Life, Interrupted, Part 2

More stories of Richmonders coping during the pandemic

Tania Fernandez

Photographer

Fernandez (whose photography business is Tania del Carmen Photography) and her filmmaker husband, Julian Pozzi, have retooled their vocations to tell the stories of Richmonders sequestered at home by COVID-19. The aim is to eventually use the images and stories as a document of this time, although what shape that will take is to be determined.

I started having conversations with my photographer friends even before the self-isolation began. Is it worth the risk of getting sick? We all have families. It’s such a high-exposure job, especially with weddings and gatherings with people coming from all over the country, bumping into you, very physical work, touching people. I was kind of wondering how to bring up this subject: How do we gently and specifically ask people not to come because we’re concerned for our personal health and safety? Then the point became moot, because everything suspended. We’re having clients reconsidering their summer weddings. Even though the spring’s been completely decimated, people are looking at summer wondering if it’ll be safe. And we appreciate clients who understand the challenge we face of how long we can continue not having regular work.  

The commercial work is in hibernation, which gives the opportunity of going back to my personal practice. We’re dealing, too, with our own family life and being all sequestered together. With the schools closed until September, we’re adapting like many parents with kids on up to college age who are now living at home. 

The priority now is to document this moment. We’re collaborating with EVERGIB agency’s Rachel Scott Everett and Brian Gibson. They’re both talented and creative, and we’ve partnered with them before. We’re neighbors. 

We were having a porch happy hour — at a distance — music and dancing, all from a sidewalk and on the porches. We started talking about this idea, and Rachel and Brian wanted to be a part of this, creating the design and a larger website and making this into a team effort.  

We have our subjects fill out a questionnaire about who they are and how they’re living and working through this situation, and through the responses we'll start curating, to be inclusive of what stories are missing. 

—As told to Harry Kollatz Jr.

Sydney Baril

Bride to be

Baril, 26, and her fiancé, Bailey Mountcastle, had to postpone their April 11 wedding at Upper Shirley Vineyards.

It was going to be a huge wedding with 200 guests and a big band, all the food and a party afterwards. The wedding would have been April 11, and going from getting married in a couple weeks to now postponing really left me stubborn in the beginning. At first, we thought maybe we could still go ahead as planned anyway. I thought, “I’ve worked too hard for this, we’ve come too close, and I’ve really been waiting for this day,” so it was impossible to me that I would wait. But I got some perspective after that. As I watched things get worse on the news, the wedding started to seem kind of small in relation to everything that was going on. It was getting to the point where I was like, “This is not the wedding that I wanted,” because everyone was really nervous. My mom was talking about how we would socially distance at the wedding, and I was like, “This is just not it,” and I had to come to terms with that. 

Our plans are very much up in the air right now. Because we don’t know how long this virus will last, trying to finalize a Plan B is difficult. We’re thinking we’re going to hold a less formal wedding with about 60 people in the fall. It was just hard to get all of our vendors back together on the same day, and I had decided to do something smaller and less extravagant, because I was just kind of tired and sad. The thought of trying to plan it all over again was a lot.  

Now I just want to get married, and I want the right people there, because there was a minute where I wasn’t going to have that, and it really upset me. So, when things had calmed down, I actually felt relieved and excited. I haven’t really given much thought to design or details of the new wedding; I just think it’s going to be simple and more about the people and the moment.

—As told to Nicole Cohen 

Lori Bangs

Small-business owner

Lori Bangs, 37, lives in Highland Springs with her husband, John, and four children, ages 6 months to 10 years.

Some days are harder than others. Jon and I usually split the children. He entertains the younger ones while I work with the older ones. Sometimes we switch — especially when the older kids are doing math! We work as a team. That’s how we handle everything in life.

When it comes to explaining our current situation and the coronavirus to our kids, we’re very open. We watch the news every morning and had been talking to them about it for two weeks before this big shutdown happened. We outlined the seriousness of the virus and why we are taking the precautions that we are. They take it very seriously.

My family is Catholic and attends St. John’s Catholic Church in Highland Springs, where Mass has been suspended until further notice. Being away from our church is hard because we miss the community aspect of it a lot. Masses will still be held, but the priest will perform them privately. Luckily, there are many other things that we can do. Prayer at this time is our No. 1 priority.

Jon and I also own a small business. We call it an “industrial handyman” business. We fix small things in big factories. We handle the little stuff so they can worry about bigger things. So far, we have been able to stay in business. It’s stressful not knowing if our customers are going to shut down and send us home someday, but it’s important to stay focused on the positive. It seems like there is a lot of help being put in place by the government, and that has made it a little less of a stress burden.

