Battening Down the Hatches

I am now on Day 35 of shelter-in-place, and it’s now sinking in my body that it’s time to wind down. Life, as I had known it, is not going to return to normal any time soon, and perhaps taking a nap would help to cope and eventually accept the current situation. The “screens,” a term from my 11-year-old nephew Finn who’s doing online learning, are my main interfaces throughout the day but for my mom, with whom I am quarantining. Now I’m feeling like the first few days arriving for my grandfather’s funeral in the Philippines 21 years ago, sequestering in a bedroom and wanting to sleep most of the day due to jet-lag from the longest flight I had flown at the time. But my mind still has not caught up to my body, and I am typing away on my bed, hoping it will finally capitulate and fall into a deep slumber “to sleep perchance to dream” of a life I had hewn and grown to love passionately and most profoundly.