Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave's On the Ground Battle Creek series and our ongoing COVID-19 coverage. If you have a story of how the community is responding to the pandemic please let us know here.

The Wert family was heading back this weekend from a Spring Break “cruise” to celebrate their daughter’s senior year at Harper Creek High School.

But, much like the departure, the return trip only took a few minutes since this “cruise” took place at their home and in locations near Battle Creek after their original plans were canceled because of the coronavirus and subsequent state-mandated Stay at Home orders.

With a little creativity and lots of imagination, the family’s 24-acre property which includes part of Harper Creek became the backdrop for the seven-day cruise which was to include time spent in the Bahamas, Jamaica, and the Grand Cayman Islands.

“We were trying to create what we would have experienced on that cruise,” says Christina Wert, a social worker with the Family & Children Services Family Preservation program. “We’re calling this the Saltless Trip and it has a double meaning because everything we’ve done has been in Michigan which is freshwater and we also all agreed to embrace it, count our blessings, and not be salty about it.”

Day One the family of four, which includes Wert’s husband, Kevin, daughter, Jayden, and son, Nehemiah, 12, a student at Harper Creek Middle School, was supposed to be at sea all day which they re-created with drinks around their above-ground pool and enjoying the rest of their property. The next day they were scheduled to be on a private island in the Bahamas. Mother Nature cooperated with the formation of a small swath of land in the creek which they dubbed Mint Island – their private island for the day.

They kayaked on Lee Lake as a substitute for their next day at sea and rode bicycles at Fort Custer State Park and explored there in lieu of the ATV quad ride in Jamaica they would have been on to explore ruins there.

A snorkeling trip to see stingrays which was among the last activities on their cruise took place as scheduled after the family donned wetsuits, put on their snorkel gear and hopped into Harper Creek to swim with a floatie painted with stingrays.

Their meals took on the flavors of the stops along the way and Wert says, “Each day we were looking up recipes that we prepared without making any non-essential trips to the store and using things that were on our property or in our home.”

While the family does hope to eventually go on the real cruise, Wert says they are making the best and the most of their time together in the midst of uncertainty and upheaval.

“We have embraced the time together,” she says. “We’re cooking together and exploring each other’s talents,” she says. “We have all stepped out of our pods and we’re bleeding into each other now.”

Finding ways to come together and stay apart

When schools in Battle Creek shut down and Aisha Walters and her husband, Howard, knew that they’d be working remotely for the duration of the Stay at Home mandate, they found themselves creating new daily routines for themselves and their daughter and son. Their daughter, Amina, 13, attends Lakeview Middle School and son, Hayden, 8, is a student at West Lake Elementary.

“I feel like there are days when we’re on and days when we’re off,” she says of the routine.

Walters is the Regional Director for Communities in Schools in Michigan and her husband is a Program and Research Evaluation Officer with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

“My husband and I are both still working fulltime and trying to connect with our kids and help them stay organized. We coordinate our meetings with our staffs around the needs of our kids.”

This involves refereeing the occasional sibling bickering while doing what they have to do for their jobs. When asked what the biggest challenge has been, she says, “The structure, it’s definitely been hard creating that structure.”

Her job now involves ensuring that support continues to be provided to families in the community through new, adaptive ways while also working with community partners to create funding sources to pay for much-needed resources, such as food and enrichment activities for children, that are continuing to find their way to families who rely on these services. 

For those families who don’t have transportation to get their children to Meet Up and Eat Up free meal distribution sites, Walters says her staff and volunteers, each assigned five families, are collecting food products and basic needs supplies and delivering them to those families.

“Our staff is ensuring that those resources are maintained,” Walters says. “My kids are able to see the behind-the-scenes of what I do for my job.”

Their children’s schools established an online learning component soon after area schools closed. So, although Walters and her husband are not among parents who now find themselves with the additional responsibility of homeschooling, there are Google classroom sessions with teachers and their fellow students that are factored into the family’s daily routine. 

