This again? 2023 blizzard lockdown brings déjà vu from 2020 COVID lockdown

Ja'Mira Haynes woke up at 7:20 a.m. Wednesday to her husband running the snowblower outside their Eagan home. She knew it would be a long day — a long week, really, with four of their children stuck at home at least two days as the snow keeps falling. But Haynes was comforted by one fact:

She's done this before.

And there's no way the Great Blizzard Lockdown of 2023 will compare to the even greater COVID Lockdown of 2020.

In 2020, as Haynes and the rest of Minnesota figured out COVID lockdowns and e-learning and ordering everything from Amazon, her husband, Deonte Haynes, was deployed to Iraq with the Minnesota National Guard. He didn't return until fall: After his wife dealt with the anxiety of Iranians firing missiles at Haynes' base, and after she perfected juggling children and school and work.

So a few days stuck at home during a predicted major snowstorm?

Piece of cake.

"COVID taught us all how to pivot really well," Haynes said. "Being hunkered down unexpectedly for so long really helped us master the unexpected — and do it more gracefully than we did in 2020. It taught our kids to develop a game plan when things change."

When the pandemic descended on Minnesota three years ago and Gov. Tim Walz instituted a statewide lockdown, he compared it to "a storm of epic proportions." And we stayed home.

This week the déjà vu is palpable. Schools are closed, the Legislature is closed. Teachers are attempting to instruct students virtually, asking them again and again to remove distracting Zoom backdrops and take themselves off mute. Essential workers again are saving the day: It was health care workers in 2020, snowplow drivers now. Though the analogy is imperfect — COVID remains with us, but these roads will get plowed and spring will come, supposedly — today is an unmistakable echo of three years ago.

"To have it drag on and on and on is certainly very different from a few days, but the lessons are the same," said Shannah Mulvihill, executive director of the nonprofit Mental Health Minnesota. "We've learned how we as individuals manage solitude, and what we need to surround ourselves with to be OK if we can't do the things we normally do."

"As humans, we like to feel we have control over what's happening," she continued. "In a big storm, we don't. In a pandemic, we don't. The only thing we have control over is how we address it personally."

Steve Cwodzinski, a former high school teacher who is now a DFL state senator from Eden Prairie, was stuck at home Wednesday and Thursday, and perhaps longer, with the Legislature adjourned. He hates Zoom meeting culture — dad jokes don't land as well online — but Cwodzinski thought an unplanned break from a breakneck legislative session was a blessing, a perspective-giving breather.

"I had that giddy feeling you had when the principal came on at 1:30, said the buses are arriving and we're going home early," he said.

Wednesday wasn't work-from-home or school-from-home for everybody. In Rochester, the superintendent called a plain old snow day; district policy currently doesn't call for e-learning during weather emergencies. In Minneapolis, though, students were e-learning from Wednesday until Friday. That did not sit well with every parent.

Leif Ueland, who has a sixth- and eighth-grader in Minneapolis schools, believes asynchronous learning — a brief meeting to start the day, then students doing individual work — is a sorry simulacrum of the real thing.

"Online live learning [during COVID] was not ideal, and this is just taking that and taking what was good away from it," he said. "Call it a snow day or don't. If you can't pull off the e-learning, then come on. It's a charade."

At the Haynes household in Eagan, Ja'Mira Haynes, a child support officer with the Dakota County Attorney's office, kept working as interruptions rained in. Her husband, who had called off work to help with the kids, needed help while he was on customer support for his clear aligners. Jalei, a second-grader, came in to talk about her e-learning activity regarding counting money. Deonte Jr., a kindergartner, showed his mom his lips were dry; he needed some balm. Jordynn, a high school junior, asked for her mother's iPad. Alex, a second-grader, took advantage of mom working by watching as much television as possible.

The key to Haynes making it through the Great Blizzard Lockdown of 2023 was simple: Make a plan. She scheduled 15-minute breaks throughout her work day to give the kids some attention: A snack here, a hug there. She set out a charcuterie board for grazing. She scheduled reading-and-rest time early in the afternoon. She gave the kids grace on screen time; they could play Roblox on the PlayStation as long as they kept it on mute.

"We're rockin' and rollin' today," she said. "COVID helped sharpen all of us a little bit. It taught me to engage with my kids to lower their anxiety about the unexpected. So when they grow up and experience things that are unprecedented, they can say, 'Let me get a game plan and move forward, and not be in the corner crying.' "