I think we all remember the confusing feeling when we realized that the world had plunged into a pandemic. Most of us probably did not realize the extent of the situation we were in, the isolation, the confusing sadness that came with this new reality. I remember waking up in the mornings during the first few days of everything closing down and taking a sleepy few minutes to digest that today was yet another day of not leaving the house. It was heavy.
It became clear a few days in that my focus would be on keeping my 11 year old son occupied. I actually quite enjoyed creating a “home school” schedule for him, and I spent every night creating a study plan and a schedule for the next day, e-mailing it to him with links to resources.

I thought the above schedule was going to be very doable, but my goodness did I underestimate the toll this bizarre new reality was already taking on my pre-teen’s sense of normalcy. I can’t say I remember the exact details of the first day’s failures, but I do remember both of us screaming about YouTube access for 11 year olds, remembering passwords, how to access Google Drive … and yeah, I am pretty sure most of you parents were there too. Here is what the Day 2 e-mail revealed.



For sure it took another couple of days to get into a groove, but the most fun assignment I gave my son was to watch Draw Every Day With JJK. It led to us doodling together, coloring together, something we used to do a lot during my chemo days, and was something that helped us breathe and enjoy the calm of the simple moments.
Soon I started to feel the need to do more with my doodles, and as we watched governors and authority figures be regulars on our TV screen at news conferences, telling us all the latest Covid news, I started to become pretty fascinated with Governor Andrew Cuomo’s demeanor. He seemed so relaxed and so calm, like he had been waiting for this moment to shine in a time of turmoil. He seemed like the voice of reason we needed to hear. Little did we know 🙄 Regardless, I still feel that his down to earth press briefings helped me get through these first few days and weeks. So I doodled him, sort of a study in demeanor, perhaps part alien, part calm, part overwhelm, for sure tribal. Isn’t that sort of how many of us felt?

My nephew Jay Devon was a particular fan of my pandemic doodles, he would print them out to color them, and I couldn’t think of a sweeter compliment. Here are some of the other faces I found interesting during this time, plus a couple of random doodles that were requested of me. Can you guess the faces?