In Part 2 of “Home,” we’ll share two more stories about how storytellers are adapting their home lives during social distancing. Our first story is from Chicago-based storyteller and Story Collider producer Lily Be. In her story, Lily Be decides she needs company during the pandemic -- in the form of a bearded dragon.

In our second story, Tazmin Uddin develops a new appreciation for having her big family all under one roof during the pandemic.

If you missed Part 1 of this episode, check it out here! And stay tuned for our next episode, “Community,” on Friday!

Story Transcripts

Story 1: Lily Be

If there is one thing I know I am not, it is full of shit, so I'm not going to lie to y'all. Early March, when rumors of the pandemic started stirring, I was not worried about it. When they locked down Chicago, I was OK with it. Look, I moved out of my house when I was 15 years old. I had a baby by the time I was 17 and at 18, I moved across the country with no one but my baby and his dad. And by 21, I moved back to raise my son. You want to talk social distancing, quarantine, have a baby at 17 and commit to raising it. I was made for this.

Lily Be is a mom, nanny, storyteller, show creator, educator, and game developer based in Chicago.

In fact, I was better off post pandemic lockdown than I was before. My employers had agreed to pick me up and drop me off from work, saving me money on Ubers and transportation period. My now 24-year-old son had agreed to do my laundry and my groceries, okay. Coronavirus seemed to be a come-up for me.

I was fine until about week three. I mean, I was still fine with it by week three, but in week three, I was more in my head.

I think a lot of people were asking ourselves those existential "Why am I here, what is my purpose? How long will this last? Why did I marry you here? You're y kids? Oh no. What did I do with my life?" Right. All those questions. The earworm that was that was playing in my head at the time was "You're going to die alone, Lily. And it stemmed from an e-mail that I received in 2016 from a then friend I had a falling out with on Facebook who was mad. And wouldn't stop e-mailing me. And in one of the last emails he said to me, I was going to die alone and I wrote it off as like you're psycho, so full of shit.

But now. End of March 2020. Where I could catch coronavirus, easily die in my apartment, and nobody would find me until they reported the smell.

I a single 42-year-old asexual Afro Latino who lives on the west side of Chicago, who doesn't know her neighbors, and who a lot of people don't know where I live -- nobody knows where I live. Very few. While I may be social on the Internet and very social in public, if I don't show up to a place or I don't show up to an event, people just assume I'm doing something else. I'm a very extroverted loner.

I started to worry. I asked my son to check on me, and he's like, "No, I'm not check on you every day, you're going to be fine." I started joining more groups. I got myself more busy on the Internet. But again, if I don't show up or post or something, people just assume I'm doing something else.

This wasn't helping to get this earworm out of my head, this fear that was settling in.

So I just figured I got to get something to keep my mind off of this thing that I'm afraid of will happen.

And they say thoughts become things or just, if I kept thinking it, it was probably going to happen, so you know what? How do I start? Let's get busy doing something else. And I decided, OK, I got it. I'll get a pet. And I did.

And on April 14, 2020, Lyle the Bearded Dragon moved into my home.

He was the size of my pinky in a 20-gallon tank that my son dropped off, and right away I fell in love with him. Love at first sight. I started doing things for this bearded dragon that I didn't even do for my flesh-and-blood son. Like a housing upgrade within a week.

Should've seen the look on my son's face when I asked him to go pick up a tank and the south side of Chicago, 55-gallon tank. "Can you go pick up this thing?"

"What? What are we talking about?"

But he did it because he knew how much this lizard meant to me. I remember, when I first had my son, how people suggested that I should make him baby food because baby food, organic baby food is so good for them. All you got to do is boil carrots, mash 'em down, put them in jars, stick 'em in the fridge. I was like, "What, are you crazy? Nobody got time for that." But you know what I had time for in a pandemic? Building a three-tier mealworm farm so that Lyle didn't have to wait for his food to come from no big-box pet store. No, he got that gourmet shit.

I also was meal prepping foods for him that I myself don't eat like Swiss chard and endive and dandelion greens. I mean, Lyle was living it up.

