When the earth begins to tremble

Gus, two minutes after the earthquake

I can't think when I've had a more confused batch of feelings than in the last two weeks. It's all so sudden and unexpected—the fact that a new virus, COVID-19 (and the responses thereto), could affect basically everyone in the world all at once! And the powerlessness it reveals—not so much that we had control over our lives before, I suppose, but we were able to pretend that we did! I keep deciding to write about it later, when I've had time to sort things out. Later, when I've digested it all and formed a coherent narrative in my head—with a logical starting and ending point, and nothing potentially embarrassing that I'll look back on later with a rueful shake of my head: how little I knew then!

But it's now, isn't it, that's the interesting part? Now is that in-between place where time stands still—and perhaps there will be a day when that's valuable to me, to remember how it was in the middle of things; to see a little slice of where my mind was in this most interesting of interesting times.

Anyway, I won't pretend to be atypical in all of this. My pride would rather have me be—prescient somehow, or otherwise above the fray—but I suppose my last two weeks have been much like anyone's in this part of the country, upside-down as that may be. A month ago I couldn't have told you the name "Coronavirus." Two and a half weeks ago, I was comfortably dismissing its relevance, looking at the empty shelves where toilet paper used to be at Costco, and shaking my head at what fools we mortals be. Two and a half weeks ago we enjoyed an unseasonably warm afternoon at Sebastian's first track meet. I watched the sun flash in and out of billowing evening clouds and nursed Gussie uncomfortably on the backless bleachers as the children clambered nerve-wrackingly up and down the hard metal rows. Afterwards, two of the kids went off to their youth activities, and Sam and I took Sebastian and the rest, rosy-cheeked and chilled, out to eat Mexican food and go over every detail of Seb's race with the satisfaction of those who have all such exertions well behind them.

And then there was Thursday—you will remember Thursday, Reader, as the day that Everything Happened At Once. I must have said a hundred times, "I don't understand! Why? What is going on?" as each new announcement came—BYU classes suspended, General Conference changed, plays and concerts and recitals cancelled in an ever-expanding wave of caution. I made ill-advised forays into news media, desperate for information. I went to bed uneasy and woke more uneasy. Sam and I went to the grocery store for a few things, but the strangely quiet lines of shoppers and the inexplicably empty shelves filled me with an even more unreasonable dread.

It keeps tiptoeing out even now, that dread, no matter how I try to ram it back in with my rational analysis and jokes and positivity. The only way I can explain it, in the conspicuous absence of any actual present danger, is to say that uncertainty has never been my forte—if indeed it's anyone's. I'm very aware of how blessed I am! Our lives, indeed, have been so scarcely disrupted—we already homeschool, Sam already has a fairly good work-from-home setup, Abe's been able to keep working. But no one likes this waiting and wondering, and I like it considerably less when accompanied, as it is now, with loud and recriminating voices on all sides of the issue. I said I was reminded of young Joseph Smith's "war of words and tumult of opinions," but it's more than that—I'm inside it! People everywhere seem so utterly convinced that their own, and only their own, interpretation of "quarantine" achieves appropriate levels of caution—not to mention being convinced that their own levels of toilet paper and food are always perfectly balanced in that spot above "preparedness" (good!) and below "hoarding" (bad!). It's always everyone else that's selfishly panicking and "hoarding" stuff, apparently—certainly it couldn't just be that each individual family is trying to prudently meet their own needs based on the information they have, or at least deserves the benefit of the doubt in that arena? Sigh. Must every difference of opinion be relegated to a Moral Battleground? And I'm so tired of hearing others opine about what could have been different if only—if only—if only.

Honestly, it felt like the last straw when we were all jolted from sleep or half-sleep (I was nursing Gussie, of course) by a 5.7 earthquake last Wednesday morning. In spite of the excitement and novelty of it all (and I've always wanted to feel an earthquake that I didn't have to guess at, so I wasn't unhappy about it)—that uncanny shifting and shakiness echoed in my stomach all day long, and has haunted my sleep every night since, shooting me bolt upright in bed with heart pounding, convinced the world is heaving around me again.

