feature Jackie Stark

The year that changed everything; the year that everything changed

By Jackie Stark

In what turned out to be true COVID-19 fashion, my introduction to this global pandemic was with a Zoom call.

It was mid-March, 2020. I was in my office at work, surrounded by most of my co-workers, listening to my boss on a Zoom call from a trade show in California as she told us she was shutting the office down that week. Just days later, the entire state would be sent into a lockdown by the governor.

Looking back, my co-workers and I shouldn’t have all been there together in the same room, huddled around a computer with no masks on. But the whole thing was just beginning, and we knew nothing about this clinical-sounding virus that would soon ravage the world. So we discussed logistics — keeping track of computers and files and ensuring workflow wouldn’t be interrupted too much. And then we all packed up our offices and went home.

We had no idea we wouldn’t be back for over a year. ***

My son, Silas, was born five years prior to the spring 2020 lockdown that sent all of us inside our homes for months. We had celebrated his birthday just a couple of weeks before the shutdown, and as I watched the news stories about a highly contagious and fatal respiratory disease infecting people around the world, it took me right back to that day in March, 2015 when a nurse woke me up to tell me my newborn son was in the NICU.

Silas was born with a collapsed lung. Medical staff also said he may have necrotizing enterocolitis, a condition that can be fatal. I’d had a c-section just hours before and could not stand up, so they wheeled my giant hospital bed into the NICU, leaving me lying there beside my son, my husband standing beside me. Silas was sleeping, doped up on morphine so he wouldn’t move and accidentally pull out the chest tube that was reinflating his lung. We weren’t allowed to hold him.

What followed was a five-week nightmare, where one day melted into the next, the boredom of just sitting for hours punctuated by tests for other potentially fatal conditions, until, finally, everything came back negative and we were allowed to take him home.

All that remains of that time is a tiny white scar on his

The author with her husband, masked up on the chairlift at Marquette Mountain.

side from where the chest tube was inserted. He has no lingering health problems, and my husband and I do our best not to dwell on how his life started.

And then five years later, as news of this deadly virus that attacks the lungs grew worse every day, I found it difficult to not go back to that time, when I spent all day in the dimly-lit NICU, holding my son once the chest tube was removed, watching him sleep, waiting for the results on yet another test to prove he didn’t have a congenital heart defect or a brain disorder or a different potentially fatal condition. The quiet of the room was rarely disturbed, and conversations were always hushed, with the white noise of medical machines ever present in the background.

The thought of my son ever laying in a hospital bed again — well, I couldn’t go there.

So, our little family of three stuck together and stayed home, doing our best to fill the hours with something other than a screen. We went for walks and created neighborhood scavenger hunts: find a barking dog, a house with nine windows, a blue mailbox, someone on a bike. We discovered that squirrels, which spend all day running along our backyard fence, were much more elusive out in the wilds of South Marquette.

We also went hiking. A lot. And we found new trails we’d never been down before. We started making “adventure maps,” taking Silas’ compass out with us and mapping out our trail that day. We’d make note of interesting trees, slippery spots, or other memorable parts of the hike, cataloguing our adventures in a notebook.

On other days, I scoured the internet to find art projects to occupy Silas’ time. We spent two weeks painting a backdrop on large pieces of cardboard and created a play based on an Anansi the spider story, inviting the grandparents to partake in a little COVID-19 theatre via Zoom.

We spent an entire evening on the kitchen floor, creating a Hearts of Hope Marquette display, cutting out construction paper hearts in a rainbow pattern to say “All You Need Is Love, Soap, & John Prine.” As we taped them to the the large window on the front of our home in April 2020, our plan was to remove them when the pandemic was over, and I naively thought they’d only stay there a couple of months. But they hung in the window so long the sun sapped them of all their color, and we took the washed out hearts down that winter.

And in between all of those moments, we worked. I spent eight hours a day in my dining room, managing work flow and basically living on Zoom. My husband set up shop in our guest bedroom (we wouldn’t be using that for a while), stealing a chair from the dining room and using a fold-out card table for his desk.

At first, working from home wasn’t so bad. It was kind of nice some days to wake up, grab a cup of coffee and just get right to work. But soon a daily cycle began. My son would pop into the room and ask me to play a game,

distributing aid to nonprofits on the front lines and responding to community needs.

Zosia Eppensteiner, who took over as CEO of the foundation after Gail Anthony’s January retirement, said the fund was created with the hope of helping people as quickly as possible.

“We knew there was going to be these tremendous needs in the community, and we needed an immediate response to what was happening,” Eppensteiner said. “Food insecurity, PPE, shelter, we wanted to be able to provide the resources to help with that.”

