During the last couple of days, I’ve finally gotten around to doing some of the sorts of things I thought I would do during this ‘stay at home’ period. When I first quit going to the city to work, I took on a few projects, such as refinishing the dining room table and spring-cleaning the garden, because the opportunity seemed so unusual and precious, and I figured it would be short-lived. But as the crisis mounted, I lost my appetite for household projects; I’ve even lost my taste for reading (usually a favorite form of entertainment), unless it’s about corona virus. So, like many folks, I bet, I’ve gotten a lot less done than I would have expected.
But I’ve taken a few emotional hits lately and my usual response to such events is to get busy. So in the past few days, I’ve cleaned and starched a set of placemats crocheted by my grandmother (an exacting one-by-one job which I’ve put off for about three decades), scraped an old security-firm sticker from a window (another task postponed for years, when I realized how cemented it seemed to be; indeed, the process consumed about an hour!), and sorted a messy under-sink cache of ziplocks, food wraps and the new, ecologically-sound waxed-fabric food coverings. These homely pastimes are the sort of thing that would have once inspired great satisfaction — I finally got to that, hooray! I’m free! Now it won’t be hanging over my head for another decade.
But that’s no longer the case. I mean, I’m glad I’ve accomplished these things, but under the circumstances, who can get even mildly excited about such things? The mere fact that I have such things to do underscores my privilege — I have a home to hunker down in, and possessions to Marie-Kondo; I don’t have to spend my nights in a homeless shelter petrie dish. I can work from my spare bedroom; I don’t have to don protective gear and care for the sick or pick up trash or stock grocery shelves. I don’t even have any stricken loved ones to worry about and grieve for. The sufferings of this plague are very unequally distributed.
There’s lots of hunkering-down advice out there, and most of it is offensively romanticized. Considering the cataclysm that Covid-19 represents for so many people (many of them already exploited, disadvantaged and vulnerable), it’s no wonder I take so little satisfaction in my refinished table and starched placemats.
Linnetontheleaf 
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