And yet, the dread—the shakiness—all of it—fades to nearly nothing when I think of the good things that have come rushing in to fill this forcibly-cleared space. I have had to pray with persistence and directness for tangible peace—literal physical peace to quiet my churning thoughts and still my fluttering stomach, so that I can keep weaving the fabric of our days without tangling the thousand little threads of family life I hold in my hands. And that peace has come! It even stays from time to time. I'm full of gratitude for prophetic counsel, for plentiful food and household supplies that we've gathered and rotated obediently year after year. For my new understanding of how fast life can change, and how dispensable are the activities that seemed indispensable only a short time ago. For Sam being home—scrambling to develop online courses with an impossibly short turnaround time, but home. For the routines and behaviors the children and I have spent the past years building together. And for the growing certainty that a loving God has all of it—every cancelled track meet and forgotten birthday party, every returning missionary and discouraged business owner, every exhausted doctor and sorrowing family—well in hand.

With basically all schools closed now, I've encountered many people expressing great exhaustion and dismay about this involuntary homeschooling business, and though my first (ignoble) response is "Ha, now you see what I'VE been going through all these years"—I actually feel an ache of sadness and sympathy for all these people who are experiencing homeschool in the worst of all possible ways: all the effort and burden of having sole responsibility for your children's learning, without the flexibility and customizability that make it worthwhile! It's too bad! In this (understandable) impulse to make "homeschool" simply "public-school-at-home," I'm afraid many people will find themselves reinforced in their "I-could-never-do-that"-ism—without truly experiencing the benefits of non-traditional learning. Ah well. I hope parents will feel empowered enough to leave the endless worksheets and Zoom meetings and leveled assignments unfinished every now and then, so they can glimpse the moments of wonder amidst the chaos of Substantial Family Togetherness—the spontaneous connections across ages, the excitement in self-propelled discovery, the intimacy and beauty in the unexpected and unplanned. Of course it's overwhelming! All good things are.

In our own homeschool, we're carrying on in relative normalcy, marching through the History of the 1800's Unit I've had in the works for months now. As always, it's anyone's guess what the children are getting out of it—but to me it's breathlessly exciting. I'm making connections I've never made before about the whole world's preparation for the "glorious light of the Restoration"; the thousands of intricate and interconnected miracles that happened—here a little and there a little, the world over—to make possible the appearance of Jesus Christ Himself to an obscure boy of no consequence, in a tiny grove of trees in upstate New York. And the more I learn of it, the more I take comfort from that improbable web of circumstance, which, gossamer-thin and inconspicuous though it may be, is still shimmering down over our heads. God knows precisely where we are, and meets us there the moment we look up for Him—I have no doubt of that.

A month or so ago, before any of this happened, I felt driven to memorize a hymn I've always liked, partly because of the rousing tune, and partly because it addresses Jesus Christ directly in a way that feels prayer-like and personal to me. In the past week I've had it playing in my head nonstop:

When the earth begins to tremble, bid our fearful thoughts be still.
When thy judgements spread destruction, keep us safe on Zion's hill.
Singing praises, singing praises—songs of glory unto thee.

I've heard lots of beautiful thoughts about what people are doing with their extra time during this period of enforced slowing-down. I haven't been able to find much of that "extra time" myself (surely there must be some? Even for homeschoolers—all the other things are cancelled, choir and seminary and church activities and sports, and I felt like I spent at least 500 hours in the car every week? But nope, those hours are being swallowed up somehow)—and of course the kids are missing their friends and fighting a lot and the house is often messy (but there's nothing SO unusual about any of that)—BUT, I still feel the "differentness" of our world every single day. There's something amazing about knowing the whole earth is being affected by this pandemic. There's something amazing about picturing all the members of the church worshiping in their own homes every Sunday. There's something amazing about being here as a family all together, all day, every day. I keep thinking it shouldn't feel as profoundly different as it does, but it just DOES! Partly in a good way, all my chicks together in our nest. Partly in a puzzling and scary way, seeing and feeling for the first time (since Sept 11, 2001, anyway) how the events of the Last Days could actually unfold.

But I really am grateful to be alive right here, right now. There's no one I'd rather be quarantined with than Sam and these nine monkeys of ours. My prayers and my scripture study are deeper and more fervent. And I feel flutterings of excitement amidst the fear—like, this is it! This really is the time we've been given to prepare for the Second Coming of the Savior! The gospel really is being restored before our very eyes, and we get to be part of it!