We Have it Totally Under Control: A Pandemic Essay Collection

By Alison Roth

It started with a simple question: how has the coronavirus pandemic changed your life?

We asked, sixteen writers answered – and this essay collection was born.

We Have it Totally Under Control is a literary time capsule of sorts. Authored by people from many walks of life, this anthology covers topics from cancer to unemployment to grocery shopping. Some essays are joyful; others are so heartbreaking they’re difficult to read. But these essays all have one common thread: they’re written by humans who’ve lived through one of the most difficult periods in recent history, and who had the courage and vulnerability to share their stories.

You’ll read about:
•What it's like to live through a pandemic with postpartum depression, cancer, or an ex-spouse.
•The history of the handshake – and what the future holds for this timeless gesture.
•Raising a million dollars to end homelessness during one of the most difficult economic periods in history.
•A family who rebuilt beautiful relationships after decades of trauma.

...and much more.

The pandemic has changed so many lives, and We Have it Totally Under Control chronicles just a few of them. But there’s a good chance that in at least one of these stories, you’ll see echoes of your own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alison Roth
• Release date: Mar 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005968250

Alison Roth

Alison Roth loves helping people tell their stories. A former journalist, she currently works in marketing near Ann Arbor, Michigan. In her spare time, she enjoys mountain biking, camping, and quarantining with her husband, two children, and elderly cat. She occasionally writes personal essays and short stories.

Book preview

We Have it Totally Under Control

A Pandemic Essay Collection

Copyright 2021 Alison Roth

Published by Alison Roth at Smashwords

Co-edited by Shannon Janeczek

Cover art by John Boissy

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please download an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not download it, or it was not downloaded for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and download your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

Disclaimer

This essay collection is a work of creative nonfiction. All the narratives in this book are mostly true, although perhaps slightly embellished for better storytelling. In some cases, names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.

A Note from the Editor

Self-publishing a book was not on my pandemic bingo card.

In March 2020, when the world shut down, I only had the emotional capacity to focus on a few key things: not getting COVID, paying the bills, and maintaining civility in my locked-down household. I was not one of those people who made sourdough starters. But as the months droned on, there was an old hobby I began to pick back up: my writing.

I do write for a living. But writing for work and writing for myself are two entirely different things.

I started a personal blog, musing on topics that are very personal to me, like parenting, running, and quitting drinking. (I promise I am more exciting than I sound.) As the pandemic unfolded further, I gained the confidence to share these personal essays with a few small networks and submitted to various other pandemic anthologies. One of them published my work. This gave me a bit of a natural high, and I wanted others to feel the same. That’s when I developed the idea for this book.

(If you’re reading this in the future, the title of this anthology comes from then-president Donald Trump’s reference to the COVID pandemic, which was definitely not totally under control at the time.)

These essays are written by my friends. Some of them write for a living. Some haven’t written since college. The goal was to make this collection inclusive and give them a chance to be heard. The topics you’ll read about range from depression to cancer to employment to religion to … cats. Some are brief, while others test the limits of the word count. Some are lighthearted, some are heartbreaking. But they all have one common thread: they’re written by humans who are living through one of the most difficult periods in recent history, and who had the courage and vulnerability to share their stories.

So thank you to the amazing contributors who poured their hearts and souls – and probably a few cups of coffee or other adult beverages – into making this anthology possible. To ensure that it was available for free, they did this work without any compensation (as did I). If you know any of these writers, feel free to buy them a socially distanced beverage.

Thank you to my co-editor Shannon Janeczek; to John Boissy, who designed the beautiful cover art; to Amanda Szot for her publishing guidance; and to Tony Targan for his general legal advice.

And, of course, thank you to my husband Chris, and my kids, for putting up with me working all weekend, every weekend, on this project – and for leaving me alone whenever I threatened to stick the self-publishing software in places that aren’t family-appropriate.

Oh, and that cat essay? It’s mine.

Alison Roth

Editor, We Have it Totally Under Control

Table of Contents

A Note from the Editor

Grocery Shopping in the Time of Coronavirus: Tracey Boone

Modern Family: Laura Spitzak

Handshake People: Rick Chambers

The Making of a Mother: Alyssa Velekei Lada

Pandemic Street Scenes: Katie Walter

Wait and See: Andy Grimm

Delicious Disasters: Emily Fredrix Goodman

Sail, Not Drift: John Kerr

A Million-Dollar Year: Barbara Cecil

Stranger Than Fiction: Tony Targan

Intent: Marisa McLeod

Day Job: Dawn Keech

Today’s Koan: Emily Olson

Two COVID Divorces – A Love Story: Florence T.

Dear Doctor: Addason T.

Year of the Cat: Alison Roth

About the Editors

Grocery Shopping in the Time of Coronavirus

By Tracey Boone

I’ll let you in on a secret: I love grocery shopping.

As a kid, growing up in small-town Michigan, going to the IGA on Friday evening was an event. My mother would pack us into the car and off we’d go. Once we arrived, mom got a cart, and we were summarily dismissed with a dollar each. We would take our largess across the street to the Ben Franklin and buy little paper bags full of candy – which would be gone well before we settled in to watch The Donny and Marie Show later that night. As much fun as putting ourselves into a near diabetic coma was, I always liked meeting up with mom somewhere in the aisles of the IGA.

As mom threw Hamburger Helper and Kool-Aid into the cart, I noted prices, gazed at the tiny nook of Maybelline makeup, and vainly tried to peek back into the stockroom. But mostly I just loved being with my mother for a few uninterrupted minutes. I would follow her around with a notepad and plan what food I would buy when I lived in my own house. At home, on my ancient typewriter, I typed lists – new first names for myself, the names of all who had ever displeased me. You know, the usual. But grocery lists were my favorite.

In college, my roommates and I turned grocery shopping into a competitive sport. We each had about ten dollars to buy food for the entire week. We carried a calculator, clipped coupons, and tried to find the best deals. It was a competition to spend as much as possible without going over, yet not buy so much we couldn’t carry it back to our shag-carpeted student dive. We lived on cornflakes, store-brand pot pies, tuna, and refried beans. During our senior year, we had access to not only a car, but also a brand-new Meijer.

When I started my career, I finally had the luxury of not counting every penny, which led to quite a few shopping sprees of the grocery variety. I loved cooking new things, but my main pleasure was strolling the aisles of whatever grocery I found myself in. The complicated meals I planned for my new husband required more than just Meijer and Kroger. I needed the farmer’s market, the bakery around the corner, the Middle Eastern market, Target, and the bulk food store that sold nothing but spices and nostalgic