Here we are, in Minneapolis, living in my wife, Ashley’s, childhood home. We moved here from New York City six years ago to grow our little family, take care of Ashley’s aging mom, build community and find work. Ashley is a United Church of Christ pastor. We have a 2.5-year-old, August Jane, and a 2-month-old, Alouette Joy. My mother-in-law, Linda, has Parkinson’s Disease and is recovering from a hip replacement surgery.

When our state went into the Covid-19 stay-at-home order at the end of March, Ashley was entering her last trimester of pregnancy. Like so many of us, we shifted our lives to adjust to this new reality. Suddenly, everything in our lives was condensed into our home: nursing care, day care, church services, toddler music class, doctor’s appointments, and work calls.

I wanted to take these photos to make meaning of this situation, and to share the experience of our multigenerational, queer family.

We brought Linda home early from a transitional care unit when it went into lockdown and we couldn’t visit. Now professional caretakers came to the house, risking exposure to help her heal. I could no longer attend any doctor’s appointments with Ashley and her birth plans were thrown into flux. August, who loves people, doesn’t really understand why she can’t swing at the park, go to her day care or touch her friends. She is trying to adapt, but sometimes it catches up with her and she breaks down. Sometimes, under the financial, physical, and spiritual pressure of all of this, so do the rest of us.

Now these strange times are becoming the new normal. Like everyone, we are trying to understand how to connect, be in community, make meaning and a living and raise our kids under these circumstances.

At the end of May, Alouette Joy was born, a day after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police. We brought her home through our smoldering city, erupting against the continuing injustice and brutality. Her birth and this social justice movement represent joy, so we gave her that word as a middle name.

My life as a photojournalist is on pause as I help care for our young children. Some days I feel like a shadow self, fading from view into the life of quarantine, doing the invisible domestic work women do all over the world, every day. My life is smaller—and deeper—than ever before.

We run on little sleep and the fumes of hope in these times. We are grateful to have these kids and each other, to be healthy and have food and this roof over our head. We find joy in knowing that good people everywhere will not rest until there is freedom. In little moments, in tiny dolls and paintbrushes, in these few hands that we can still hold, and the summer season that keeps blooming, anyway.

Angela Jimenez is a freelance visual storyteller based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She works in photography and videography to tell stories for journalism and social justice-oriented non-profit organizations. She has crowd-funded and self-published two photo books: Welcome Home: Building the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (2009), about the worker community of one of the oldest and largest lesbian-feminist gatherings in the world, and Racing Age (2017), a collection of essays and photographs about competitive masters track & field athletes age 60 and older. Her touring exhibit of Racing Age, accompanied by community-based oral history and photo workshops in senior communities, has been supported by an Arts Tour grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This project is a continuation of her contribution to the New York Times' "Still Lives" photographer diary project about photographers living in the time of quarantine. www.angelajimenezphotography.com