I was a child, just a child, when I started to worry about adult truths, when my bleeding heart began to beat for the tragedies of the world, and when I first started scrubbing my hands raw until they cracked and bled. 

I was a child, just a child, when I figured out it wasn’t a good idea for me to watch the late-night broadcast news, when I learned to escape inside books to recoil from worldly atrocities, and when I had my first anxiety attack.

I was a child, just a child, when sleep first eluded me, when insomnia grew stronger than my prayers, and when vivid nightmares recurred: of realizing I forgot to attend math class all semester long, of werewolves hiding behind curtains with their furry feet sticking out in wait, of enormous tsunami waves rolling in and washing the earth away. 

Empath [em-path] Empaths understand the mental or emotional states of others in a way that defies conventional science and psychology. Empaths have the ability to sense the feelings, thoughts, and energies of people, plants, animals, places, or objects. … Empaths often experience stress or illness if they are bombarded by too many negative emotions. (Source: American Empath Association)

Since the pandemic hit, I’ve had nightmares. I wake before the traumatic event resolves and ponder whether I should write these unnerving dreams down in a journal. I never commit to the process. I’d rather forget the sordid scenes my mind’s eye conjures up in the twilight. Lately, my subconscious seems to be fixated on ominous animal species and becoming stuck.

The most terrifying of my COVID-19 dreams felt more like a hallucination and starred a ferocious snake—an enormous, jewel-green eyed one of muscular form, thick and gargantuan, with elongated, razor-sharp fangs. The dream begins when I’m alone in my house and the ominous screams of a child stop me in my tracks. To the depths of my soul, I know the frightened, shrieking child is one of my own. 

Dashing out the front door, I hurdle my triad of rosebushes and break into a full sprint toward the torturous cry. The spooky shrill is heightening in decibels and desperation, calling out to me like a beacon, a siren alerting me to action. The reason for the desperate howl unfolds as I witness my oldest son wound tightly in the grips a colossal constrictor snake. He makes one failed attempt after another to wiggle free. 

Scared, stuck, struggling to breathe, he spies me and squeaks out, “MOM! HELP!” 

Body frozen, I am stuck in cement as I witness the horror of my son nearing his death. The demonic snake shimmies and shakes my firstborn as his tormenting eyes fixate on mine. I realize this reptile has emerged straight from the pit of hell to ruin me, and feel as if I’m dying alongside my son. Out of nowhere, a neighbor emerges with a gun, army-crawling toward the underbelly of the snake. With precision, he pulls back the trigger of his pistol and aims it at the serpent as I squeeze my eyes shut and pray. 

Shocked by the piercing of metal shot through his scaled reptilian form, the snake lurches in such painful hysterics he releases his life-ending hold on my son. Filled with uncontrollable rage, the constrictor now lunges toward me where I remain stranded, alone. He opens his jaws so wide I can see straight down to his empty stomach. Swiftly, this evil species takes my whole head inside his filthy mouth, sinks his poisonous teeth into my neck and the back of my skull, and attempts to swallow me whole. 

Before my fate is known, I am awake and screaming loudly. Drenched in sweat, heart-pounding, and panting in the dawn light hour, my husband rubs my back with care as tears stream down my face. I drink from the Kleen Kanteen on my bedside table before making my way to the bathroom to splash cool water over my face and lather soap between my hands. I scrub my palms repeatedly until my skin is shiny, pink, raw, exposed. 

If serpents have started appear more frequently in your dreams as of late, you’re not alone. “I have found snakes, and in particular, snake bites a very common dream symbol lately,” Loewenberg told the Cut, which she believes is due to the venomous nature of snakes. “These days, it seems the collective subconscious is giving this virus the form of a snake because it literally is poisonous and we all want to avoid getting bit by it,” she continued. (Source: The Cut)

It’s 5:00 AM on September 30^th—the morning after the Presidential Debate—and I’m jolted awake from another terrible dream. This time, my husband and I are sitting, transfixed, watching a documentary about the rise and fall of the Great Lakes. The narrator informs us the video was captured over five decades of filming the same spot on Lake Michigan. My husband aims the remote at the screen to increase the volume. Instead of increased sound, the waters of Lake Michigan rise and spill forth from the edges of the T.V. rapidly filling the entire first floor of our home. 

“Turn it down! Turn it off! Make it stop!” I scream to my husband. 

“I can’t! It’s not working! It’s stuck!” my husband yells back. 

In a flash flood, we are lost to one another, underwater, gone. Desperately, I search for my husband in the murky water as my lungs fill with salt-free liquid. Before I succumb to my fate, I wake up, gasping for air. 

To dream that you are drowning indicates that you are feeling overwhelmed by emotions. … To dream that your house is flooded suggests that you are becoming overwhelmed by your emotions. (Source: Dream Moods http://www.dreammoods.com/ )

I’m at the kitchen sink, scouring pots and pans when my youngest daughter shares a recent dream. She and her schoolmates are eating lunch in their classroom, per COVID school policy. Two boys sit down beside her. 

