Over the past few months, our homes have become workplaces, schools, and the backdrop for the majority of our lives. In this episode, our storytellers consider how to adjust to being stuck at home.

Our first story is from psychologist (and Story Collider board member!) Ali Mattu. Cooped up with his young outdoor-kid daughter, indoor-kid Ali decides they should venture out into the wild together.

After Ali’s story, our host speaks with Yi-Ling Liu, a journalist based in China, about how families in China have changed post-COVID-19.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of “Home” on Monday!

Story Transcript

When people find out I'm from California, they ask me about the great outdoors, Yosemite and Joshua tree surfing on the Pacific Coast and I'm not that kind of person at all.

Clinical psychologist Ali Mattu is host of The Psych Show, co-host of PBS’s Self-Evident, and an expert on Netflix + Vox’s The Mind Explained: Anxiety, HBO’s Doctor Commentaries, and A&E’s The Employables.

I was always an indoor kid, most comfortable playing Mario Kart and Streetfighter and watching Star Trek. It just felt comfortable at home, safe, secure, like I can do whatever I want to do. There were times when I went outside and it was usually to Burger King where I would take advantage of the limited time. Ninety nine cent special for the Whopper.

I got a lot of Whoppers because that limited time special lasted for many, many years. My dad was really worried about me.

He was worried that I didn't have any dreams or ambitions because I was always just stuck at home inside and he was really worried I wouldn't graduate from high school. He told me this when I graduated from high school, so I did OK, but I'm beginning to understand what was going on in his head, because now I'm a dad, I have a three-year-old daughter, and I worry about her and I worry about parenting because she's nothing like me at all. I'm not the only one who says that. My parents say that they they notice how she has so much energy and is always moving around like the Tasmanian devil, just like our home is in such a state of chaos after she's been playing for a few minutes. Meanwhile, I was just happy to be plopped down in one spot and didn't really make a mess, didn't really do those things. And the only time my daughter reminds me of myself is when she's pissed off. She furrows her brow and her forehead becomes really pronounced and her eyes look just like me when I'm upset. Do you realize how weird and messed up it is to only see yourself in your child when they're pissed off and especially like pissed off at you?

That's what it's like to be a parent. It's trying to figure out how to raise someone who's related to you, maybe looks like you, but is nothing like you inside.

One of the things I've learned is she's very much an outdoor kid. I need to take her outside. I need to let her work out all of her energy. I need her to do things outside. So we do indoor stuff like we love The Lion King. She's super into lions. She has a little lion named Lion.

I made a vote for naming that lion, Lionel. It didn't stick. So Lion comes with us everywhere.

We we watch Lion King, we sing along to Lion King. We go to the zoo, we we go to the beach and reenact scenes from The Lion King. It's been awesome to be able to expose her to the outdoors just because she gets all of her energy out and then coronavirus hit.

And we can't go outdoors, we're stuck inside. We've lost that choice, and in some ways, all my dreams have come true because now everyone's an indoor kid. Turns out it's not cool to be an indoor kid when you're being forced to be one. I'm seeing myself reflected in my daughter's face all the time right now. She's not well, she's not doing OK in this scenario in coronavirus times. And I've realized I need to take her one more, take their.

I'm seeing myself I'm seeing my face reflected to my daughter all the time now, she's not well, she's angry, upset.

This poor three-year-old girl does not understand what's happening in the world. She wants to go outside, she wants to play and she can't. And parenting her in this world feels like trench warfare, I'm showing up every single day to fight this battle. And there's like no progress at all. There's no hope that this conflict is going to come to an end. Supplies are running low. And every night I go to bed waking up knowing that I'm going to fight the same battle. And for what?

So I've been looking for an escape again. Being in California, lots of open space, one of the things that I've been doing with my daughter is going to these big outdoor state parks, these big county parks. And it's actually really nice because not a lot of people are out there. There's a lot of open space we can socially distance from each other. And my daughter loves it. The ideal day is we go out, she runs around. I give her a snack, she we go back in the car and she falls asleep. And then I get to just relax in the car and goof off on Instagram for a little while. And just for a moment, forget that I am a parent who's parenting in the pandemic.

So this one day, we're going to one of our favorite parks and I make the genius decision to let Apple Maps guide me instead of Google Maps. Now, what's the difference? Well, one is a beautiful app that seamlessly integrates across this ecosystem of devices and has this wonderfully soothing voice. The other actually gets you to where you want to be efficiently and accurately.

Apple Maps decided to take us instead of to the base of this this big outdoor park that's around a mountain to the back of it, through this canyon uphill and to this secluded rear entrance that I didn't even know existed.

And so we get out and I'm like, OK, I guess this is cool. And at first I felt very safe because no one else was there. This is one of the weird things, like I've always been an indoor kid and so I always kind of feel safe when there's not a ton of people around. But in coronavirus times it feels so much more comfortable when there aren't people around. You can kind of breathe a sigh of relief because you don't have to be as on guard as you usually have to. So we're walking in. We're about 10 minutes into this trail, this massive canyon. I don't know where we're at, but I'm feeling good. And my daughter sees a sign and she points at it and says, “Lions.”

And I'm like, OK, well, she says that about everything. She sees lions everywhere.

So she sees a sign that says “Lions.” And I look at it and in big letters it says, “Mountain lions live here.” All right, what does that mean? I keep reading and apparently this whole environment has a ton of mountain lions in it, but then it says, “To stay safe, travel in large groups.” And now I start freaking out. It's just me and my daughter. I haven't seen anyone else. And then it says, “Make loud sounds.”

And we've been kind of walking silently and just kind of enjoying the scenes. So now I'm even more nervous. And then it says, “Mountain lions like to eat little kids.”

Now, it probably did say it in those words, but that's what was communicated to me.

And now I'm freaking out, because from the moment we entered this park, I've been hearing a rustling in the bushes all around me, I thought they were squirrels. Now, my indoor kid mind is going to a place of those are mountain lions. I think, “You're about to be eaten. You need to get the hell out of here.”

So I grabbed my daughter and I say, “OK, we're going to play a game. We're going to walk backwards and we're going to sing a song,” and she says, “What song are we going to sing?”

And I say, we're going to sing Hakuna Matata. What a wonderful phrase. So we start screaming out, “Hakuna Matata!” I'm trying to keep my daughter relaxed.

I put her on my shoulders so we appear bigger and we back out of that park. We're totally fine. Didn't get eaten. I don't know if those were actually mountain lions, but for a while I stopped going outside. I stopped going to the outdoors to the detriment of my daughter and our home, which again, looks like a disaster.

And I realized I need to do something about this. I need to I need to face my fears so we start going out again. And I notice these warning signs are all over the place in California. And we go to a park and my daughter's playing near this bush. And I recognize that Bush and I see these three leaves and remembering the sign I looked at on my way into this park. And I take a picture and I send it to my friend Lohan, who's the biggest outdoor kid I know. And I ask, “Is this poison oak?”

And he responds and he says, “Dude, not only is that poison oak, but you have spotted poison oak in one of the places that's hardest to spot in a season where almost everything looks like poison oak. Amazing job.” So I grab my daughter and I say, “You can't play there. That's not safe.” And I feel so happy because for the first time in a long time, I have a win and it feels so good to win at something.

Thank you.