Quarantining with your family is like a surprise family vacation. Your parents wake you up at the crack of dawn and say “pack your things! We are going to Quarantine!” You don’t know what that means because you’ve never been to Quarantine before, but you trust your parents and they say it's THE thing to do this spring. You head down to the kitchen to find your siblings equally as confused and intrigued. It seems as though even your parents don’t know what is going on, but you go along with it. Your sister asks, “what about school?” and mom says that it's cancelled. Hooray! You say, “but I have to work!” and they say you can do it from vacation! Everyone cheers because this seems like a dream! No class, no coworkers, no problem! The excitement builds and everyone piles into the minivan. You all start to realize that you haven’t all been together like this with no distractions in a long time. Everyone begins exchanging memes, tik tok’s, and laughs as the minivan zooms down the highway. A blissful happiness fills the vacation air as you start having family Scrabble tournaments again and the kids are in charge of Taco Tuesdays! What fun suburbia is!
After a week this dreamlike vacation is over and it’s time to head home. You cram back into the car which is feeling smaller than it did before. Tensions are rising and elbow room is decreasing. Dad is getting more impatient with every sound, movement, and breath by any and every member of the family. He is starting to realize that work is a more important part of the whole work life balance thing than he once thought. Your sister is telling everyone to be quiet while she Zoom calls her professor even though you keep reminding her that school is basically cancelled. Your boss has been calling you constantly for “status updates” and it takes everything in you to not chuck the phone out the window and not even look back as it smacks and skids against the pavement. Mom is trying to ease the tension by showing you her friends’ throwback high school senior photos - a new trend on Facebook - but you agitatedly remind her, for the 3rd time, that you do not know who Tricia is. You want to ask how much longer until this is over, but the GPS just says “calculating.”
Right as things are starting to reach their breaking point, Dad pulls into a Dairy Queen. You all watch in awe as a disgruntled ‘essential’ worker proves that DQ Blizzards do in fact defy the laws of gravity when flipped upside down. So you all sit in the peaceful silence of a soft serve coma watching the sun set over the highway marking another day of this never ending car ride. You toss the iconic blue container into the trash can and head back into the car, continuing on into the uneasy future that feels like an eternal present. The yellow lines on the highway beating back monotonously with no change in scenery and no sign of progress.
Despite the lack of elbow room and inevitable boiling tensions you all realize how thankful you are to be with your family. How thankful you are to be able to work from the car - and to still have work at all. You realize how incredibly blessed you are to be safe and sound in that impenetrable minivan. So what if the GPS says a longer ETA every time you look up? We’ll get there eventually. I recommend taking a nap - it always makes car rides go by a little faster.
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