 “What are you eating? she asks. 

“Peanut butter and jelly,” one boy replies. 

“You can’t eat here. I’m allergic to peanut butter and all nuts,” my daughter responds with urgency. 

 “She’s right. You can’t be near her. She has food allergies,” a teacher says.

In an act of defiance, the boy leans over and smears peanut butter all over my daughter. Instantly, red bumps form, the hives spread, the swelling begins. Nobody will help her, so she tries to convince herself she’ll be alright. Then, she is back home, wanting to hide. She knows if I see the allergic reaction I will administer the Epi-pen. She fears what’s coming but knows her life depends on that shot. 

Putting on a brave face, she states, “Then I woke up.”

I pull her into my arms and let the tears fall. Once she is calm and I am relatively calm, I return to the kitchen sink where I fiercely pump soap into my hands and silently recall, “Clean hands save lives, says the CDC.” Though, what cleanses the persistent fear?

Lather, scrub, rinse, repeat. 

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I am not writing.

I am wiping down the counter again. I am feeding the dog, I am putting clean dishes away. I am checking the clock, checking my child’s schedule, and then checking if my child is in front of his computer upstairs.

I am not writing. I am eating another Oreo cookie. I am searching job postings using keywords that sound like things I once did or might know how to do. I am feeling a panic like bees in my chest as I determine there are no jobs I am qualified for. I am entertaining the notion that there is no job I will ever be qualified for again. I am shutting my laptop.

I am not writing. I am taking the dog for a walk. I am saying hello to my neighbor. “How’s it going?” they ask. “Oh, you know, it’s going!” I say from the other side of the street. I am counting my steps with the device on my wrist. I am comparing the steps I took against the calories in the cookies I ate. I am eating another cookie. I am taking the dog out again.

I am not writing. I am cajoling my younger son to do his math homework. I am stage-whisperscreaming at him to not scream as he runs past his brother’s closed door, away from the math homework. I am apologizing to the brother, my older son, who sticks his head out the door and asks “Can he NOT SCREAM while I’m in class?”

I am not writing. I am circling the house, picking up dirty socks, picking up probably-used masks. I am carrying a bundle of socks and underwear and masks down the hall and dropping them in the washing machine. I am taking the clean clothes out of the dryer, the same five sets of clothes each of us have been wearing for the last six months.

I am not writing. I am yelling.
I am yelling about the dirty socks, and the shoes left in front of the refrigerator, and the granola bar wrappers on the floor.
I am yelling up the stairs: “Get on your Zoom meeting!”
I am yelling through the bedroom door: “Get off your tablet, that is enough screen time!”
I am yelling from the front steps: “Come outside, it’s a beautiful day. You’re not going to spend it playing video games!”
I am yelling into the yard: “Guys, no playing football, please! Only one person on the trampoline, please!” “Keep six feet between you and your friend, please! Do you need a mask?”

I am not writing. I am thinking about what to make for dinner tonight, rifling through the refrigerator for ingredients I could put together into something everyone would eat. I am adding the ingredients we don’t have to a list. I am heating up hotdogs for lunch, again, and when that is done, I am checking my purse for hand sanitizer and going to the store to buy the things on the list. To buy more Oreos. To buy more hotdogs. To buy more hand sanitizer.

I am not writing. I am scrolling Twitter, always. I am posting funny memes on Facebook and saying “Because if we didn’t laugh, we’d cry.” I am crying. I am reading the news; I am raging. I am mentally composing searing rebuttals to science-deniers. I am fantasizing about compelling arguments, pithy retorts. I am receiving texts from my sister, from friends.

“This is hell,” they say,
“WTF?” they say. “Can you believe this asshole?” they say.
“I know,” I text back. “OMG, I know.”

But I am not writing.

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I began knitting in college.  This was in the mid 80’s, before knitting became cool and funky.

Knitting was for grandmothers, but I was drawn to the soothing presence of knitters in my dorm who remained calm during even the most heated floor meetings.  They sat there, smiling benevolently while clicking away on their needles, occasionally offering rational, compassionate advice.  I wanted to join them, and so I did.  During those years, I made nothing of any significance, just an unwieldy uneven swatch of garter stitch, but it didn’t matter.

Knitting, the process, brought me peace. 

For the next 30 years, I knitted off and on, picking it up and dropping it again. I managed to make some things.

This past November, after another hiatus, I picked up my needles again.  I can’t remember why, but I do know this time was different. I knitted with a ferocious intensity, every night before I went to bed, during the day when I needed a break from grading essays, in the car when I waited in the school parking lot to pick up my youngest from wrestling practice.  Within a three-month period, I produced multiple scarves, hats, and headbands for the people in my life.  I read books about knitting.  I surfed the internet for patterns. I joined an online knitting community. 

