April 12, 2020
What does a pandemic look like?
F
or me, it’s a monotony of days
peppered with bouts of depres-
sion in the apartment my grand-
parents pay for and waves of overwhelm-
ing guilt and helplessness. Neither are
productive emotions in a pandemic.
There are also good days, where the sun
is out and my coffee tastes just right, and
I remember that this is only temporary.
I live alone, though a friend lives up-
stairs. I never thought I’d be grateful to
be an introvert. The sadness of the world
sometimes feels far away, accessible only
through Twitter headlines or
the New York Times articles my
mother sends me … hourly. Oth-
er times it feels like it’s moved
into my apartment, stitched into
my clothes and seated across
the table. It feels as if we’re
under- and overreacting at the
same time. A pandemic smells
like solitude, an endless supply
of lavender candles lingering in
the corners of my apartment. It
tastes like too much whiskey,
consumed alone.
In warmer times, a pandem-
ic can sound like the crack of
dice hitting the plywood tables
punctuating Ann Arbor’s yards
— the fraternity house across
the street has been playing for
what seems like weeks. Last
night, my friend called a noise
complaint on them. Sometimes
life feels normal. I remember a
March afternoon my freshman
year of college, when I left my
dorm for class and froze outside
the building door. What words
are adequate to describe feeling
fresh sunshine on your skin af-
ter weeks of studying and exist-
ing under fluorescent lighting
and the smothering dullness
of the world? Sunshine meant
frat boys outside in their yards,
shirtless (always) and Weezer
spilling through the speakers. On an is-
land in the sun, we’ll be playing and hav-
ing fun, and it makes me feel so fine, the
speakers say.
In my early quarantine days, I siphoned
as much sun as I could from my front
yard. I pulled a plastic yellow chair into
the yard to do my homework and yelled
over, “Hey, can you turn the music up?” I
pointed upward in the air with my thumb.
A barefoot guy in blue shorts and abs I can
count from across the street yelled “Oh,
you want it up? You got it!” Maybe it’s the
2020 “college” version of the orchestra
that played as the Titanic went down, and
I’ll take what I can get.
A pandemic also sounds like the Spoti-
fy playlist I’ve been building called “quar-
antine, baby!” I only put songs on it that
make me happy or want to dance or smile.
That’s what we all need more of, anyway.
Every couple hours I turn up the music
and dance around my apartment, because
in a pandemic you need endorphins.
I’m grateful no one is around to see this
abomination. Then again, this is because
no one is around. My homework and un-
watched lectures linger on my chipped,
paint-covered brown desk, watching me
twirl around the room. Right as I trip into
the coffee table, my inbox dings with an-
other email from my astronomy professor.
As usual, he’s massacred it with his caps-
lock addiction, and I forward the message
on a one-way trip to the trash.
I call my mom several times a day —
imagine that, 16-year-old Annie! Pandem-
ics make you see how much you need
other people. I make a quarantine playl-
ist for her too. I listen to it as I walk the
streets around my house, filled with emp-
ty porches and the beginnings of spring
flowers. “Annie!” I hear someone’s voice,
but I can’t see them. “Annie!” It’s my
friend Hannah — we spent six weeks in
the New Hampshire woods together last
spring, sharing poems, hammocks and
secrets. She’s standing at the top of the
stairs to her porch, I’m 10 feet back on the
sidewalk. It’s awkward.
“Am I allowed to hug you?” I ask.
“I mean, I’m fine with it,” she laughs.
It’s a clumsy hug, our arms bumping as we
find our footing together. In retrospect, I
probably should have stayed on the side-
walk, but it’s human nature to crave con-
nection.
Sometimes a pandemic is more work.
My dad stayed near his job in Chicago
throughout March, organizing huge or-
ders of equipment for field hospitals in
McCormick Place from the Army Corps
of Engineers. He forwards us the plans:
“AWARDED ACF CONTRACTS,” the
email attachment reads. Eight projects,
equaling 9,693 beds, to be completed in
27 days, at most. He writes in the email,
“Kind of surreal, let’s hope they build
them and are not needed.” My dad spends
his Saturdays at the delivery dock so his
shipping guys can stay home. Luckily, I’m
at the age where I can appreciate his em-
pathy for his employees instead of com-
plaining that he’s not at home.
But a month into the pandemic, it be-
came clear how different it looked for
those on opposite ends of the financial se-
curity spectrum. A pandemic looks a bil-
lion different ways, and most of them are
not as privileged as mine. New York Gov.
