Did he believe you?” Rachel nods and her laughter subsides.“Yeah," she says.
Without warning
“So the funny thing is, well, not the not funny... the bad thing is my son’s son got it at the end of August. He got it really bad.” Without warning, Rachel’s story ricochets from hilarious to heartbreaking. “How old was he?” I ask. Rachel says, “He was three. They thought his appendix had ruptured. He was so sick. They transported him from one hospital to another in an ambulance because he was so bad. His fever was so high, they couldn't get it down. He was vomiting. “We were not able to see him, or have any contact. There was nothing I could do. I couldn't go be there with them and I couldn't even go to their house while they were in the hospital. I couldn't be there to help out, clean up, or get them stuff because I couldn't be anywhere near them. That was rough. He was in for three days. The day after he got out of the hospital he turned four. “My daughter-in-law’s a CNA. My son, he couldn't go to work. Both of them had to stay quarantined for three weeks. So it was rough, really rough. That was a hard time.”
Ache of Concern
Concern is an ache that leaks into Rachel's story—for a child’s recovery, for necessary separation, for hours of work missed. I hold Rachel’s first-hand experience next to comments I’ve heard that question COVID-19’s severity, even its reality, and shake my head. One thing I’d like to see taught and cultivated is the capacity to believe and validate an experience that we have not had; recognize the dangers of our solipsism and turn it on its head.The pandemic touched Rachel’s family in other ways. She tells me, “My daughter was subbing for the school district and the school closed, so she didn't have a job. For a little while, Danielle was actually a driver for Amazon. She drove a van during the time when all the looters were in downtown Riverside. Remember, they were protesting, and we didn't know what was gonna happen?“She's like five-foot-one, 120 pounds. What is this girl gonna do, you know? I said, ‘You know what? If you see anything weird or feel weird—back out, just back out. It's not worth it!’ We've seen an Amazon truck get vandalized on the news. So I'm going, ‘Oh, no! Is that what they're targeting? This can't be. She has a little boy at home waiting for her. She needs to come home.’”I feel my heart in my throat with these words.
Happening AT ONCE
“I guess I'm pretty fortunate that it didn't get as crazy here as it did in other states, or other areas. But it was the uncertainty, you know—How bad is it going to get? We were having curfews and stuff like that. All of this was just unreal. It felt like so many things were happening AT ONCE! Come On!" her voice pleads. "Let us get through one thing before we're put into another. All these experiences are things that we see in the movies.”I say, “You're right, you're right. Things kept cascading.” It was like living in a long and terrible movie without the chance to demand script edits.“It was rough. It was rough,” she says. Rachel returns to her daughter’s story. “But she only did that for a couple of months. And then she took some time off and we all went back to work.”I reorient once more and ask, “She's back subbing?” “She's back,” Rachel smiles. “She got hired permanent, so that's cool, at Poly [high school], part-time in the office. She's gonna wait a couple years—until her son’s in kindergarten—before she goes full time.”
To be back
I smile realizing that Rachel and her daughter do similar work. I ask her, “How does it feel for you to be back?”“It feels good—good for me to be on a routine, you know? I made all these promises. I'm off work, so I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, I'm going to paint this, I'm going to clean that, I'm going to organize this. And none of that happened!” She laughs merrily. “So I thought, you know what, I need to get back to work, back on a schedule, so I can be out of bed at seven in the morning versus 10 o'clock in the morning.” More laughter. “So it's good to be back with my co-workers. We haven't seen each other in so long. A couple of weeks ago we finally got to see the kids. The students are back, and now they're back five days a week. And I think it's a good thing.” (Note: Our interview was the first week of May.)This phrase reminds me of Daniel’s story. Kids in school in real life = a good thing. Before COVID, did we understand how meaningful this is? Will any of us live so long that we ever take school or work routines for granted?
Tell them it's Disney
Rachel tells me the school year ends May 28th. After that she plans to work summer school. Then take off work all of July and make plans with her two grandsons, ages three and four. She tells me they may “hit the beach, or maybe Disneyland, if it's not too hot. But they're still small, so I can take them to Castle Park [a small local theme park] and tell them it's Disney!” Our mirth gushes out in colliding laughter. I say, “They'll be happy.” Rachel echos, “They'll be happy.” Through the whoosh of shared delight I say, “They’ll be happy with whatever. They've just graduated from pots and pans.” Rachel grins, “Exactly!”
Who Is My Neighbor? is socially engaged art. This kind of art practice is accessible to anyone with a bit of bravery and a dollop of curiosity—no special studio or materials needed. Feel free to adopt any aspects of this work if you long to mend your corner of the world by connecting with others. Let me know what you discover!If you're new to the work, CLICK HERE for the project intro. More conversations can be found with the links below:Mike Part 1Julio Part 1Susan Part 1Esther & Joe Part 1Thank you for spending time with me and my neighbors,
