Editor’s Note: This is part of a series of journal entries from members of our community as we adapt to stay at home orders during the COVID-19 outbreak. I’ve gone back and forth wondering if these entries will fit the “Good Things” focus of Live in Everett, but everything about relating, connecting and learning from our neighbors is a Good Thing. ~Linda

JOURNAL ENTRY: 4

Rosemary Jones

Artist
Delta Neighborhood

April 12, 2020

I have nothing to write about that doesn’t make me sound like a privileged middle-class white lady lamenting everybody else’s tragedies. My friend Abby summed it up well when she said “I have the privilege of being financially stable enough to properly practice social distancing.” We’re fine. We have moments of depression and anxiety and we’re also learning new artistic mediums and baking bread for the first time and my child is diving into her interests with new zeal. We have groceries and have lost income but still have bill-paying income and we have wifi and a tablet for my kid to learn by and friends to FaceTime and the three of us have an easy relationship and an abundance of quality time together and we have our home and we have health insurance.

I’m watching my community lose these things and there is very little I can do to help except throw what always feels like too-small fistfuls of money at it every payday in the form of takeout and donations and trying to fill needs when they arise.

I’m overdue for a chiropractor appointment and I’m terrified to go because I’m terrified I’ll bring something home that could kill my husband. But the headaches come and go and the nerve pain in my hip is more frequent but I’m just going to drag it out as long as I can but I have health insurance and I have a chiropractor and I have a husband I love and a child that is ridiculously easy to be around and is sweet and mature and intuitive and helpful and I have a bed to lay down in when my hip and head hurt. Some days it feels like radical love in action and the world ending all in one. 

I’m drawing most days. That helps. I bullet list gratitude at the end of every day, even on the worst days. Especially on the worst days. My friend Taylor gave me that advice years ago and now I have journals filled with end of the day gratitude lists.

Right now I’m waiting for grated potatoes to soak for hashbrowns. We typically buy them frozen and ready to cook in a bag from Trader Joe’s, but we haven’t been to Trader Joe’s in 6? 8? weeks and I don’t know when we’ll be back. But we can find potatoes and oil online and still have plenty of salt, so homemade hashbrowns it is.

All of my favorite things are right here in this house. My Loves, my cats, my books, my art, my video games, my shows. It’s a forced extended staycation. It’s an introvert’s dream. When I’m fully present in the moment, the moment is good. So many moments are good. But when I look up from my tiny bubble and see the unemployment and loss of livelihood and sickness and death and statistics, it’s horrifying. The juxtaposition between the two worlds is more extreme than I’ve ever experienced. Then the panic and depression and nightmares creep in. So I go back to my drawing, methodical lines and shapes and shadows, letters and childish monsters. I try to find my daughter’s favorite yogurt online to go with those potatoes and oil (and should I buy more salt while I’m at it?) that someone less privileged than me will shop for and I’ll overtip (no such thing as overtipping right now) them in gratitude and guilt. I play a game in a made-up world where the villains are monsters with magical swords and nothing is real and the heroine always comes back to life if killed.

I shred and soak potatoes for hashbrowns for a Sunday morning breakfast because I have the time and the privilege to do it and the people to do it for.

You can find Rosemary’s artwork including her new pandemic postcards on Etsy. You can also download One Everett coloring pages that she designed for the City of Everett.

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