Items

• 2021-06-15

  COVID-19, Masks, and Bleach at a Preschool

  During the COVID-19 pandemic I worked at a preschool where I taught primarily 12-to-18-month-old children until they were ready to move onto the next class. The use of a face mask and rigorous cleaning methods were a constant part of my day for the entire time I worked there. Now, the memory of that time stands out to me the most through the feel of the mask on my face and the smell of the bleach that seemed to stay with me for days. The kids I taught were too young to wear masks (that was reserved for the two-year-old and up classes), but they did not seem bothered that the adults surrounding them wore pieces of fabric over their mouths and noses. For eight hours a day I felt the pull on my ears, the scratchy material against my nose, and the frustration of the mask muffling my voice when trying to get the attention of ten children in the classroom. Pointing out facial features like a nose or certain facial expressions like being happy or sad with a mask on became normal. More often than not, I would feel a small hand reach up and attempt (or succeed) at pulling my mask down which I proceeded to pull back on as quickly as possible while ignoring how good the fresh air on my face felt. Aside from the masks, the administration required routinely cleaning all toys used everyday with a high concentration of bleach. During nap time, the smell of the bleach filled the room as we cleaned all toys used that day, regardless of the duration of the activity. Even with a mask on, the smell lingered in my nose, on my clothes, and in the classroom to the point that I always felt that I smelled of bleach. When COVID-19 infection numbers were up in the local area or we had case in our school, the bleach concentration, as expected, went up and so did the smell. While I supported all efforts made at the preschool to reduce possible COVID-19 infections, these sensory descriptions illustrate the mental and emotional draining portion of the pandemic history.
• 
  2020-03-21

  A Sudden Flight

  It emphasizes the suddenness of the pandemic through sensory history.
• 
  2020-03-05

  Germs and Touch: Contact OCD during the pandemic

  The pandemic, rather the first 5 months, was debilitating for my mental health. I suffer from a type of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) called "Contamination OCD". This could also be known as germaphobia. When the pandemic began, I began to be cautious. I would slide my sleeves over my hands to open doors at the college I was attending. I stopped touching things directly. For years I already practiced this in the bathroom, such as not touching stall locks before using the toilet or always washing my hands before and after I went. Due to medical issues, my doctors advised me to truly quarantine for 30 days or more. This sent my anxiety into a severe shock. I truly, genuinely did not leave my home for 30 days. There may have been a few trash outings but I did not go to the stores or see friends; nothing. It is hard to describe how my touch was affected, especially if the reader does not understand contamination OCD. An example that truly became a problem for me is Amazon packages. For everyone else, Amazon was still running and this allowed everyone to still have fun; to still live. For me, any package I took in, I used gloves. I would not touch the box. In my mind, the carrier could have had COVID, which would be outside the box. Inside, the handler could have coughed on the item as well. Even the manufacturer could have contaminated it. I cut trash bags in half and laid my items on them as I carefully dissected each one. Anything that came into my home, groceries too, was wiped down with bleach or Clorox wipes (if I had them). Amazon packages were quarantined for 10-14 days in a cupboard so the alleged virus would die and then I could use it. I remember how dry my hands were from washing 20 times a day, at least. The way the bleach would hurt my hands if I forgot gloves. Clorox wipes were familiar and on ration as I cut each one in half to make them last. The gloves I had were the last box in my city after searching for a whole day. I had tickets booked to Seoul, South Korea the first week of March 2020...which was obviously cancelled. For me, everything was dirty until I got to it. Even then, I barely trusted it. My couches, handles, walls, phone, laptop, window, groceries, bags, clothing, and more all went through cleaning as they came into my home. I would never sit on any furniture in "dirty" clothes from the outside. I had to shower and throw them in the wash. My mind was obviously anxious and ill. While I have severely recovered and pushed those limits, I still find myself holding onto those habits, knowing the risk is still out there. My hands still dry out from washing and I use hand sanitizer too much. I haven't had COVID yet, so I am holding out.
• 
  2020-04-10

  Warmth of the sun and the feel of the grass beneath my feet.

