a reflection of a year

Beware the Ides of March was a common saying in our house and I am sure I was making a joke about in March of 2020 as we prepared to celebrate my nieces birthday which falls on the 15th.  Schools were closed on that Friday the 13th for a workshop day and I was busy making my nieces favorite bread for her birthday celebration the next day.  There was a feeling of impending doom as Covid cases were on the rise and everything felt tenuous and uneasy.

We would spend the next day celebrating my niece with kids running around and family. My parents talked about their trip to Flordia that they were planning on taking the next week. We ate lunch from a shared buffet and people made side comments about how nice it would be to have a week off from work.   Several hours later we were celebrating the birthday of a dear friend and his family. Our kids sharing ice cream sundaes and barbecuing ribs.  At 7pm we got the call. The schools would be closed for 2 weeks. An hour later I got an email that my office was closed for the next 4 weeks. 

And so that warm day in March became the last day in a year that we gathered without concern.

A year later as we prepare to gather again for my nieces birthday, this time with just my brother and his family and my parents, who have been vaccinated, it  is with both joy and continued worry. It has been a year of home schooling and working from home. Of time spent together as a family, canceled events and missing our friends.  We still did so much, wearing masked, socially distanced, online.  I want to say what we gained has outweighed what we lost. That the increased time as a family, board games, movie nights and magical visits from fairies and bunnies and Santa will be what we remember.  

But I would be lying. Instead my kids have learned to wear masks, seen a country divided on what to do and listened to the school board for our district fight amongst themselves about what to do.  They saw the worst in people more then they saw the best. And the new found anxiety of getting sick, of losing someone, of never being able to play sports again or return to the stage.  And we did our best as the adults to safely guide them through the storm but we were drowning to.  Overtaxed and overwhelmed. Struggling to maintain friendships, to get work completed while also teaching elementary school math. To figure out a new way to shop for groceries and navigating who, if anyone, should be allowed in our bubble.

I read an article when this all started that talked about how the adults get to chose how our kids will remember this time, and that is kind of true. But our kids are not unaware of what is happening around them. Will they grow up seeing more what divides us then connects us? Will they be fearful of the world?   

I look back on this year and I can not remember how we made it through.  But we did.  But that was all we did. We made it through. 

Marking What We Have Missed

The pandemic that has kept us isolated and nervous since mid-March shows no sign of slowing.  And as time marches on I find myself worried less about virus and focused more on all the small things we aren't able to do this year.  And worrying that we won't be able to do them next year either.  And even though I work so hard to keep things normal for them, how will they remember this time?  Will they remember the later bedtimes and board games and laughter?  Or will it be the year that time stopped and all the things they loved to do got put on hold.

• No Easter with my parents where every year the bunny hides eggs and toys for all in attendance
• No spring theater production with the kids holding puppets as ensemble cast members in Dr. Dolittle
• No Ballet recital where my girl would spin her hair in a tight bun, her outfit colors of the ocean
• No Field Day at school where I got to volunteer and watch the kids and their friends run amok in matching shirts
• No baseball practice, long afternoons sitting on the sun with one of my closest friends while our boys run laps and practice catching fly balls
• No baseball games on sun filled Saturday mornings where the girls play on the swings while the boys wait in the dugout and the parents talk lazily on the sidelines
• No last day of school where I pick up the kids and we blare Schools Out for Summer while we drive past the line of teachers waving goodbye
• No first day of summer where everyone sleeps in and the weather is usually crappy
• No trip to the Jersey Shore where we would sleep in a fleabag motel right on the beach and eat fudge and cotton candy on the boardwalk until we felt sick
• No Ballet camp where I would work from the hallway of the studio for a week while my daughter smiled non-stop for 3 hours a day
• No football camp where the boys got used to their pads and ran laps trying to outrun their coaches
• No summer theater show where Moana and The Jungle Book would have been staged
• No football practice where the parents would park with their cars facing the field so they could turn their lights on when the sun fell below the tree line
• No back to school shopping with my mother, going from store to store shopping for pants and dresses and underwear and sweatshirts and new shoes
• No first day of school where we would race for the bus and then I would follow them in to gather with the other parents to watch the kids arrive off the busses
• No Ballet and tap classes where I would watch my daughter dance and gossip with the other moms in the hall about schools and lice and in-law visits
• No football games where I could cheer for my boy and his friends, watching him always find me in the stands after a big play
• No fall theater show where I would work back stage, helping them with costume changes and being able to watch them shine

