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