  The memories that stick in my head the most durning the pandemic are of the time I spent in my backyard with my partner and our dogs. I couldn't go to work and there was not much to do with my job virtually. I spent my days outside playing with my dogs; and sitting or laying on the grass next to my partner. I would sit in the backyard and feel the warmth of the sun cascading over my body; as I inhaled deeply the warm rush of the marijuana smoke into my lungs. I would walk on the ground barefoot feeling the earth beneath my feet and the grass between my toes. Listening to the birds chirp and the bees buzz by on their way to pollinate the many wild flowers and vegetables we have in our back garden. It was such a peaceful time for my partner and I. We had only bought our house a year or so earlier, and during this time we really started to feel like we settled into this space. Our backyard was our shelter from the world. To juxtapose that with what was happening outside of our sun drenched backyard is the most striking thing about these memory for me. Here we were enjoying a freedom that is seldom experienced in this hyper-capitalist world we live in (the freedom of not working). We were fortunate enough that we could spend our days in the sun with our dogs while the world passed us by. There was a brief moment during this pandemic where we hoped that others would see how capitalism ruins our lives and how much better things could be. It seemed in many ways the earth was healing, we had a brief glimpse into what a ecologically sustainable future could look like, but not only that, we had an opening to see what a life that emphasizes people over profit and leisure over work could be. Unfortunately, that was not going to last and was never meant to. The powers that be needed their profits, and their workers to exploit; and slowly but surely they demanded we risk our lives for their economy. The warmth of the sun and the feel of grass beneath my feet was lost to the grinding gears of the capitalist machine and I'm not sure I'll ever get it back.
• 
  2020-03

  Good With My Hands

  I've always used my hands to shape the world around me. Working with my hands both soothes and stimulates, and it feels good to be productive. I've long been known at work for crocheting or cross stitching (my hands can work at those with little help from my eyes) during boring meetings, as a way to keep myself awake and render fruitful an otherwise pointless meeting. I have some very talented hands, if I do say so myself. I make jewelry, I quilt, I cosplay (itself honestly probably 10 or so different skillsets), I etch glass, embroider, play deftly with resin, string art, and perler beads. You name it, these very talented hands of mine can probably do it. If they can't, someone on Youtube will show me and I will figure it out. My hands are always busy. At least they used to be. COVID took that from me. When quarantine hit, that is what was left to me. So that is what I did. Fortunately, crafters are notorious hoarders, so that was one thing I struggled little to find when the shelves at all the stores were bare. Whatever it was, it was already in my craft room. When you couldn't find masks anywhere, me and my loved ones never had to worry. I sewed probably 100 from the leftovers I had from a few of my quilts, fun masks with swirling DNA strands, dinosaurs, and Bat-signals. When we couldn't get toilet paper and mom my had to mail me some from out of state, I sent her a giant cross-stitch of her favorite character (Snoopy) as a thank you for being my toilet paper hero. I didn't stop there though. I had to make videos daily for the kids in my (now) virtual classes. So I went from being the women who crocheted in meetings, to the one who painted herself to look like different characters during meetings. (The first student to comment with who I was dresses as that day only had to do half the day's assignment.) The other meeting participants would periodically make me turn my camera on to check on the progress of my transformation. Crafting was really the only thing left to me, what with lockdowns, my school going virtual, the inability to access basic necessities, and the persistent taboo on leaving the house. Crafting got me through it. I made so many things, simply because I needed to be doing something. I sewed, mod podged, and wire wrapped, papier mached, and glass painted, until every wall and surface in my home (and some in my classroom) were covered. Often I'd have the TV on in the background so I'd have noise for company. I'd craft into the wee hours, because it's not like I could go anywhere in the morning. It got so bad that my housemate (a dear friend and fellow transplant with no family in Arizona, we moved in together a week before COVID struck because neither of us wanted to live alone) Kristen had to stage a crafting intervention of the "No really, we are out of space. For the love of God, knock it off or get an Etsy store" variety. (I then switched to baking because I don't know how to be if my hands are still. I was accused instead of trying to make her fat.) I crafted until I ran out of things to craft. Thanks to COVID, I squished a lifetimes worth of crafting into a year. Now I'm out of projects. If I wanted it, I made it already. If anyone compliments something I made it is given immediately as a gift to them, so I can then go make myself a new one and my talented hands can be busy again for a minute. I've taken to cross-stitching random things my friends say, just to have something tactile to do. My hands remain as sharp as ever, poised for the next project, but the brain that fired them has run out of steam. And I still don't know how to be if my hands are still.
• 2022-05