In other words, they wanted to meet

immediate needs immediately. Families wondering where their next meal was going to come from found themselves with food on the table. People worried about housing kept a roof over their head. Front line workers were given the PPE they needed to do their jobs. Operating on an annual calendar, the United Way doesn’t necessarily get to see the immediate effects of its good works in the community. But Rickauer said immediate effect was the whole point with the COVID-19 Community Response Fund. “With this fund, to be able to do, really everything, within a week or two and

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then just keep repeating it over and over and over and over, it was just tremendous to see,” Rickauer said.. “It felt rewarding to see all the hard work pay off.”

Each week, the committee pored over applications, doing the administrative work that was required to get resources in the hands of people that needed them.

“In a way, it was the longest day, but the best day, of the week,” Rickauer said. “It was something to look forward to every week, because … at the end of it, it washed away any of the stress from the previous week because it felt good to be able to be there, having that impact.”

What started with $25,000 from the MCF itself, grew to nearly $180,000 in the year-and-a-half since it was created.

Money raised for the COVID-19 Community Response Fund has gone back out in the community, helping groups and individuals alike, with the first grants sent out in April, 2020.

“In the thick of it, you don’t realize the magnitude, but then I ran a report at the end of the year, just to see the annual statement of the fund,” Eppensteiner said. “Multiple pages of gifts coming and multiple pages of grants, for me, was something … It was pretty amazing.”

or go outside, and I had to repeat the dreaded sentences, “I can’t play with you. I have to work” so often that I began to feel disgusted with myself. He would leave, slightly dejected, and the guilt would wash over me. Then would come the resentment that I felt guilty at all. We still had bills to pay. And around and around it went, until it was quitting time, and I walked the 17 steps into my living room, where we could play Uno or color together, or watch a movie. And one day melted into the next. ***

I have rewritten this piece at least 10 times by now. How do you boil an entire year’s worth of living down to a few hundred words? How do you convey what it was to feel the fear and the boredom, the relief and the guilt all wrapped up together? I was lucky. Only a few family members contracted COVID-19, and all of them survived. My husband and I both kept our jobs. It just felt like someone hit a pause button on our lives, trapping us in the same day with the threat of a deadly disease ever-present in the background.

So, I’ve rewritten this thing over and over, choosing short, little stories about memorable days from the shutdown to try to tell you what it was like. To maybe offer a sense of connection. But none of the stories said what I wanted them to. So instead, I’m offering you just this one.

Like many people, I learned a new skill last year: skiing. We took lessons as a family. Not only did it give us something to do outside, but my son absolutely loved it.

It was a beautiful, wintery Saturday morning that we decided to spend a few hours at the hill, putting into practice what we’d learned from several weeks of lessons. I was more comfortable on my skis at that point than my husband, so we naturally formed a line as we snaked our way down the hill — Silas, me, then Kyle.

The ride up was a peaceful experience. Silas was always seated in between us on a three-person chair. The thick snow quieted everything, giving it a hushed feel.

It was the third or fourth run down that Silas, clearly feeling the most at ease of the three of us, skied out ahead, this time, not skiing down the hill in the wide, S-shaped pattern we’d been on all morning, but more like an “I.” Straight as an arrow he took off like a shot, and before I knew it, he was way ahead of me. I yelled for him to slow down, but it was a useless thing to do. So I hit the gas, the wind slapping me in the face as images raced through my head of Silas flipping up into the air, completely out of control, arms and legs flailing as he crashed back down to the ground. I leaned forward, flying, sure I was going to break one or both of my legs by the time this trip down was over but willing myself to go faster anyways. My heart was pounding in my chest and my feet felt light in my boots as my skis bounced over the hard crust of the hill.

And then, as we made one final, long right turn, Silas way out in front with little to no chance of me catching up, time seemed to slow down. Watching him ski effortlessly, while I concentrated on where my toes were pointing and how my weight shifted, hoping I wouldn’t wipe out, a wave coursed through me. A rush of love, and a heavy feeling of nostalgia for the moment I was in. Right then. Right there. It was something to remember, my five-year-old son enjoying the feel of the whipping wind and the crisp, cool sound of his skis cutting their way through the snow — this other human being that was as much a part of me as my own limbs, an extension of myself and yet a person all his own, skiing like he’d been doing it his whole life instead of just a few weeks. We were there together, flying down the hill, feeling the freedom of our own movement. I felt proud and exhilerated and amazed at his fearlessness.

