My kid is asking existential questions I’m not equipped to answer.
I’m taking a break this week, so I asked Emily Flake, a cartoonist for The New Yorker and the author of “That Was Awkward: The Art and Etiquette of the Awkward Hug,” to take the wheel. Emily is writing about trying to help her daughter with her Big Pandemic Feelings, and examining her own identity in the process. |
—Jessica Grose, Lead Editor, NYT Parenting |
 | | Emily Flake |
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A couple of weeks (months? years?) into the quarantine, my 7-year-old daughter burst into tears as I dried her hair after a shower. “Please, Mama,” she wailed. “I need to go to school. I need to. School is what makes me, ME.” These words should have broken my heart, but instead I just registered them as heartbreaking as they sank into the dull, empty place where my heart usually is. |
But I got it. On a clear, cellular level, I absolutely understood what she meant. I barely know who I am right now either. |
I should tell you right away that my husband and I have been lucky through this — so far. We both worked from home anyway; we just don’t typically have to do it while parenting 24/7 and pretending to home school. My husband’s work entails a lot of repetitive administrative and physical tasks. (He runs a record label and fulfills orders for others.) Mine requires a bunch of silly intangibles, a laundry list of diva-level requirements: a measure of solitude. Time to think. Material. And most crucially, a sense of who I am and where I’m coming from, a point of view from which to write. None of these things is currently abundant. |
The part of me that used to think and feel and react in ways I could shape into a cogent essay, a humor piece or a gag has been replaced by a small, panicked bird that lives in my chest cavity. This bird alternates between flapping around in there, screeching and fluttering, and lying almost comatose on its side, watching the slow collapse of everything in a state of benumbed inactivity. This bird, to put it bluntly, sucks. I am this bird now, and I hate it. |
This pandemic is teaching us so many awful lessons. The one I’m learning from my new life as a panic-bird is that the old structures weren’t just a to-do list; they were part of my identity. It’s OK for you to say, “Yeah, duh,” here. I’ve been saying that to myself a lot. The idea that our humanity is defined at least in part by our relation to others has been covered in holy texts from the Pentateuch to “The Good Place.” I’m very late to this party and horrifically underdressed. |
 | | Emily Flake |
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I have always maintained that the ability to find humor in a situation is crucial to my ability to get through it. I’ve managed to pull a few jokes out of all this, but I do not feel especially funny minute by minute. I am not cheerfully rallying my family into fun games of charades. Mostly what I’m doing is snapping at my kid and zoning out on my phone while trying to produce at least the minimum amount of #content necessary to keep a roof over our heads. |
It feels dopey to even write this, but humor is central to my sense of self. It’s what I do as a cartoonist, essayist and occasional stand-up comic, but it’s also part of my general life philosophy. The real goal of my work is always human connection. The communal joy of laughter, the balm of knowing that you are not alone in your feelings — those are my touchstones. |
Who am I if I can’t string two words together? What am I but a useless blob with a head full of oatmeal? |
The other night (or last night, or last month) I was putting my daughter to bed and she started to cry. “What’s wrong, baby?” I asked, and I meant it. She happened to catch me in a moment where the fog had cleared a bit, and I could do a little better than just pantomiming empathy. |
“What is all this even for?” she wailed. She didn’t mean the quarantine: “All of this, why are we even here? Why are we even alive?” I tried to put together a soothing platitude about helping one another, leaning heavily on the Sunday school tenet of loving God and our neighbor as ourselves. |
To her credit, she was having none of it. “I hate this, I hate everything that’s ever going to happen to me. Help me, Mama, please, please help me.” And if I needed a starker example of the disparity between my constructed self (a cheerful, competent mother) and reality (bird, oatmeal) there it was. |
Absent the scaffolding of the world as we know it, I’ve got nothing to say. So I did the only thing I could. I held her, and rocked her, and hoped my silence helped. |
My daughter is saying out loud the questions that everyday life helps us forget. This quarantine feels like a time of reckoning, forcing us to look at ourselves as we really are. Maybe whatever world we build after this is over will be more honest about that reality; but I don’t know if that’s something to be hoped for, or deeply feared. |
P.S. Today’s One Thing to keep your kids occupied comes from Tiffany Anderson, who teaches third grade at Achievement First Bushwick Elementary in Brooklyn. She recommends kids listen to the “But Why” podcast, which answers questions from children like “Why do baby teeth fall out?” and “Are llamas ticklish?” |
Want More on Answering Kids’ Big Questions? |
| Parenting can be a grind. Let’s celebrate the tiny victories. |
| I set up a camping tent in our backyard and my 3-year-old toddler has been playing in it for going on three hours! — Ariane Le Chevallier, Portland, Ore. |
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