  Isolated and Out of Touch

  As someone who is very affectionate, the loss of touch throughout this pandemic has been devastating. While hugs, handshakes, fist bumps, and all kinds of other casual touches were second nature before March of 2020, six feet apart became the standard overnight. Greet your friends with an elbow bump, not a hug, and don't get too close because you might get sick. In May 2020, my first nephew was born, and I didn't get to snuggle him for months. It felt like I was missing out on vital connections with him, because I interacted from afar with a mask on. I live alone, and this loss of touch felt so isolating. You don't realize how important hugs are until you are quarantined alone for weeks and weeks without the touch of another human being. Now in 2022 as the fear has lessened a considerable amount, the lack of touch still seems to be prevalent in my life. After two years of adjusting to the loss of that particular sense, it feels awkward and forced to show the same affection that used to come easily. It seems like such a silly thing to mourn, the fact that I'm hugging people less. But it's one of those senses that you don't realize the importance of until it's gone. The loss of touch didn't affect everyone, but this completely altered the way I show the people in my life that I care about them.
• 
  2020-05-05

  A lack of touch in a tactile world

  When the COVID-19 virus struck in the spring of 2020, I was still completing my undergraduate degree in history at a small university near the border of North and South Carolina. My university transitioned to online learning around the second week of March. One of my classes that semester was an upper level special topics course on Public History. Seizing the opportunity to document the COVID-19 pandemic for future generations, my course instructor had students to document and journal about our everyday lives in quarantine during the second half of the course as we transitioned online. The above is a video I took for that course of some my friends from back home, where I had returned to live in isolation with my mother, father, brothers, and grandfather; while at home, I would drive about once a week to an empty target parking lot to socialize with some of my friends from the community. We would sit in our cars, spaced at least fifteen feet apart, in order to avoid spreading the virus. Though I was thankful for the opportunity to still see my friends, and to have at least one social outing each week, the sense, or rather lack of sense, that was most prevalent in my mind, and still is when recalling the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns in the spring of 2020, is not being able to touch my friends. I am a very tactile person, and giving a hug or a handshake to my friends is an important part of expressing my love and feelings for others. Though during the COVID-19 pandemic we were able to communicate by means of modern day technology, such as zoom, and even in cases such as mine due to the state where I lived, still being able to socialize in outdoor areas, the fear of the virus prevented me from being able to express friendship in one of the most natural ways. Though only ten to fifteen feet apart, it was if we had all created an invisible bubble that could not penetrated. Though this was all for good reason, it did not make the psychological implications any less real. The ten feet that separated me from my friends for over two months felt like ten million miles, and my thoughts constantly played tricks on me. I grew accustomed to not touching or being near others. It was in early May, almost two months after returning home from college, that I touched someone outside of my family unit for the first time. A friend of mine who I went to high school with, who also worked on a farm that borders my family's farm, wanted to ride ATV's together. I agreed, and we remained at least six feet distant from one another. We it came time for him to return home, however, he extended his hand to give me a "fist bump." Normally, he probably would have tried to hug me, but even the notion of touching our fists together made me hesitant, though I did return the friendly gesture. The virus had me, and most of society, programmed to remain enclosed to ourselves, and in doing so, though necessary for a time, unable to engage in the most basic of human interactions. Prior to the pandemic, I never had give thought to the importance of touching in my relationships, however, in a post-pandemic world, I will never take for granted the most basic of human interactions, such as touch, because in a moment it could be gone.
• 
  2021-09