and what is to come? How long will school be online? Will there be no birthday parties this fall? and what of Halloween?  Will there be basketball? Will my in-laws be able to come up for Christmas? Will the Elf on the Shelf show up? 

With every decision we chose between the risk of the virus and the risk of holding our kids back.  As the world begins to re-open, do we re-open with it? And how do we create a new normal? One that allows us to look back on this time not as a time when so much was missed, but as a time when something new was gained.  Only time will answer that question, if only we knew how much more time we will have to wait.

Spring in Maine

Dairy queen will open soon

And the ice will melt from the trees

and the streams will rush with life

And dairy queen will open soon

Clocks will jump forward

We will pick ripe strawberries and blueberries

We will buy seedlings full of hope at the farmers market

And dairy queen will open soon

The snow will melt to make way for green grass

The birds will start to sing songs of redemption and rebirth

The days will be longer

Bedtimes will be later

And Dairy Queen will open soon

We will have meaningful debates about the value of the last week of school

About which beach has the best sand

About when we should go to Boston

Longing for the days we will spend sitting in the back of a pickup truck eating ice cream from Dairy Queen

The perpetually grayness will fade into spring colors

Blues, pinks, purples

Easter bunnies and peeps

We will hunt for chocolate eggs

And eat lamb around a big table

And we will say what we are thankful for

And there is no doubt that one of us will say we are thankful that Dairy Queen will open soon.

Today

I woke up today and you were still gone.   I got the kids breakfast and put them on the bus. An inconvenience and a luxury. A luxury to kiss them goodbye.  To have dinner in the crockpot ready when everyone gets home.  A luxury you will never have again.

I woke up today and you were still gone. I read somewhere that a sign of hope is setting your alarm to wake up in the morning.  And couldn't help imagining you setting your alarm Sunday night.  Preparing the house for another week ahead of school and work and kid activities.  Was it still going off when they found you?

I woke up today and you were still gone. I want to text you and ask you how I'm suppose to handle this because you are the person I would have normally texted.  And I know you would tell me to keep swimming. To "not trouble trouble".  So I sit in my office, emails coming in, meetings to attend. I have conversations at the bus stop and training dogs and the bike trails the town put in.

I woke up today and you were still gone. And if I am lucky enough to wake up tomorrow you will still be gone. And I will miss you in all the small moments. And years from now I  know if I am still lucky enough to keep waking up I will reach for phone to text you.  Because we were supposed to be old women together.  Because you were robbed of the luxury to tuck your kids in and watch them grow.  Because I was robbed of one of my best friends.

I woke up today and you were still gone.

The day that was more then good enough

I woke up on the first day of school and had time to straighten my hair so when I went to the schools boo hoo breakfast I wouldn't embarrass my kids. I got down stairs and made them fresh smoothies. My son complained his eye hurt it was a little puffy but not pink eye (I called the doctor to check). I made them lunches and made my daughter brush her hair.

When we missed the bus (because a summer of no deadlines means no one noticed the kitchen clock had slowly lost 10 minutes) I didnt yell. I laughed and made the kids get out of the car and take first day of school photos. Then I got passed the bus (legally) and pulled into one of my sons best friends driveways.  Everyone laughed when I told them what happened and the events were forever captured and published on social media.

I got to the school before the buses which means I got to see my son walk by me flashing the peace sign and earned one more hug from my daughter.  Then I went to work. Sat in meetings, worried about my son's eye and waiting until it was the day was done. At 315 they called me from my mother's care laughing about the day, my sons eye was fine, they were off to get DQ to celebrate the first day of school.

