Louise is nonverbal, though, so we don’t know exactly what she makes of this strange time. Louise (also an alternate name) is an 8-year-old with a gentle temperament and a great sense of humor she has taken quarantine gracefully. In real life, as Lee refers to it, she has a sister. She just went to live with another family, remember?’’ Now we’re getting to the crux of it, I thought tenderly, her fear that the coronavirus will leave her motherless! But when I brought up our mother’s tragic death a few days later, Cece seemed puzzled. ‘‘Don’t you remember?’’ she asked, eyes widening. Instead she would insist that Sam play our beleaguered father, who tried to contain my rages with the indispensable help of Cece.ĭuring one long morning of the game, it occurred to me to ask Cece where our mother was. Sam, seeing my struggle, would try to take over my role, but Lee would not accept him as my understudy. Once in a while I’d try out a new character choice, with a line like: ‘‘It’s OK if I make a mistake - I’m learning!’’ But she, furious that I’d smuggled a parenting lesson into her game, would demand that I start the scene over, playing Lee as abject and unraveling. If Lee made an error in her remote kindergarten schoolwork, we’d have to immediately replay it, with me as Lee making the identical mistake while Cece smugly corrected me. Usually, Sisters was mind-numbingly boring and dispiriting. ‘‘Just don’t touch your face, and don’t do it again.’’ ‘‘There’s Purell in the lobby, sister,’’ she said with put-on world-weariness. ‘‘Lee, don’t touch the elevator because there’s coronavirus!’’Ī battle between feigned concern and real delight played out on Lee’s features she relished my character’s fear. I obeyed, fearing her temper, I guess, as much as the virus. ‘‘Let’s play Sisters, and you’re the one who touches the elevator,’’ she said. I said, too quickly: ‘‘Try not to touch the elevator, Lee.’’ She pulled her hand to her side as if she’d been burned. On our way downstairs to check the mail in late March, she rested a hand on the wall of the elevator. Sometimes, Lee seemed aware of the therapeutic nature of the game. That way, perhaps, she could see her anguish represented without having to inhabit it. She had always role-played a rotating cast of doctors and experts - she wore her Doc McStuffins Halloween costume most weekends since October - but in quarantine, she wanted to play only her own imaginary sister while I flailed as Lee. The game’s primary function, I assumed, was to give Lee relief from her own experience of helplessness. To contain her destructive behavior, I kept expanding my own. The novelty of throwing tantrums and defacing our apartment - albeit more gently and reversibly than the real Lee would have - quickly wore off for me, but Lee became addicted to my portrayal of her. ‘‘Lee’’ was an exhausting role that a lifetime in the theater (I’m a playwright) inadequately prepared me for. Lee named the game ‘‘Sisters,’’ and we started playing it for hours each day. ‘‘Pick up that chair! Pick it up!’’ And then, softening: ‘‘Don’t cry, sister. Instantaneously, Lee transformed into my fictional older sister, ‘‘Cece.’’ Cece was temperate, firm and wise, and my behavior scandalized her. In a child’s voice, I imitated the last surly thing Lee had said and suddenly (I surprised myself!) kicked over a dining-room chair. One evening, in desperation, I improvised. My husband, Sam, and I tried out various well-regarded disciplinary strategies to no avail. She started throwing food, writing on walls and kicking and punching us. A few weeks into quarantine in Brooklyn, Lee (I’m using an alternate name for privacy) became out of control. In ordinary times, my 5-year-old daughter is an anxious kid. How a Game With My Daughter Helped Us Cope With Quarantine and the Past Playing hours of pretend with my 5-year-old showed me how coronavirus was re-activating old medical traumas in our family.
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