So know this, people: that I knew something was up in mid to late June when our little bath time poop game didn't end in him pooping in the water while I went and got his towel. I came back to the sink and he hadn't pooped and I was like, "Wait a second. You always poop when I turn around to go get your towel."

It started out as a frustration, but because it happened every time, I just made it a game where I'm like, “OK, here I go to get your towel” and poop! I never saw him do it.

He's a little bathroom shy. But when that didn't happen in June, I got concerned and then he started losing weight and I had to find an exotic pet vet to see him. I took him in and I couldn't even go into the room with him. I had to sit in the car and wait and sit in my son's car just worried.

The vet's like "what is eating?" And I was like, "Well, you know, all these vegetables and greens and and mealworms that I breed for him." And wouldn't you know it, it was the mealworms that almost killed him?

She sent me home with an antibiotic in case he had a stomach infection and a stool loosener.

And with every day that passed, because they needed a stool sample, every day that passed and he didn't poop, I got more and more worried. My heart sank more and more in my stomach.

And this isn't something that you can really just announce on Facebook during a pandemic. Don't nobody want to send no prayers out to your damn lizard. And I didn't want to bother people with that kind of like request. So I dealt with this by myself. When people asked me how Lyle was, I didn't want to get into too much about him because I just felt it wasn't important, all things considered. Right. So I just waited. And waited for this poo-poo. When it finally came, it was the most beautiful, glorious little poop I'd ever seen. I scooped it up into the container they gave me and I called his big brother like "Your little brother pooped, your little brother pooped!"

My son's like, "OK, Mom, I'm at work, can you not?" And I was like, “You don't understand, your little brother's going to be OK! It's a big, beautiful poop."

And he hung up on me. I took the poop in, it tested negative for parasites, another win. And then I put him on a diet of different proteins, same greens. When I tell you that Lyle is like my soul mate, I'm not lying. I don't feel like I'm lying. Because we're so much alike in that we love our space. Like he can't have anyone in his space. I can't have anyone in my space. We appreciate the people that nourish us and love us and care for us.

And we both know that dying alone is not the worst way to die. It's being full of shit when we die that's far worse than that. I'm kidding. It's that there's no point in worrying how I'm going to die. It's just making sure that while I'm alive, I'm caring for and making an impact on the people and things that really matter. And thanks to Lyle coming into my life in 2020, I won't lose sight of that.

Story 2: Tazmin Uddin

It's a typical day in Haque-Uddin-Rodriguez household. That's a dozen of us living across three floors. It's a Wednesday. I got home from a day of work teaching two classes to our seniors, planning different youth activities. I played with my nephews. I had dinner with the family and, by 10:00 p.m., I'm in bed enjoying some well-earned rest.

Through the Rumi Center for Spirituality and the Arts, Tazmin Uddin has learned to combine her spiritual and poetic journeys and see writing as a form of spiritual practice. You can find her musings on Instagram @soulful_reflections.

Typically, my phone is on Do Not Disturb once it hits 10:00, but my phone rings. Who the heck passed my Do Not Disturb? Who's calling me?

So I look at my phone and it's my younger brother calling from downstairs. It's 12:30. I answered the phone and I'm like, “What do you want? Why are you calling me? It's past midnight.”

And he says he needs my dad's paperwork.

I'm like, “What do you need the paperwork for?”

And he's like, “Just come down. I'll explain.”

So I roll out of bed, I get the paperwork and I go downstairs. And of course, even in my state of not being completely awake, I notice his big Pats banner because he's a traitor.

I give him the paperwork. He asks for my phone. I give him all of that and I'm asking him what's going on? What happened?

He tells me, “Remember at dinner time we were talking about borders closing because of the coronavirus?”

And I'm like, “Yeah. That's not happening anytime soon.”

And he's like, “Guess what? The border is just closed in Europe and Asia is next.”

My dad is in Bangladesh. He went on vacation to BD after like 10 years and he's going to do some shopping and things of that sort.

In my head I'm like, “I just spoke to Dad.” Like that morning before I went to work, I gave him the shopping list for my cousin's wedding, gave him the measurements for my brothers, told him explicitly that my sister and I want the latest style sarees and that they should be long-sleeve blouses. We don't want the petticoat style. We want the style with the pants.