  The comforting smell of cardamom and cinnamon on a Sunday morning

  One of the most defining characteristics of my quarantine has been learning how to bake. After a year and a half, I am finally comfortable kneading, proofing, and baking. I have learned the tell-tale signs of under-proofed and over-proofed bread by touch (slightly indent the bread with the end of your finger and how the dough springs-back will tell you all you need). I have learned to listen for the hollow sound of fully cooked bread. However, one of the greatest joys I have found with baking is filling the house with the smell of cinnamon, sugar, and cardamom on a Sunday morning with my slightly adjusted cinnamon roll recipe from our well-used Betty Crocker’s 1961 New Picture Cookbook (it was my mum’s before me). My family is Scandinavian, and the smell and taste of cardamom is ever-present in Scandinavian baking. Kanalsnegl, klejner, and fødselsdagboller are all delicious Danish and Norwegian cardamom classics. But Betty Crocker’s cinnamon rolls are also highly popular in my house. From this, a fusion roll was born. On Sunday mornings, the house is filled with cinnamon and cardamon of these classic buns. The Betty Crocker recipe calls for two teaspoons of cinnamon filling, but I sub one teaspoon with cardamom. I also add a pinch of cardamom to the butterscotch topping. In a time of stressful uncertainty, the smell of freshly baked rolls with cinnamon and cardamom is like wrapping up in a comfortable blanket. I have attached the recipe if you want to try this sensory smell experience, too.
• 
  2020-07-09

  The Unkempt Lockdown Beard

  Over the past year, I found myself for the first time extremely isolated from most of the outside world. As opposed to my entire life previously, where I was always around other people and tried to make my appearance presentable, I no longer had to worry about what I looked like. As a result, I stopped shaving and let my beard grow for weeks and months on end. I will never forget the strange feelings associated with the different stages of my beard. Running my fingers across my face and feeling the sharp pricks from the stubble of a short beard, or the fuzzy and puffy feelings from touching my medium-sized beard, or straitening out the matted hair of my longish beard. As I had never tried to grow a beard before, these feelings were new to me and something I will not forget. The picture I uploaded was shortly after I had shaved my cheeks and left the rest of the hair on my face and neck, which felt stubbly and sharp on the sides but more silky and smooth in other areas. This is something I would have never done if I had to be around people. The isolation I experienced during the lockdown allowed me to grow this strange beard and experience the feelings that came with it. This is representative of the experiences of so many people who all of a sudden found themselves in a new situation of solitude as a result of the Covid lockdowns. For once in a lifetime, your appearance didn't have an effect on your professional life and you could just let things like beard growth go completely uncared for. As I will probably never experience this kind of isolation again, I will probably never experience the feelings of running my fingers across and through an unkempt beard as I did during the Covid-19 pandemic.
• 
  2020-07

  Silence and Isolation

  This is important because it speaks to the daily struggle of living through the pandemic. I was not touched by the disease itself, but my life was changed by it. My submission describes my sensory experiences of isolation during the pandemic as I moved to a new city for work. It expresses how the pandemic brought more than health issues but social issues to society as well.
• 
  2020-04

  Clean Hands and Empty Spirits

  This story is a small snapshot into how I felt mentally, and smelled, heard, and touched physically during April 2020. It talks about how the smells and noises around me at the time contributed to my worsening mental state and the feeling of hopelessness. This is important to me because it was this time that I learned that I am mentally stronger than I think and that I can get through rough patches with the help of my husband. It was not a fun experience, but I grew from it.
• 
  2020-08-17

  Touching Ground

  This photograph is of my feet, buried in the sand and rocks of the beach of Lake Michigan, on the coast of Port Washington. Covid-19 affected so many areas of our lives in 2020, and in so many ways, that it can be hard to pin down which loss was the worst. Like many others, the sense I missed the most over the course of that long year was that of touch: physical contact with family, the cool water of the public pool, the slap of bare feet on pavement, dust coated legs on a school field trip. Over time, so many little touches were lost that it began to feel as though I was untethered, floating free in space in my little bubble of house-kids-spouse-pets. The cozy feeling of my rocking chair, the heavy press of my son on my lap and the rasp of my dog's coat against my knee became the only thing I registered, my little space-ship in this weird galaxy of loneliness created by Covid-19. In August I left the house for the first time in far too long, headed for the abandoned shoreline of a nearby coast town, desperate to feel connected to anything outside my little bubble. I stood there, feeling the spray of the water on my ankles, the grit of the sand and rocks between my toes, the sun on my face and the wind against my skin. In these feelings I was reconnected, I was present once again, my tether to this beautiful world damaged but intact.
• 
  2020-09-30