My husband and I have great faith in this country; it’s been amazing how we have all banded together in this time. It’s really wonderful that people of different political parties, religions and walks of life have decided to work together when it seemed all we could do was fight a month ago.  

—As told to Nicole Cohen

Lonnie B

DJ and cancer survivor

Right before all this stuff hit, I ran out of blood pressure medicine, and my doctor had retired. So I had to get a new doc and all this stuff just to get my medicine refilled. And I didn't think I was going to be able to do it with all the COVID stuff, but a doctor’s office was able to get me in and give me my medicine. So, yeah, outside of that, man, I'll take no chances — if I don’t have to go outside the house, I’m staying in.  

I think a lot of DJs are going live online to take people's minds off of COVID and all those other things. And as much as I want to be on the side of taking people's minds off of COVID, I’ve actually been enjoying listening to other DJs myself. I do believe that this is the time to prepare for tomorrow or what’s to come, so I'm spending time watching what everybody else is doing, analyzing and thinking, “What can be my unique approach?”

I'm actually curious as to what tomorrow has in store because, in the perfect world, we would think that on this certain day, they're going to pour the water on top of the wicked witch’s head, and ding-dong, the witch is dead. But I don’t know if that’s gonna happen. I don't know when we'll be in a position where we can go back to having 500 to 1,000 people around each other and be cool with it. So it's hard for me to prepare for, you know, that date. I'm more focused on just trying to stay healthy enough to make it to the other side of this hole. 

—As told to Craig Belcher 

Jennah Fisher

Dental assistant

I am a dental assistant who has seen my hours cut from 40 a week to five, and now I’m not working at all. I’ve had to pull my kids out of day care, and I spend my days cleaning and trying to keep them occupied at our home in Hanover County. Because they are so young, they don’t fully understand why they can’t go to day care or Grandma and Grandpa’s, but I tell them that the world is sick right now, and we need to stay home. They seem to go with that.  

With the loss of income, I have been forced to file for unemployment, which is a hassle because so is everyone else, which is making this process take longer. Having my hours decreased has been a little depressing. I’m just trying to get things done around the house that I normally don’t have time for. I am not worried about my job security because once we get through this, I know my office will be really busy, and I am eager to get back to work.

—As told to Nicole Cohen (Note: Cohen is Fisher's sister-in-law.)

Harold Claros

Spanish teacher at Varina High School

Claros has tried to maintain a sense of normalcy for his students since the coronavirus outbreak prompted an early end to the school year. As the school system refines its online teaching strategy, he’s continued to roll out new lessons for his students.

I was really reinforcing the positives before the school closure and saying, "We'll get through this, and I'll see you guys soon, I'm really excited to see you guys again."

Even when the school closures were announced, they were asking me, "What's going to happen?" It was a lot of reassuring them that I have it under control.

Putting together online lessons was a little harder than what I expected. Since I'm a younger teacher, I’m extremely tech-savvy, but certain things just weren't working for me. Not that it wasn’t physically working, it just wasn’t working as to how I wanted to construct a classroom. What I actually did was, I created an audio lesson plan so you would play it, and then I would provide all these things within the folder as if you were in an actual classroom with me.

I've received messages from students of mine, telling me the lesson plans are so easy, and "This is the best I've received so far," "You’re not making it boring," "It's easy for me to follow," so that's going to be able to assist me in the weeks to come, where that positive feedback will only make the next lesson even better.

—As told to Rodrigo Arriaza

Gabriel Santamaria

Podcaster and bassist for The Flavor Project

I’m part of a podcast called “The Hustle Season” that has been continuing to put out content, but in different ways, and I’ve been gigging online, obviously. I’ve done a couple of livestreams already. This has been unique, different — it’s not an audience; it's like a camera there, you know? And you have to squint to see responses. [Laughs] That’s different.

So we've been keeping busy doing that, then just what everybody else is doing, watching a bunch of shows and just trying to keep busy — staying informed but not trying to get sucked into the news. There's a lot, you know? 

I've been doing some side gigs sometimes, doing this painting gig, but not that many times a week. I had to apply for unemployment since they allowed giggers and freelancers to get the benefits of unemployment. I haven’t gotten my first check or my PIN yet, but I'm waiting on it. But, you know, a lot of people have done the same thing, obviously. 

—As told to Craig Belcher

Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.