In a giant slip of sanity, I sat in the middle of a ripped bag of groceries. The eggs hit first as the rest came crushing down after it. The eggs, an essential part of any quarantine diet, and hard to come by, are at the bottom of whatever remaining food items I could order from the store. No toilet paper, again. And here, I am losing my stuff over eggs. But they were my eggs! And they meant a lot to me!

But I am unessential, as they say. Just me and my unessential kids, making what we can of this major shift of reality. We are homeschooling, gardening, and pretending we are not yet tired of each other. We are trying to hold on to anything…essential.

So how can I take my insignificant role now and make it matter? What even matters now as the poor get poorer, the brink-of-divorce couples finally take it to court, and Facebook turns into the quarantine police and toilet paper Nazis. And all you want to do is scream into your monitor, “but I still haven’t even bought toilet paper, so stop yelling at me!!!!”

The Facebook Nazi’s were bad enough before, telling everyone what they should or should not post, but geez! Now they have been given a whole new license of saving the world, one condescending #MemePunch at a time. I’m doing my part and yet still feel reprimanded for even ‘thinking’ of driving to my mom’s house to cry in her lap. Stop it, people! Those of us who are doing it right, care. Those who are not, will still not care even if you post it. Remember, people will always read exactly what they want to.

So, here’s what I’m going to do, and anyone who wants to play along, feel free. I’m going to harness my innermost, depression-era loved one. For me, that is my Manna, my mother’s mother. She was a preacher’s kid who grew up in the depression, back when preachers got 10% of nothing, if nothing was all the congregation had. The woman that would wash Reynolds tin-foil and always eat the bread heels. The woman who could make a meal with two cans of beans, a leftover piece of chicken, and some dinner rolls, and you thought it was the finest restaurant in Richmond, and of course, with the finest of company! The woman who made everyone feel essential to her!

For my Manna, when you’ve eaten possum and scraps, then you know the difference between want and need. So, you make sure anything that your love, feels loved. And that everyone always feels… essential. Because survival is not about what you have, but about who you are surviving with. Share on X

I’m going to pray to Manna for guidance. I’m going to take a breath, a deep and cleansing breath. I’m going to pretend with my children. To pretend that we have gone back in time. I’m going to light the hurricane lamps, find my grandma’s old bread recipe, pull out the sewing machine, and I’m going to play! Play Laura Ingles, play back-in-time, whatever you want to call it! The phone is getting dumped. If we’re going to do this, we are going to do this right. I’m leaving the here, and going into the now! We have already lost our minds, might as well enjoy the long-forgotten childlike reproach to life. Let’s play…unessential!

Melanie Winter

Melanie is the Director of Marketing and Content Writer for WinternetWeb Technologies.

Melanie writes content for clients to promote marketing and branding in her web development business. She also writes for a blog and local community history projects and publications. She earned a Bachelors from Virginia Tech in Communications, English, and Religion. Melanie also enjoys writing fiction, spending time with her two daughters, antiquing, gardening, and community volunteering.