Ten Days in March 2020
This post is a photo essay of sorts. You can read about the things leading up to and including March 11, 2020, in the post You Belong Among the Wildflowers. I’m documenting these events from many years ago in an attempt to chronicle some of the formative seasons of my life.
When Zoe was born, Christian got two weeks of paternity leave. She was born in April, and the two older boys were in kindergarten and first grade, so we had two glorious weeks where Christian was home, I could nap almost whenever I wanted, and the three of us were able to connect during the time the boys weren’t home. It was glorious.
When Noah was born, it was not like that.
His birthday marked the beginning of a 10-day span that would in the future feel more like a fever dream than real life. My memories of being in our home in South Carolina with him are few and far between, invigorated mostly by the pictures I took. For many, when the Covid lockdowns began, their lives stopped. For us, though, everything sped up as we attempted to do everything we needed to do before we moved.
March 12
Noah turned one day old. The older kids had been at home with my mother-in-law and neighbor. Christian brought them up to the hospital to meet Noah. The older boys were excited. Zoe had mixed feelings. She liked the idea of the baby, but she couldn’t quite figure out how she felt about me being in the hospital with the baby.
Also on this day, my uncle died. My mom was in Florida with him as he struggled through late-stage colon cancer. She had cried on the phone the day before when I told her I was in labor, lamenting that he was coming so early and she was going to miss Noah’s birth. I was sad my mom couldn’t be there, because she had been there for the births of our three other kids. But I was mostly just hoping Christian would get back from Georgia in time.
That night, my sister came to the hospital to meet Noah and brought me a milkshake.
March 13
We were discharged from the hospital late that morning. It was a surreal feeling as we drove down one of the main roads downtown, on a Friday, and the streets were almost empty. It was like a ghost town. We stopped at one of our favorite local restaurants, and we had to park outside and call in our order. It felt foreign and bizarre.
That night, we enjoyed our first night at home as a family of 6. Zoe started getting used to the idea of having a baby in the house.
March 14
It was a Saturday. Christian and his mom took the kids to a plant sale—some things were still happening as normal, despite the fact that schools were already going to be closed the following week. I don’t remember being nervous about the virus. It still seemed very far away from us.
March 15
We had our own little church service at home that morning, and then we decided to embark on a walk down at the river where we could easily keep our distance from other people. I was glad I felt well enough to walk.
March 16
We went to the pediatrician for Noah’s first follow-up appointment, and his bilirubin levels were higher than normal, marking the beginning of jaundice. Our doctor ordered a bilibed to be delivered to our house so we could do light therapy on our own. He was supposed to be on the lights any time he wasn’t nursing. The following day, Christian and I were supposed to drive to Georgia to close on our new house there. We had planned to take Noah, of course, but the doctor said if Noah’s numbers didn’t improve, we’d have to leave him in Columbia so he could continue getting light therapy—it might be that Noah couldn’t afford to be off the lights for the three hours we would be in the car.
Later that day, we met my parents at a local real estate office to sign the papers for them to buy our house there. Them buying our house meant we hadn’t had to put it on the market during what was an incredibly stressful season. I remember the realtor being nervous about everything going through because if the courts closed, the closing wouldn’t be official. We needed it to go through so that we could use the profit from the sale of our old house to be part of our down payment on the new house. I don’t know how it worked—but praise God, everything went through.
March 17
After a whole day on the lights, Noah’s numbers had improved enough that morning for us to leave and drive to Georgia. We left the older kids with family and made the drive to our new county. We spent the night at the home of one of the elders from the new church, and we kept Noah on the lights as much as possible.
March 18
My birthday. I turned 34 years old.
We also closed on our house in Georgia. Then we ate lunch at a local Mexican restaurant, probably one of the last remaining restaurants open for dining in what felt like the whole world.
We drove back to South Carolina and had planned to go out for my birthday, but that got scratched with the lockdown. I don’t remember what we ate, but we spent that evening alternating holding Noah while we watched a movie.
March 19
Now we were all back home again, and the kids didn’t have school. I had packed some before Noah was born, but now that we had closed on the house it was feeling more real. We took it easy while I also tried to wrap my mind around moving—at this point, we had a U-Haul truck reserved for March 28.
March 20
My two best friends came over to help me pack. I took periodic breaks to rest and feed Noah. At one point, one of them asked if we were concerned about the U-Haul store closing down before the following weekend. We hadn’t thought of that. Christian called and they couldn’t make any guarantees. No one was working more than a day ahead or so, and all the government recommendations seemed to be changing hourly.
As we processed this, my friend asked why we were even going to wait until the following weekend. Why not just move the next day? The kids weren’t going to suffer from not going to school because they weren’t going anyway. We had already packed up most of the house. What was the point in living in a packed up house for another week with the kids home, when we could go ahead and live in our new home and start unpacking?
We couldn’t think of a good reason not to do this, and there were many reasons why we thought it was wise. So we put out the bulletin to family and friends, many of whom we had arranged to come help us move the following weekend, and asked them to come the next day. We also let our new church know so they could try to arrange people to help us unload when we got to Georgia.
March 21
Early the morning of March 21, friends and family descended on our house and helped us load up a moving truck. I did what I could while also tending to the little kids. Noah was blissfully ignorant; he just wanted to be fed at regular intervals.
By the time we went to bed that night, all of our belongings were in Georgia in our new house. It had been just over 24 hours since we had decided to go ahead and move, and I felt unmoored and like I was living in an alternate reality.
Two weeks prior the kids had been in school, I had been pregnant, and we were living in South Carolina. Now the kids were out of school for an indefinite period of time, I had a 10-day-old newborn, and we lived in Georgia.
It has taken many years of retelling this story, both to myself and others, to come to terms with the impact this period of time had on me. The pure enjoyment of those first few days at home that I had experienced with the births of the prior three children did not exist. We missed out on the joy of sharing Noah with our family and friends due to heightened concerns about Covid. I had had a normal hospital delivery, something women who went into labor just a few days after me did not have, but the labor and delivery had been so sudden and unexpected that mentally I was still reeling.
There were many moments of grace. Friends bringing food, taking me to the hardware store when we got to Georgia and were missing hardware for Zoe’s bed, the dozens of people who helped us load and unload. I don’t want to forget those.
But I also can’t forget those ten days in March. They sometimes come to me unbidden, and my mind jerks from memory to memory, trying to find peace, but there is none. There is no way to put it on a shelf and look at it with fondness. Those ten days were brutal.
I write the details out here, with pictures to help me remember, because my brain and heart need there to be a witness to those days. Maybe if I write them down, if I let myself feel the heaviness of those ten days, I will feel relief. Because sometimes I wonder if I haven’t been in a state of hyper-vigilance since then, always wondering what turn the next day will bring, always feeling like the ground is moving underneath my feet, always feeling like I am just so tired and there isn’t enough of me to go around.
It’s March again, but now it’s 2025. We just celebrated Noah’s 5th birthday, and I only have one more year to go before I turn 40. Those ten days from 2020 are still part of me, but they are not all of me. And what I remind myself now is that I am no safer now, outside the chaos of that season. The Lord was upholding me in those ten days, and he has upheld me every day since.