And he said fine. Now, all of a sudden, we're calling him and we're like, “Hey, Dad, guess what? Pack your bags. You're coming home.”

My dad doesn't argue. He's like, “Okay. Fine. That's cool.”

So while my brother is taking care of everything, I'm just making a mental list of all of the things that I have to do at work the next day. I need to email the program participants, letting them know that we're suspending programs. But the most important thing I need to remember to do is touch base with the university to let them know that, hey, since we're suspending programs, we don't need the space anymore.

And it's getting close to 1:30 so I turned to my brother and I'm like, “Hey, listen. Can we just agree that you and Mij will take care of the tickets and just send them my way once everything is ready? I have work tomorrow. I need sleep.”

He agrees, so I get my phone from him. I go up. I knock out. They'll take care of everything.

I'm at work the next day. I've sent out all of the emails I have to and I'm looking at the time and it's noon. I haven't heard anything from my brother or my cousin and so I shoot them a message. I'm like, “Hey, did you guys book the ticket?”

My cousin responds. He says yes. He forwards me the ticket. And I'm looking at it and things look good. It's Dhaka airport. The flight is in four hours.

I look closer and that's not dad's name. That's really not his name. I really want to yell at my brothers but of course I'm at work. I can't yell while I'm at work, so I shoot him a message and I'm like, “Yo, you didn't check the name?”

And he's like, “Not really.”

And I'm like, “Well, guess what? The name's wrong.”

I shoot a message to our family group chat because big family means even though we live in the same house we have to have a group chat, like what's up?

So there's seven people in that group chat. I messaged them and I'm like, “Hey, who's free to get on hold with the airlines?”

The traitor responds and he's like he's at work but he'll get on hold with the airlines. One of my other brothers who's at home says he'll do the same.

I'm like, “Okay.” I really don't want to get involved but I guess they've got this now. I can take a step back again.

Meanwhile, my sister is letting us handle it. She's not responding to any of the messages.

And two hours go by and finally I get a message from my brother. Three people on hold later, they finally have the new ticket. I ask him to send it to me because, after what just happened, I don't trust him.

So he sends it to me. I look at it. The name is correct. I checked my dad in and things are good. So that's taken care of. I'm like relief.

A couple of days later, my dad gets home. And, in typical Haque-Uddin-Rodriguez fashion, we're there to greet him, because somehow that same day he managed to get all of our shopping done.

So we're just there in the living room, two suitcases open, packages of clothes all over the place, packages just being handed off one person to the next, and everyone's gotten what they need. My nephews are happy to have Nana home again and my sister and I got the color of the saree we wanted, not quite the style, but I guess the important thing is that my dad is home.

So we're just settling back into the routine. My sister is back in her apartment. I don't need to pay bills anymore since dad is home. I don't need to take care of any of the mail. He's got that.

And one of the first things I notice once things start to settle down is I haven't seen my nephews in a couple of days. Usually, they come down for at least one meal or just to play around and things of that sort. So I message my sister and she responds.

She's like, “Oh, Dad just traveled. He's much older.” My sister's a nurse so she's saying that she's dealing with patients who are potentially COVID positive so she doesn't really want to expose anyone. She's kind of been self-isolating, staying away from the kids as well.

I asked her like is the virus something that we should be worrying about? And she's like, “Listen, I'm running out of Lysol wipes. If you guys have, leave them in the hall so when I get home I can wipe everything down as I come upstairs.”

And I'm like, “Oh, I guess this is something we should be taking seriously.” We've been suspending programs but there are a dozen of us so we're not really feeling the isolation. We have all the entertainment in the house. But I guess this is something that's serious. And my sister, being on what now we call the frontlines, is obviously hearing things firsthand.

I'm looking back at it and I'm just like I didn't think things would get that bad, but this is the first time since my sister started working that I'm actually hearing her worried and voice concern.

And even though I know that we will never, ever experience the stress that my sister is going through, I know that as a family, we worked together to get my dad home. And my sister, no matter what happens, she's got this because we've got her. That's what we, the Haque-Uddin-Rodriguez clan, do. Thank you.