Finding Happiness Through Fear
My wife and I welcomed our third child and first daughter, Cloey Louise Kensing, a week ago today. Like each of our first two children, Cloey (named for her great-great-grandmother) came early: She was due Aug. 19.
The post-quarantine baby boom some predicted, whether seriously or in jest, didn’t come to fruition. Anecdotally, the hospital in which Cloey was delivered was a ghost town throughout our three-night stay. Part of that is due to the restrictive measures medical facilities adopted in response to COVID-19, and the ongoing surge over the past weeks.
But compared to the same delivery wing of the same hospital where each of our boys arrived, there was simply just a fraction of expectant families.
It made for an eerie experience, yet was at the same time oddly calming. Our time at the hospital felt almost allegorical of the pandemic era, or at least, my own experiences throughout these bizarre 17 or so months.
I have in the past shared details of the hours and days last March when the world changed: Having pitched a series of feature stories to Awful Announcing, I was set to go to Las Vegas and cover a variety of subjects in and around the college basketball tournaments played there.
As the situation domestically quickly worsened, I remained committed to going, even outlining some ideas for how the uncertainty of the pandemic would make for its own story. Subscribers to the Patreon read last year my plans, including an idea to emulate one of my favorite writers, Hunter Thompson, and create some gonzo journalism on the drive to Sin City (sans the drugs, but with all the Fear & Loathing).
Once the Thunder-Jazz was abruptly canceled, however and with my packed suitcase sitting next to me, reality hit me enough that I reached out to my editor and scrapped the series. I emailed the contacts I had interviews and tours arranged with in Vegas to let them know I was out — one of whom implied to me that a full-scale cancelation of the conference tournament was imminent.
These are details I’ve shared: One I haven’t before today is that the following day, I experienced the worst emotional break of my life.
I picked up my oldest son from Kindergarten that afternoon and the atmosphere around his usually joyful campus was grim. There’s a scene in the outstanding 2006 film Children of Men, arguably the most realistic and thus most disconcerting post-apocalyptic movie ever made, in which the protagonists venture through an abandoned elementary school.
The contrast between a place of happiness and togetherness turned into a wasteland is haunting enough when depicted in fiction; experiencing a comparable scene in reality rattled me more deeply than I’m able to describe.
Visions of society in collapse invaded my thoughts as we drove home. I put a movie on for my son before climbing into bed and breaking down. It wasn’t until my wife came back from her work — a business she successfully launched at the peak of the Great Recession, but had to close in March 2020 and not reopen until September — and she literally shook me that I snapped out of it.
And when I write “literally shook,” I mean like another scene you might view in a movie, albeit not as iconic as Children of Men and the schoolyard — more the cliche of one party grabbing the other by the shoulders and aggressively shaking them back-and-forth to pull them out of hysterics.
Though cliche, it was surprisingly effective. It’s not a moment I’m proud of, but the darkness at the beginning of the pandemic allows me to appreciate the beauty from that time. That uninterrupted time with my family is impossible to recreate, and I’ll cherish it forever.
This ostensibly being a sports newsletter, I must refer to the below interview with Nick Starkel from Mountain West media days. Earlier in the offseason, Stanford coach David Shaw said to me that his team and San Jose State had the two most difficult pandemic seasons as a result of Santa Clara County adopting the nation’s most rigorous containment measures.
The moratorium on group meetings resulted in both teams having to stay away from home for weeks at a time, all while maintaining a game-ready atmosphere. In that struggle, though, came moments that were life-shaping in a positive way.
The pandemic isn’t over, with this summer’s surge serving as a warning to remain diligent as football season approaches. Little Cloey’s homecoming this week coincided with my own, second-born son spiking a 105-degree fever and testing positive for COVID-19.
I write this installment of the newsletter while wearing a mask in my own home. My wife and baby remain quarantined in the master bedroom and nursery while my sons and I inhabit the living room and their bedroom.
His symptoms have fortunately subsided, though, and the initial fear that rocked my wife in a way comparable to my own breakdown last March has turned into resolve. The forced separation last night prompted the building of a couch fort and an impromptu Kensing Boys’ Mario Golf: Super Rush tournament.
Paraphrasing something Shaw said, there’s happiness to be found at the end of the uncertainty and fear. For me, there’s no better reminder of that now than in my week-old daughter and her unusual arrival.