And then, as quick as it began, it was over. We were at the bottom. He looked over his shoulder to see if I was there, a big smile on his face to match my own, eager to go back to the top and do it again. I finally caught up to him and hugged him as best I could with skis on, his chest rising and falling with each breath.

And that’s it. That’s my pandemic moment. A few short seconds when the world consisted of nothing but me and my son, and the joy we felt in being alive in that moment. That’s what I want to tell you about.

***

How to put into words the shift a global pandemic creates? Things that were once commonplace take on new meaning, and we start to think of our lives in “befores” and “afters.”

What you’ve just read is the effect of a global pandemic on one person. Just a few small moments from a year-and-a-half of living, filtered through the lens of my own experiences, and put onto a page for you to interpret however you’d like. Because the truth of the matter is, each of us experienced this thing in our own way.

We all lost something last year. Some lost family, friends, a loss that is heavier than my own. I lost what everyone did — time.

But we also gained something. We understood in a much deeper way the importance of human connection. We learned the true value of what is priceless.

Who knows what the future will hold, or how long the shadow of COVID-19 will hang over the world. What we can do now is what we’ve always been able to do — be kind to one another.

And we can remember to seek out those moments of joy. To quiet our minds and just be right where we are. Right here. Right now. Skiing down the hill, just at the edge of control, watching our children grow.

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Grants of up to $2,000 were given to grassroots organizations like Feed the Front Line, Masks For Marquette and established nonprofits like the Janzen House, Start the Cycle, Room At The Inn and countless others.

And while funds raised are typically only distributed to nonprofits, this time the COVID-19 Community Response Fund was able to give grants to local businesses that wanted to provide community support in their own way.

Eppensteiner said one of her favorite examples of how the fund sought to help in a multitude of ways was by providing a grant to Doulas of Marquette.

“Doulas of Marquette recognized that, in the shutdown, there weren’t any birthing classes available,” Eppensteiner said. “They developed a program that was all virtual and free for the families that wanted to participate.”

For Melinda Britton, owner of Doulas of Marquette and a certified doula herself, providing those classes was a necessity the community couldn’t do without.

“With pregnancy, there is a lot of unexpected, and a lot of unknown anyway, so our goal was to be able to provide a class for the community that would help lower anxiety and bring accurate information, not just about birthing, but about the current situation with COVID,” Britton said.

Britton applied for a grant through the online process, with help from a friend who had already done some grant writing.

The grant from the foundation allowed Doulas of Marquette to offer nine education programs from May through September, 2020, offering daytime and evening classes via Zoom.

Outside-of-the-box thinking helped provide additional resources immediately to many people in need, and now, Eppensteiner said she’s hoping to establish a

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long-term solution to prevent such a large need from happening again. That means taking a look at things that had always been a problem, but were exacerbated by the pandemic, and finding solutions. One of those items is internet access, especially for families with children.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were prepared, if we ever needed to do this again, and we had the systems in place to make sure no kid is left behind,” Eppensteiner said. “That kids are not driving to a library parking lot to be able to do their schoolwork, or not doing their schoolwork, because they don’t have access to the internet.”

Looking back, Rickauer said the work they did throughout the pandemic was challenging, rewarding and necessary, and both Rickauer and Eppensteiner expressed their gratitude to all the people involved in the efforts of both organizations.

“Within two weeks of the shutdown, we were already distributing funds to critical needs in the community,” Rickauer said. “It definitely wouldn’t have happened without community support and without collaborative effort.”

And while many, many things have changed as a result of this monumental event, Britton said not all of those changes have been bad. One positive was the deeming of doulas as essential, allowing them into hospitals in addition to “support” people, rather than being included as a support person -- forcing women to choose between having their partner, their mom, or other loved one there by there side, OR their doula.

“That’s been really neat to see that happen within the local hospital system. We’re our own piece of the pie,” Britton said. “You can have one support person and a doula … It was very validating of our role.”

And though there are still plenty of questions about when life will return to how it was pre-2020, or if it ever will at all, Britton said there are lessons to be learned from the people living their lives through COVID-19.

“For me, the biggest thing that’s been incredible to see the last year-and-a-half is just the resiliency in women and families, the ability for them to find joy,” Britton said. “I’ve seen loss, I’ve seen joy, I’ve seen babies born, all of it, but it’s been so encouraging to my spirit over the last yearand-a-half to see babies born, because it’s like life is continuing.

“It’s been very powerful to see there’s still good and hope out there.”

About the author: Jackie Stark has lived in the UP since she was 11. An avid reader, she also loves gardening and has been talking about learning to play the guitar for 14 years.