Walters says these sessions include lesson assignments with specific times to complete and submit that work which is supplemented with daily reading. Her daughter is also keeping up with ballet lessons she takes at Ballet Kalamazoo via planned Zoom activities. But, their children say it’s not the same and they really miss not being able to go to school.

“My daughter has indicated that it’s been hard,” Walters says. “The benefit of school is the social component and being able to connect with their friends is not the same on FaceTime. Even though it was Spring Break in my son’s class, he asked the teachers if they could have a Zoom meeting with his class and they got to do Show and Tell and he showed the class our dog. For both of them, there’s been a huge sense of loss.”

Like so many families pre-coronavirus, the Walters would come together at the dinner table each night to talk about what they did that day after having been at school or work. That lack of separation is now weighing on each of them.

“We are finding ways to have intentional connections,” Walters says. “That intentionality has been a challenge and we are finding ways in the house to hide from each other. That has been the challenge. It’s no longer ‘Hey, we’re all coming together’, it’s ‘How can we get away from each other.’ When you’re around people nonstop, you become a little more antsy.”

“We are taking the time to acknowledge the little things that you appreciate about each other because sometimes that can get lost when you’re around people and together all the time.”

Three against one
Schoolwork, bicycle and scooter rides and playing in the backyard are filling the days of Aholibama Alcala’s three boys ages 6, 12 and 13. The Family Coach with Early Childhood Connections at the Calhoun County Intermediate School District, says she has yet to establish a routine and is OK with that.

“I see on Facebook that some people are keeping a routine, but I feel like I will lose that battle because it’s three against one,” she says. “During schooltime, it’s much easier to have a routine, but right now there isn’t one.”

While there have been occasional spats among her three boys, Acala says, for the most part, they get along well and come together and stay apart as they need to. On a recent day, her youngest was watching YouTube while the two older boys were in their rooms playing video games.

However, all three, who attend Battle Creek Public Schools have also been keeping up with their schoolwork via a website operated by the school system. More closely monitoring their assignments, is one of the many unexpected responsibilities Acala is balancing, in addition to doing home visits, that have become temporarily virtual, with the Hispanic families she serves through her job.

But, she says there will likely not be a routine for any of them until life returns to a new normal.

“Last night they made a huge hole in the backyard. They’re boys and I just kind of have to let them be,” Acala says.

Capturing life in the age of the coronavirus

Each one of these families wanted to somehow document a moment of their days and how they were filling them. They reached out to Kathy Szenda-Wilson, who says she's not a professional photographer but has begun an informal project to take photographs of local residents as they navigate a new way of life.

She is one of a number of photographers throughout the United States, most of whom are professionals, who are taking photos from a safe social distance of ordinary citizens through front windows, on porches and in front of their homes, many of them raising money for a specific cause in the process.

The Stay at Home orders impacted Szenda-Wilson’s ability to carry out her duties as co-executive director of BC Pulse in person. She says taking these photos is a way for her to feel connected and feed her soul while also honoring the lives of the people she has contacted and those who have reached out to her to have their pictures taken.

“Based on their feedback, it’s the human connection that they’re missing. They said they didn’t realize how much they missed that,” Szenda-Wilson says. “Lots of these folks have little kids and for them the struggle is real. Many are trying to work remotely with kids at home. For them its connections and reminders of how important we are to each other.” 

Acala says he reached out after seeing some of these photos on Facebook.

“I had seen pictures posted of our neighbor across the street and said I wish I would have known because we would have shown what quarantine looks like. This is our every day,” she says.

The result was a photo Szenda-Wilson took with her cellphone of Acala and her youngest jump roping in front of their house.

Her photo of the Wert’s shows them getting ready for their “Jamaican ruins” bike ride and the Walters are pictured sitting on the front steps of their home.

Szenda-Wilson has already taken more than 25 of these photos which can be seen on a Facebook page she has set up.

“This is such a unique and new experience for all of us and none of us have spent this amount of time isolated and this together,” she says. “Capturing these moments is important so we don’t forget what this feeling is like. This is a historical time and it’s important to have a record.”