VOICES

VOICES Coming together, six feet apart

This summer, Stephanie Kendrick, an OU grad student, answered Backdrop’s call for first-person accounts of the new realities presented by the coronavirus. This is her story, in her words.

BY STEPHANIE KENDRICK, INTERVIEWED BY HELEN WIDMAN PHOTO PROVIDED BY BETHANY RIVERA

Today is July 9th, my 32nd birthday. My career is taking off, I am three months into a graduate program at Ohio University, was recently voted onto Albany Village Council and my first book is set to be published this winter. Oh, and the entire world is currently suffocating under the weight of economic collapse and exponentially increasing death tolls from a worldwide pandemic. I promise to make this as light as possible, but today the national death toll did rise to 134,862, so levity is hard to come by. I am from this area, Appalachian born and raised. We have not yet seen the kind of devastation that New York, or hell, even Cleveland, has seen. But any illness is unwanted, any death a tragedy, and in order to keep each other safe while we learn more about the coronavirus, virtually every realm of most of our worlds has been altered.

On March 11th, I got word that my department would be working from home for a while because of the spreading virus. I am an SSA [service and support administrator] with the Athens County Board of Developmental Disabilities (i.e. case manager), and if you don’t already know, that means I rarely sit at a desk. What we thought would be a week of working from home has become four months with no definitive end in sight. I visit clients on their porches, them on one side of their door and me on the other, each wearing masks. I make

sure their needs are met, because another impact of the virus is that Ohio University and several other employers laid off massive amounts of local residents, resulting in hundreds of families in our area left to navigate the fickle and overwhelmed unemployment system. My colleagues and I deliver food boxes every week, and some of us take toys and games to children so that we can ensure they are okay. We don’t know how long this will last, but I imagine my job will continue to look different for quite a while.

Because I can’t allow myself any free time (as though a full-time job, motherhood, writing and grad school was not enough), I was sworn in to my Village Council on January 15th, when the coronavirus was just a weird foreign virus that was rumored to be transmitted only through eyeballs. During the initial shut-downs of mid-March and April, Council just didn’t meet. Ordinances backed up, issues went unresolved, so I suggested we explore the wonderful, awkward world of Zoom sessions (did I mention that I am the only millennial on Village Council?). Everyone was receptive, and after we confirmed the laxed sunshine laws would allow this, we recommenced our twice-monthly meetings and we are back to business as usual.

This has been one of the weirdest parts about our acclamation to the coronavirus - the urgency to get back to “business as usual”; how our normal can dissolve so quickly; how arbitrary rituals seem after you no longer need them. But enough existentialism...let me get back to Zoom.

Thank goodness for Zoom (no, they are not sponsoring this essay). The week prior to the coronavirus shutdowns, I was scheduled to meet with a prominent local business owner to discuss using his venue to implement a communitywide, accessible, weekly open mic for poets and storytellers. Of course, this dream was momentarily squashed. After a couple of months of being thrust into my new technological reliance, I questioned whether I really needed to wait for the virus to pass before establishing an open mic. I purchased a Zoom account with my friend Kari, created a Facebook group as an event hub and voila! Today is not only my birthday, but also marks the Second Thursday Night Open Mic! We will one day meet in person, sharing poems and stories, laughs and tears, in the comfort of the space of others. For now, however, we will share these moments through a screen, happy to still spend time with one another, happy to keep one another safe.

Ultimately, I have been busier than I have ever been. Although the coronavirus has brought many changes to my world, forced relaxation has not been one of them. I blame this on technology, my impulse to serve, and my own pathology. I am adaptable, fortunate and honestly a little tired. Athens County is full of opportunities to be of service to our neighbors: donate beans and rice to a blessing box you pass on the street each day, drop a dollar in the CFI fishbowl at the farmer’s market, wear a darn mask if you are able when you venture out. I know you are tired too, but if I’ve learned one thing since March, it’s that we really need each other.

Kendrick’s first book of poems, Places We Feel Warm, will be out next year.b

SSAs Bethany Rivera (right), Stephanie Kendrick (middle) and Heather Dikis (left) picking up USDA food boxes for delivery.