LOVE LOCKDOWN

CANADIAN WOMEN SHARE WHAT THE PRESSURES OF A GLOBAL PANDEMIC, AND ALL THIS (Too much?)TOGETHERNESS, HAVE REVEALED ABOUT THEIR RELATIONSHIPS.

- LEAH RUMACK

MY HUSBAND IS doing it again. The breathing. Was it always this loud? Was it always this…wet?!

I glare at him over my laptop,which is fighting for space with his at our tiny kitchen table.

“Everything okay, honey?” he asks.

“ARGH!” our nine-year-old son shouts, slamming down his iPad, the site of his “distance learning.” “This is stupid! This is wasting my time!”

It’s approximately day 3,298 of the COVID-19 lockdown — or, as some people like to call it, late April 2020. Like millions of people around the world, our family of three has been locked up together in our small house for over six weeks, hiding from a mysterious virus that’s leaving a trail of death and a shattered economy in its wake, all with no discernible end in sight. The novelty of board games and Zoom parties has long worn off, my income as a freelance writer has slowed to a trickle, and guess what? I don’t know how to teach an angry, lonely kid grade three math. I can’t even do grade three math. Tensions, needless to say, are high.

My text alert pings.

“Have you started the research for your article about the inevitable increase in divorce rates yet?” my friend asks.

I text back one word. “YUP.”