I met my mom at my sons football practice at 6.  His turquoise practice Jersey a stark contrast against the light green manicured lawn. His helmet and pads making him look like a little kid in his big brothers clothes. While my daughter ran around the parameter with a new friend her blond hair streaking like fire behind her in the setting sun.

I sat on a conference call for the last hour of practice and was able to get my sons helmet and pads off without needing to put down the phone and when the call switched to the car speakers (because hands free laws are important) my kids turned their voices to whispers.

It was 8pm when we pulled in the driveway, I hung up the phone and finally asked them what I had been dying to know all day, how was school? 

We tumbled in the door together, a pile of backpacks and sports equipment. I filled out what seemed like hundreds of pages of emergency contact, bus transportation, school lunch and internet privacy forms while my husband got the corn out of the boiling water. We ate dinner, open faced warm roast beef sandwiches made from last night's pot roast and corn from the farmers market. We talked about our days and laughed about what there was to laugh about. The kids took showers and at 915 my daughter was in bed curled up with her kitten and my son in bed curled up with a book and I took the dog out and spent 30 minutes on the porch with my husband watching the moon rise above the tree line and thinking that even though the day was far from perfect, it might be as perfect as we will ever get.

What if

I know the girl I want to be. Do you want to hear about her? She is confident, kind and healthy. She wears the clothes she likes no matter what people think. She is brave and speaks her mind. She loves her body and is good to it. She has a tattoo that makes her smile. She enjoys every day, gives herself permission to fail and asks for help.

It's easy at night when the house is quiet, and the moon has climbed high in the sky to make a list of promises for tomorrow. Of all the things I should do. Do yoga, drink water, pay bill's, work, dinner, kids, husband...each one with a million small bullets beneath them. Run, call my mother, baseball registration, don't eat the cookies.  It's easy at night when the only thing between me and sleep are the list of what ifs that pound in my brain like squirrels on typewriters.

What if baseball registration is full. What if they miss the bus. What if the bus is late and then I am late to my first meeting. What if I left the coffee pot on, the oven on, the crockpot on. What if I made the wrong call at work, what if my husband's contract isn't renewed. What if the house never sells, if someone gets sick. What if I get sick. What if the dog needs surgery. What if the cat doesn't come home. What if, what if...

What if tomorrow I woke up and decided that I am enough. That the extra pounds, the gray hairs, the bad habits, the fashion choices, are enough. What would happen then?

Happy New Year?

I feel like I just wrote this post...or maybe it is that a year in my life has not yielded much change. 2016 was not easy and I don't know why.  Everything felt hard, like I was moving through jello. Somehow no decision I made was easy...each one coming with what felt like consequences and then we spent the last 6 weeks of the year sick.  All four of us...off and on..sick.  Never all healthy at the same time.  But there was good too...ballet recitals and first days of school, holidays and birthdays and Saturday night movies nights and pizza at Romeos.  That is what I want to hold on to.  Not the feeling that nothing I do is enough...

So on to 2017. Tomorrow we kick off a new year.  One that starts somewhat arbitrarily...and one that carries with it all the weight of the lost hopes and goals of the year before.  My Facebook feed is already full of friends involved with MLMs telling all of us now is the time! 2017 can be your year!  And in my house, the kids and husband, dog and cats are asleep, a Law and Order SVU  marathon is on the TV and I have a paper to write.  It does not feel like a "special" night.  It did not occur to me to get a babysitter or let the kids stay up late to celebrate...

2017 is going to the be the year of contraction.  Pulling inward to have more time to spend on what matters and less time behind the computer screen.  I am going to commit to less and finish what I commit to.  And heck...while we are being unrealistic I am also going to lose that last 20 pounds, eat better and run 5 days a week,

Happy New Year.  May 2017 bring you most of what you want, and all of what you need.

Meleena