Andrew Cuomo called COVID-19 “the
great equalizer,” but this evidently could
not be farther from the truth. Maybe in
just plain human terms, it’s accurate.
We’re all dealing with something, and it
will only go away if we all do our part. But
our losses are by no means equal. I think
about this a lot.
More than 16 million Americans have
applied for unemployment. I was laid
off. My co-workers have houses, kids
and bills to pay. People are displaced, los-
ing income, losing benefits, losing family
members and friends. The Guardian de-
clared that minority and at-risk groups
are, of course, disproportionately af-
fected: “It’s a racial justice issue,” their
headlines read. Celebrities on Twitter
are learning what it means to be an ac-
tual parent, without the help of nannies,
while single mothers watch incredulous-
ly. Small businesses rely on GoFundMes
to survive. A Navy captain pleaded with
his superiors for more resources for his
ship in order to combat COVID-19. After
his firing, he tested positive for the virus.
What about people without running wa-
ter to wash their hands? People with pre-
existing conditions? Those who have lost
health insurance? Those with insufficient
health care? Single parents? People expe-
riencing homelessness? The list goes on.
I once wrote a letter to my future chil-
dren for a nonfiction writing class. At the
time, Australia was on fire. “It’s 2020, and
right now it feels like the world is much
more bad than good, I wrote. I hope you
are more confident about your world than
I am with mine.” But now it just seems
like the world is burning everywhere. If
only I’d know what was ahead. A national
election, a pandemic, climate change, ri-
ots at the Capitol. The list goes on.
In the letter I’d also written that “poli-
tics has become morality and I don’t
know how to navigate that.” My old
housemate, Julia, and I had a late night
conversation from our respective sides of
Lake Michigan.
“I think a lot of my sadness is coming
from seeing the way the U.S. is handling
this and realizing the state of our coun-
try,” I told Julia. “Like, I lost a lot of faith
and pride in my country when Trump
was elected but seeing doctors and nurses
beg for supplies is just another level that
I wasn’t prepared for.” It’s silent on the
other end. Who has an answer to that?
Finally, she said, “I’m doing what is
perceived as normal, and inside I’m kind
of screaming.” Maybe in a pandemic,
that’s all you can do.
February 18, 2021
What does a pandemic look like?
It looks like six half-full or-
ange bottles, compounding in a
cupboard as my psychiatrist tin-
kers with the chemicals my brain
thinks it can do without.
It looks like falling in love — a
few nervous phone calls and our
first date on the porch with the
windows open. We’re both stub-
born and eager and dive hungrily
into learning each other.
It looks like my mom with her
drawer full of KN95s, a stack of
writing portfolios to grade, a cafe
au lait, a glass of wine, her run-
ning shoes and a round of greet-
ings as her students enter the
Zoom.
It looks like a wedding in my
grandma’s backyard, tables of
pizza and salads spaced out by
tiki torches and apprehension.
My cousin and her husband say
“I do” on my aunt’s porch, framed
by July sunflowers from a friend’s
garden. Two families mingle to-
gether next to Lake Michigan as
the sun sets.
There are some better days
— even a few nights spent in
tents. Nov. 9, when Joe Biden of-
ficially won the election. People
cascaded into Chicago’s streets,
dancing and singing, befriending
strangers, feeling an unfamiliar
warmth in the air. The day my friends
and I cooked shakshuka next to Lake
Superior. Moving into a new apartment,
a two-bedroom this time, with a small
army of plants, my best friend and her
dog. The day my mom got vaccinated.
All the dinners, walks, games, naps and
breaks taken outside.
Young people are entrenched in a
mental health crisis (no need to read
the article, a scroll through Twitter or
TikTok will give a good indication), Go-
FundMe has ballooned into America’s
insurance policy and climate change and
government oversight joined forces to
trample Texas.
I’ve always wanted to believe that
those with means will help those with-
out, and in the past year I’ve watched
both brilliant displays of empathy and
soul-crushing acts of hatred and selfish-
ness. “It’s 2021, and right now it feels like
the world is much more bad than good.”
Today, Ann Arbor is quiet, except for
the brawling snow plows and the salt
crunching under my boots. I force myself
to walk down to the Huron River a few
times a week; I lay on the ice and watch
clouds skid across the sky. The handful
of people milling around the river nod
slightly to each other. We’re all looking
to be seen.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
statement
Scattered
quarantine thoughts
from a terrible dancer
BY ANNIE KLUSENDORF, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE WIEBE
Wednesday, February 24, 2021 — 9