Jumping through Pandemic Depression
All images/Brittany Bronson.
By Brittany Bronson
“I always felt grateful, but I did not know it was gratitude.”
– Andre Dubus, A Country Road Song
I take to jump rope like I take to anything new. I study arm positions. Wrist rotation. Techniques for protecting the knees. Four weeks into quarantine, there are six different jump ropes hanging from a hook in my coat closet. Beaded ropes. Weighted ropes. Both long handles and short. A speed rope for the days when I crave a whirring around my face, as if I’m running with a Mojave wind down a long, desert road.
I’ve spent countless dollars on gym memberships and equipment, but not until the pandemic do I learn that a $10 rope can be the source of hundreds of exercises and maneuvers. I begin with the basic bounce, graduate to a running man, then start showing off advanced tricks to my audience of neighborhood kids and the homeless in Siegfried and Roy Park.
Target sold out of jigsaw puzzles. Sourdough bread had too many carbs. I needed a quarantine hobby, and jump rope is as good as any. Exercise has always been my way to pass the time. To forget that I’m lonely. To feel good by doing something hard. Three thousand Americans died yesterday, while I landed a trick called the Inverse Toad. To brave this pandemic with a jump rope feels both essential to my survival and completely irreverent.
***
The first time I cheat at quarantine, I travel to Oregon in July to visit my sister. Navigating an airport feels risky, so I cancel my flight last minute and do the 14-hour drive in a day. On the morning after my travel, I walk to a nearby park and jump on the empty basketball court where the nets are missing from the rims. Five minutes in, my right leg starts to tighten, and within another, I pull my Achilles tendon.
I drape the ropes around my neck and feel confused, because my body does not injure easily. When I look at my weather app, I realize it’s only 48°. After a decade of living in Las Vegas, I’ve developed a particular elitism about the sun. Just two days earlier, I jumped for an hour beneath its 105° heat. The expectation that my body would traverse a 60-degree difference without any gentle coaxing, without requesting permission in a warmup, reflects my entitlement perfectly.
I limp through the rest of my vacation, assuming the pain is karma because I traveled after Twitter warned me not to.
***
The human reflex to jump is instinctive. It is used to flee predators. To gather food from trees. Ancient Egyptians jumped over vines. Australian aborigines used flexible bamboo. To jump is a form of attack. Of defense. Of dance. Of play. On my last quarantine cheat day, I watch my nephew and niece jump over a sprinkler in their bathing suits. On my drive back to Las Vegas, I pull over on the shoulder of the highway to do jumping jacks. When I get home, my dog jumps up to greet me, an impulse I try to train out of her, but indulge because her rebellion is joy.
***
I return back to my new normal. I work from home, stare at a computer for eight hours a day, and take breaks to walk my dog or to jump rope in the alley behind my condo. I’m working on a Mic Release, an advanced trick that involves throwing the handle out, rotating the rope alongside my body, and catching it.
I’ve been practicing this trick for weeks, but it is not coming as easily as the others. Often, after the rope flies up and smacks my forehead or misses its landing spot between my forefinger thumb, I wonder, Why the hell am I doing this?
Why do anything when people are suffering?
There are over 70,000 new cases of COVID-19 today. At night, I sit on the same couch that I work from all day reading Tweets about people my age dying alone on ventilators. Shortly after my trip, my chest feels tight. My throat itches. I go through a drive-through testing site, but my results come back negative. As I fall asleep, I place my hand over my chest and listen to the sound of my lungs fill. My boyfriend suggests that I’m experiencing an anxiety attack.
“You jumped for an hour yesterday,” he reminds me. “If you had COVID, you wouldn’t be able to do that.”
The following Friday, I go to the Urgent Care anyway after describing my symptoms to a telehealth nurse. She is concerned about my chest tightness. The man guarding the door wears both face mask and shield and returns my sanitized Driver’s License to me in a plastic bag. Another man in his fifties swabs my throat. An older woman in her seventies, who shouldn’t even be working, I think, leads me to the x-ray machine and gently drapes the heavy apron over my shoulders.
“Your lungs look good,” the doctor tells me after. “Really good, actually.”
***
The second time I cheat in quarantine, I drive to Arizona in October to help my parents move into their new retirement community. They are in their seventies, so I get another COVID-19 test before my journey. If I ever write about this, I think, I’ll make sure to note that test.
I unload boxes from a U-Haul, unwrap dishes from last month’s newspapers, and organize their belongings in brand new cabinets and shelves. My stepmother and I agree that the home will be better for my dad’s Parkinsons’ and dementia. When she asks him to grab a box near the front gate, he walks out the door, sits down on the nearby bench, and stares out at his new driveway.
I wonder what he is thinking about until my stepmother explains: “He already forgot what I asked him.”
At the end of the day, we eat dinner on the back patio where my stepmother brings up my jump roping. She asks if I brought one, so I run out to the car to retrieve the beaded rope I keep there.
After she watches me do a trick, she smiles and laughs. Seeing her delight in me do something so silly makes me the happiest I’ve felt in months. She asks if she can try, and after one rotation, stops.
