How difficult it is for so many people to be cooped up in this unfamiliar way with family. Surviving it will take wisdom and insight: two parents working from home, one or two or three children wandering the rooms waiting for the entertainment to arrive.
What came to my mind last night was kindness. Forget wisdom and insight, both of which might take years of therapy or meditation to develop. Just focus on kindness. When you are ready to throw the kettle (metaphorically) at your spouse, remember kindness. Remember that both of you are hurting, feeling deprived, put-upon, misunderstood. Just remove your hand from the kettle and settle for kindness. I'll even grant you some slack and say you don't actually have to manifest the kindness as a positive action. All I'm asking is a momentary flash of kindness that will act like the steam vent on a pressure cooker. Poof! The steam escapes and the pot can return to its slow simmer. No harm done.
All we can bring to each other during these stuck-inside days is kindness. No, that isn't quite right. The least we can bring is kindness. At better moments we can add in some humour (preferably not cutting humour or sarcasm), or some extra physical help. Or a hard-won serenity that will communicate itself to the surroundings.
But if you can't at the moment manage humour, if you are ready to pop, break, explode, murder, or maim, then take a breath (did I mention breathing?), physically step aside, and change the energy with kindness.
Change the energy! That's what I used to counsel one of my daughters when her small children were driving her around the bend: change the energy. Put on music and dance with a lamp-shade on your head. They'll be too shocked to continue their argument. Or if the energy is already frantic, then go outside or into another room, with or without the children.
I've long been aware, when on the subway, of how charged the energy is within the trains and the stations. But when you are in it you don't realize how tense and breathless you have become. It is only when you go through the station doors to the outside air that you sense the silence.
In our daily coronavirus pressure cookers, let us carry the tools with us: breath, kindness. Let us watch for warning signs and then do what we can to forestall the out-of-control moment.
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
Audible.Com: go to https://www.audible.com and search for Ann Tudor
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