Family life in the time of COVID

It’s a strange time.

Masha and I were on top of the crisis early, and have already been almost exclusively indoors with the whole family for a week. It’s a good thing too, cause we might all have it. We’ve all been coughing, and now two people at Masha’s office have tested positive. No fevers for us yet (ignoring Masha’s 99–100 last weekend which went away after some Tamiflu). So, all that aside, the days have been long, and filled with the flurry of activity one would expect from us both trying to react to a drastically and rapidly changing professional situation. Masha’s work days, despite now being entirely from home, have been just as full as before, if even higher stress; and I’ve been busy trying to contact my students’ families to see where they’re at (most fled the city), set up online lessons, and attempting to help my panicked colleagues in my teacher’s organization.

In the midst of all this we have the boys. Sebastian we have to be careful with. They showed him a video at school about the virus, which we think was a mistake: he doesn’t seem outwardly scared by it, but he knows it can make you stop breathing. He is a sensitive kid and there is no way he is not absorbing our anxious energy and uncertainty, especially when we talk about it all the time despite our best intentions. There were two nights when he refused to go to bed at the normal time and…