  No Room for Activities

  I am not overly social. Therefore, the COVID-19 pandemic’s stay-at-home orders were not a big deal to me. However, the mandate meant no after-school activities for my kids who had a very hard time with it. My ten-year-old son took it the hardest as it meant no soccer, no chess, and no playdates which also meant no touching, no tag, and absolutely no wrestling. After classes, I would pick them up and chauffeur the kids around town to all their activities. If we had time we would sometimes stop by the mall and grab a bite to eat. If we had an hour to kill, we would run into the arcade for a quick game or two of Mario Kart. But all that stopped once COVID struck. There was no room for the kids’ activities—no sports, no music lessons, no mall eateries, no more Sbarro on the run, no arcade—so in essence, no more fun. Due to COVID constraints, my boy developed a small case of depression from not being able to play with his friends and soccer buddies. Seeing my son miserable affected me, especially after reading some children were committing suicide due to these restrictions. I forgot just how much bonding with friends and socializing meant when you are ten and surrounded by thirty other kids for five days a week. While the pandemic gave parents like me a respite from all their children’s after-school extracurriculars, it was not worth seeing my son sad like that, and socializing was not the only aspect affected. My kids really missed getting their hands-on activities with other kids at the playground and soccer field. Kids simply love playing anywhere and touching everything, so not being able to do so hampers their growth through play and touch. Soccer was an outlet for all my son’s pent-up energy and once it and the other sessions were taken away, he felt trapped at home. We would play in the backyard, but it was not the same for him. Although he may complain about school now, he still needs his friends. Luckily, the pandemic is over, and soccer and their clubs are all back on. My son is back to his normal rambunctious self again. My children are back to being full-time kids again!
• 
  2020-05-25

  First Hug in Months

  My family and I have always been really close, meeting for family days as often as we can. Family gatherings will begin and end with hugs. When the pandemic started, we ensured that we isolated from everyone, even each other, as we all live in separate households and my father and sister have autoimmune diseases, and I have asthma and two heart conditions. Basically, Covid-19 was dangerous for all of us and we were afraid not only to contract it, but even more so to possibly give it to each other. While we would talk over Google Duo and Zoom, it honestly was not the same as getting to interact in person. There is huge importance and one could even say power in human contact, in human touch. It can be something that inflicts pain or reassurance. In this case, I lost the reassurance of hugs and seeing my family in person. The first time I hugged my older sister after lockdown started was about three months after lockdown began. We had both been isolated for weeks without symptoms and without having gone anywhere, and we had both tested negative for it. It had been the longest time I have gone without hugging her. I cried.
• 
  2020-04-09

  How pets help people cope during a pandemic

  This article talks about the numerous health benefits that scientific studies have proven we get from pet ownership. During the pandemic, those health benefits are more important than ever. Given that there is no evidence that people can get COVID from their animal companions, interacting with your pet is a fun, easy, and safe way to stay healthy and happy during the pandemic.
• 
  2020-05-20

  Gia's Soft Fur

  I will always remember the feeling of my dog Gia's soft fur and the tickle and wetness of her silky tongue licking my hand during this pandemic. These sensory experiences soothed me during a stressful and anxiety-ridden time during the COVID pandemic. When the pandemic worsened in March 2020 and the state of Utah went into a full lockdown, my family's life changed suddenly. My son's birthday party was canceled. My children began school online. My husband no longer found himself flying to New York or Los Angeles, and I found myself filled with worry and anxiety. How will my elderly parents weather this pandemic? Will I get them sick? Will I be responsible for their deaths? Will my 9-year-old son become depressed because he can no longer play hockey or football? How will my 13-year-old handle feeling emotionally isolated because she can no longer hang out with her friends? All of these worries plagued my mind and made my body stiff, my neck sore, my mood heavy with stress. My family soon found ourselves in a new routine. We spent more quality time together since we were no longer rushing to get to activities. There was more time for dinner and meaningful conversation. However, there was still a heaviness, and everything seemed to be wrapped in a layer of anxiety. An unexpected text from my sister-in-law (who is an animal control officer) changed our lives. A darling 3-year-old black and white miniature poodle had just been dropped off at the shelter. Her elderly owner had died of COVID-19, and this sweet dog needed a home. After a quick family meeting, it was unanimous; we wanted the dog! Gia immediately became more than a pet; she became a source of comfort and calm to me. With a sweet temperament, she always seemed to know when I was full of anxiety. Each night I would sit on the couch watching the nightly news, my body tight and sore, the rigidness seeping into my muscles that comes with prolonged stress. Unaware at first that I was even doing it, I would reach for Gia, who would lay close to me, and begin stroking her fur. Often, her silky pink tongue would lick my hand, and the combination soothed and relaxed my body. Even as worry began to swirl in my mind, the questions continuing: when will it be our turn to catch this virus? Will I have lasting effects from it? Gia was there, her warm body lying beside mine, her soft fur between my fingers relaxing my body and easing my mind. During this COVID-19 pandemic, I had read that almost all the rescue dogs had been adopted across the nation. I guess I was not the only person in need of emotional comfort during this isolating time. This pandemic has taken an emotional toll on everyone I know. I feel so grateful that Gia came into our lives during this pandemic. This sweet dog has become more than a pet. She has become an emotional support dog for my daughter when she is lonely and a physical companion for my son when he needs to run crazy through the house. Gia is there when my nerves are frazzled from worry about the pandemic. She gently lays her warm body next to mine, as if knowing I need her near me to ease my anxiety. I stroke her soft fur, close my eyes, and remind myself to BREATHE.
• 
  2020-05-28