In February, while other people were stocking up on water and toilet paper, I was stocking up on yarn. 

Again, I wasn’t sure why except that I was suddenly in love with the many textures of yarn. I drooled over colors.  I learned I loved bamboo needles. 

My family members, colleagues, friends teased me.  Why suddenly, was I obsessed with knitting?

I had no answer, but now I understand.  I was preparing for Quarantine. 

I am ashamed to admit I was blindsided by the shutdown. On a seemingly random March Tuesday, a student ran into my office, frantic that Harvard had shutdown.  Would we go next?  She didn’t want to take classes online.

“Oh no, that won’t happen,” I said.  Two days later, it happened.  

And then my days exploded. 

Pre-quarantine, I hadn’t ignored teaching technology or our university’s online classroom management system.  I posted assignments and readings.  I bombarded my students with announcements and reminders.  Students uploaded their essays, and I graded them and reposted them with typed comments (since my handwriting is atrocious). However, while I understand the appeal for many, I never aspired to teach an entire class online I am old-fashioned, a Luddite, a classroom teacher who thrives on eye contact, syncing brainwaves and the energy in a physical classroom.  I don’t know how to do what I do in a class that only meets online.  

Then suddenly I had to learn, and that learning while teaching took time. 
I didn’t know I could fit more into twenty-four hours, but suddenly I was spending at least ten hours a day online but not continuous hours.  I ran back and forth from the computer to feed my teenagers, to console them, to help them manage their online coursework.  I ran loads of laundry, picked up cups and plates and dirty socks mushrooming around the hours. I went foraging into the grocery stores looking for the toilet paper that I hadn’t bothered to buy earlier.  

And then I worried.  I worried not just about my family but about those who live alone, those who lost their jobs, those without emotional, medical, financial resources.  I worried about those locked at home in abusive situations. I worried about those stuck in dormitories who could not go home or had no home to go to.

I could not and cannot think about quarantine in silver-lining terms as a time of peace and reflection.  While my family and I were fine, (we had work, each other, access to resources), I knew we were privileged.  All around me, there was and is so much need.  My neighbor and I discuss this.  Sometimes it is easy not to see, and then when we look closely, we see that need surrounding us, threatening to swallow us all up.  There is much we can do for others, but there is much we cannot do, and that powerlessness, the inability to reach and help so many is overwhelming.  One might shut down and not try to do anything anymore.

But that can’t happen.  Somehow, I told myself, we have to figure out how to serve and help while not burning up in our own worry. 

And so I turned to knitting.  This was not planned.  I just did it.  My usual method of self-soothing – reading – has not worked as well during this quarantine, and initially I found that detail unsettling. Who am I if not a reader?

Apparently, at the moment, I am a knitter.  

Every night, after shutting my computer, I knit, and quite unintentionally, I have found myself knitting for others. I knit fingerless mittens for friends whose hands are always cold from chemo, a scarf for a friend who lives alone and craves hugs, hats for friends whose company I miss, a sweater for my daughter, as I anticipate the day, now looming (or so we hope, for her sake), that she will leave our house for college. 

While my college knitting seemed to be about calming down, my middle-aged Quarantine knitting is about that but also very much about connecting in physical and emotional, even spiritual ways.  

Knitting is so very tactile, an antidote to the overwhelmingly virtual world I now live in.  

Knitting is connection.

I knit for other people. If I make myself a scarf, it is because I am practicing, to make it for someone else.  In this period of social distancing, I miss my friends, my students, all my people.  I watch my children miss their friends.  That loss hangs over all of us. When I knit, each stitch binds me to another person.  I think about the person for whom I knit.  I put that love into something tangible, something I can hold. 

Each stitch provides a moment of focus, on that person, on our time together.  It is so easy for my mind to race, particularly at night, scanning the horizon, moving from one worry to another.  When I knit, I can only focus on one idea, and that idea is that person I love.  And there are so many I love.  I am fortunate to have them, and I feel fortunate to recognize their presence in my life.

I have just turned in my final grades for the spring semester. I am preparing to teach online, but just one class.  Our state, our city, is slowly opening up, but still no real socializing or interaction.  Who knows what’s coming.  What will happen in a second wave?  No doubt each day will reveal the effects of this crisis on those in our community.

Aren’t we all bracing ourselves. 

Meanwhile, I am still knitting. 

Maria Jerinic is a contributor to and co-editor of Finding Light in Unexpected Places (Palamedes Publishing 2019) and a co-editor of Finding Light in Unexpected Places Volume 2: Covid 19 Edition (Palamedes Publishing, forthcoming).  Her essays can be found in the following anthologies, Cocktails with Miss Austen, 9 Lives: Life in Ten Minutes Anthology, KnitLit the Third: We Spin More Yarns, and in a collection of online journals. She teaches in the Honors College at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and is the mother of three teenagers. She needs to knit. 

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