“That’s Why They Call It Window Pain”

Abstract

We are both first-generation women PhDs who survived traumatic, abusive childhoods, and found ourselves caretakers of those who once cared for us, in the height of COVID-19 lockdowns. The pandemic complicated our responsibilities in un/comfortable and un/expected ways, as care of parents and academic positions, all differently fragile, required negotiating dis/connections between academia and family, all while the virus and uncertainty hung thick in the air. This article is written as a collaborative travelogue with personal pictures and narratives, to emphasize our traversing back and forth between these worlds, and often pausing on our journeys to rest, to worry, to cry, and to celebrate, in the in-between spaces. Gloria Anzaldúa’s (2000; Anzaldúa & Keating, 2002) discussions of liminalities as uncomfortable and sometimes desirable and sometimes intentional guide our journeys, as does Sara Ahmed’s (2017) emphasis on the power to stretch spaces of discomfort to find pleasure and comfort in traveling through/settling into liminal spaces.