  Trail Runs

  A close-knit family can mean a lot of noise, a lot of home cooking, and a lot of downright work. Care in a large family doesn’t understand the word pandemic or isolation; it only understands that you’re there or you’re not. COVID meant to my family the opposite of what it meant to everyone else on the planet, we would need to be physically closer to help care for those who need it. Instead of focusing on the smells and noises caring for others, I choose to remember the feel of damp earth under my feet and the smell of new ferns in the forest. I remember the whisper of water in the creek signaling the halfway point on Thursdays or the smell of the rainwater pond at the end of Tuesday. I can laugh at the smell of a wet dog; who got into both and had to be bathed twice a week for the entire summer. We took turns going for morning runs or hikes so that one person would always be home with my grandparents. My grandfather was needing more and more supervision daily that my grandmother couldn’t handle on her own. Ironically enough without COVID, we wouldn’t have been able to do the things we did. Now, instead of remembering the smell of hand sanitizer; I remember the clean air in my lungs and the smell of the trail on those morning runs in northern Arizona. I have downloaded a sound effect from https://www.freesoundslibrary.com/mountain-river-sounds/ that reminds me of one of the places I went to get away from the chaos of COVID.
• 
  2020-02-06

  Hospital Sensory Experience

  This experience of the Covid-19 pandemic is probably very different than most people. My picture submitted of myself shows a selfie that I took while in the hospital dealing with a non-Covid-19 hospitalization. As you will see through reading this I was on sensory overload. My experience with taste when it comes to my hospitalization was not one of joy, but one of provisional change due to introduction of various new medical regiments which made things tasting like metal along with various other side effects. The over powering aroma of alcohol wipes and various chemicals burned my nostrils causing my eyes to water with irritation and redness. Desiring the touch of a loved ones other then the nurses pin pricks and the doctors jabs however, due to Covid restrictions my only comfort was my husband. With the on going treatments of chemotherapy I had caused numbness in my toes and fingers which felt like knives. I am a 35 year old man who is diagnosed with stage Three-B Testicular Cancer who was healthy one minute and who's world was turned upside down the next moment. So, my Covid-19 experience has been that of Chemotherapy, isolationism, crying, hospital smells, changing of all of my sensory parts of my body, and more. This is important to me because it has changed my life, Covid-19 experience, work-life, and many other areas.
• 
  2020-06-23

  Social distancing due to bitch ass virus

  Social distancing is the main practice of COVID-19 that people have followed (six feet apart) BUT as a person who never liked being within six feet of strangers anyway it’s nothing new and also the fact that I am a touch-starved college student nothing has changed because of it
• 
  03/12/2020

  Rudy Goberg tests positive for hubris

  In March, during the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak reaching Europe, Australia, and the USA, some people were still taking the risk less seriously than others. Twitter has a nose for irony, and a lot of people picked up on what happened to basketballer Rudy Gobert. In early March when the NBA was still denying the need to shut down the season, he touched every microphone and surface he could reach to mock the possibility of COVID-19. A week later, he was sick with it, and the NBA season was called off. Twitter user Jeffery Cook (@JefferyCook)