Episode transcript: season one, episode 1: Lockdown
// Monday, March 17, 2020

Welcome to Shelter in Place, a podcast about finding daily sanity in a world that feels increasingly insane. Coming to you from Oakland, California, I’m Laura Joyce Davis.

Like so many of you, I was home with my kids yesterday when I got the news that for the next three weeks, the Bay Area would be on 24-hour lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

I’m not one to freak out—not right away, anyway—and so my immediate response was to sigh heavily, and then continue explaining to my kindergartner the difference between even and odd numbers. That was early afternoon. I was still hanging in there.

Since my husband and I are both freelancers, the biggest shift for us so far has been that we have to somehow try to work while also having our three children home with us, full-time. Since he needed to go into the office today—for the last time, as it turned out— it was just me and the kids.

Our internet has been out since Saturday—not because of the coronavirus, just an unhappy coincidence—but the schedule I’d worked on so laboriously all weekend actually seemed to be working. I had successfully gotten an 8, 6, and 3-year-old to buy into my nature and art walk, where we had walked the neighborhood, written notes, and drawn pictures of flowers and rocks (or, for the younger one, smiley faces, which she calls “felices”).  The older two, who are in a season of almost constant fighting, were generally kind to each other and even helped each other out a few times. For the first time ever, they unloaded and loaded the dishwasher, and were even cheerful about it. The little one, who likes to fool around during naptime, actually slept.

But by evening, things were degenerating. I’d confiscated the magna-tiles when my son threw a temper tantrum and a butter knife at me—an accident, he swore. The kids were whiny and irritable. My call to AT&T about the Internet made me nearly homicidal: I had to wait through ten minutes of advertisements that forced me to opt in or out of car insurance, some sort of sweepstakes, and other unrelated services I can’t recall, just to get to a real person—and then after all of that they disconnected me anyway.

By the time my husband walked in the door a little after five and said something to me about dinner that was just the tiniest bit impatient, I cried, “I’m about to flip my lid! I need you to walk back out the door, count to ten, and think about the kind of day I’ve had before you come back in.”

Which, to his credit, he actually did, and then encouraged me to go for a bike ride.

It was almost six o’clock when I headed out, and the sky overhead was sunny day blue, but dark clouds were pressing in on the horizon. I thought I’d be out there alone, but I saw more people than ever—bikers, walkers, kids on scooters and in strollers. I guess we were all desperate for those last few hours of freedom.

As I rode, I thought about what it means to shelter in place.

“Shelter in place.” A phrase at once both benign and ominous.

I thought about the months we spent indoors during the wildfire seasons these past few years, how a home can feel like a shelter or a cage. I thought about the thousands of homeless people in our city, who have no place to take shelter. I thought about what it means to be “in place.” How here in the Bay Area, being outside and moving is a core value that almost everyone I know shares. And moving doesn’t just mean exercise, but the freedom to spend your time in the way that you choose to spend it. But for most of us, all of that has changed overnight.

By the time I got back from my bike ride, the dark clouds bisected the sky—but they hadn’t taken over completely. I don’t know about you, but I need to find a way to keep seeing that blue sky even on the darkest days. I need to find a way to shelter that feels safe, not fearful. A way to get through these long days with my kids without feeling alone. I need a way to keep in touch both with the writing that feeds my soul, and connect to the people I can’t be with right now.

Whatever happens down the road, I think we’re all going to look back on this and see this time as significant. As a writer, I need to find a way to mark that history for myself.

My friend Jen said to me last night that she thinks podcasts today are what letters used to be. They give us a way to share our deepest selves, but they also capture the moment in history that we’re living in.

Think of this podcast as my daily letter to you, about life, writing, and the things I want to share with you in person, but can’t. I’ll do my best to put out an episode every day. I’ll share in real time how I’m experiencing this unprecedented moment in our shared history. I’d love for you to join me on this journey, and to let me know how this experience has been for you.

Until tomorrow, this is Shelter in Place. I’m Laura Joyce Davis.