“I don’t want to hurt myself,” she says, grabbing her hip. She walks a few miles every day, is particularly active for 70, so much so, that over the past 10 years, I often forget that she’s aging at all. When she hands the rope back to me, the sadness arrives to her face abruptly, reminding me that there are always things nearby, waiting to be mourned.
I hurry to put the jump rope away, tuck all eight feet of it into the bottom of my purse.
***
I move through the world in a body that has always cooperated with me. This is why I take to the activities like jump rope easily. To have a body that listens, that responds, that heals, is a privilege that I know I will eventually lose. I mark it once a year when I return to Andre Dubus’ A Country Road Song.
It is a simple essay, a long description of the author’s daily run from his Massachusetts’s home, along the nearby river, and up a steep hill. Dubus writes the essay from his wheelchair, detailing his former running path in every season, how the same route became mysteriously new in the bitter cold of December and the weighty humidity of June. He describes the sky, the birds, the trees, the feeling of ice crystals forming in the hairs of his beard, of removing his sweat-soaked shirt and wrapping it around his head until he was running nearly naked across the green earth.
Reading the essay during the pandemic overwhelms me. I imagine losing my ability to walk, to run, to jump, to smell, to taste, to fill my lungs with a deep, unencumbered breath. I have yet to have a positive COVID-19 test, or my body was just once again good to me, fought the virus quietly without asking my brain to take notice.
***
The season changes but my days do not. I work from home, read news about fake news, and exercise. After reading an article I find on Twitter about doom scrolling, I worry that I might be spending too much time on Twitter.
Consider a purge, the writer says, but that feels too easy. To willfully excuse myself from having to think about the pain and injustice that others are experiencing seems like a selfish, not a self-care, choice.
Instead of heeding the writer’s advice, I read articles about a famous businessman and philanthropist in my community who recently died. I know him in that unique way that social media makes me think I know strangers. He is someone I once criticized on Twitter, because his generosity both helped and harmed my city.
There is a long, personal article about his challenges with addiction and depression. After reading, I feel sick, because I have no right to know so much.
I cry for him anyway. How confusing, and hard, and disappointing it can be—wanting to be good. My own anxiety, sadness, and depression are all things I have felt before, but not until the pandemic have they lasted this long, this quietly, and this ordinarily. They surprise me the same way my dog does when I look down from my writing desk to find she is lying at my feet.
All I can do is wonder, “When did you get here?”
***
In December, I move my jump rope workouts to Paradise Park. When I moved to Las Vegas 10 years ago, this is where I exercised, where my graduate school cohorts and I played pick-up basketball games with neighborhood teens. I loved the sound of children playing on the playset, of their mothers and tías draping tablecloths over nearby picnic tables, the smell of charcoal rising from the grills.
I always thought this park displayed the diversity of my community, but it’s been years since I’ve been here, and it now reveals something else. There are 20 or so homeless people wrapped in blankets in the grass, their makeshift shelters and belongings close by. I walk quietly through them, head down, wondering if it’s disrespectful to work out so close to where they are sleeping.
I start jumping at center court and quickly lose myself in crosses, shuffles, and side swings. I’m trying to get through a challenging combo, but I keep tripping. I lean over repeatedly to place my hands on my knees and catch my breath. Finally, I get it. I release a little cheer the way I always do when I land a new trick, happy to have something to celebrate, even though I’m alone.
But I’m not alone. I look up to see a nearby man is watching me. Most of him is concealed by his sleeping bag, but he smiles, removes his hand from the warmth, and flashes me a thumbs up.
***
What am I seeking when I jump rope? The smack of a rope against concrete. The rhythmic percussion formed by the balls of my feet. The sound of my lungs filling. The sweat that forms on my forehead, my chest, then drips down between my breasts. Not to forget that difficult things are happening to complete strangers, to the people I love, but to recognize that it is hard, and it is sad, yet still—I can jump. Jump until my muscles and limbs ignite. Jump until I remember that a body is a profound thing, and mine is alive and burning.
Brittany Bronson is a writer based in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Times of London, and others. She has received awards and recognitions from the Nevada Arts Council, the Pinch Literary awards, and TalkPoverty.org. She earned her MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 2014.
Thank you for visiting Humanities Heart to Heart, a program of Nevada Humanities. Any views or opinions represented in posts or content on the Humanities Heart to Heart webpage are personal and belong solely to the author or contributor and do not represent those of Nevada Humanities, its staff, or any donor, partner, or affiliated organization, unless explicitly stated. At no time are these posts understood to promote particular political, religious, or ideological points of view; advocate for a particular program or social or political action; or support specific public policies or legislation on behalf of Nevada Humanities, its staff, any donor, partner, or affiliated organization. Omissions, errors, or mistakes are entirely unintentional. Nevada Humanities makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on these posts or found by following any link embedded in these posts. Nevada Humanities reserves the right to alter, update, or remove content on the Humanities Heart to Heart webpage at any time.