It's 8:45 on Monday morning. My husband and I just finished our workout in what used to be our sunroom, but is now our home gym. I just got my kids' school day started in what used to be our playroom but is now their classroom. They're both logged on to Google Meet, while their masked Teachers are in the real classrooms with this week's in-person cohort, starting their day with a virtual morning meeting. A few minutes later, as I'm making my first coffee of the day, my husband comes downstairs dressed in a suit jacket, dress shirt, tie...and shorts. He casually flashes me a smile as he walks into his home office to begin his court hearing. My kids start asking me for a snack when it dawns on me: over the past few months my home has turned into a Gym, Court of law, Elementary School and Restaurant. It all happened pretty gradually, so it didn't hit me until this morning just how multi-functional our home has actually become. And how grateful I am for it, and for all the little things I used to take for granted.
How lucky are we that during this scary and horrible time in the world, our home is able to provide a place not only for comfort, but also for work, school, strength and sustenance. I have always been a homebody, and that has certainly been exacerbated since the pandemic began. But now, when I talk to someone in person rather than over text, I really appreciate it more than I would have in the past. I ran into a friend at Target this weekend, and even though we spoke to each other at a distance and with our masks on, it really filled my cup just to catch up and make eye contact, even if it was only for a few minutes. Although I will say that if I spend more than an hour outside my house these days, I need a full day to recover from the outing. And so I've been working on renovating all of the spaces in our home, and now I can honestly say that if we are put on lockdown again this winter, I won't be mad about it.
While we are still able to do things out in the world, our kids have actually been able to have some extra curricular activities to provide them with socialization and other skills. Zoey's been back to Gymnastics and is enjoying a weekly drama class at our rec center, while Josh has his town soccer practices and a weekly outdoor dinosaur bone digging class, also at the rec center- which happens to be located on our street. On Friday evening when I walked over to the rec center to pick Zoey up from her drama class, I saw that the staff were setting up an outdoor drive-in showing of Hocus Pocus for older kids in the neighborhood, and I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude and love for this community. No one knows when this will all be over, but everyone is trying to make the best of it- especially for our children. I'm not sure exactly how Halloween will go this weekend, but I know my kids have already been "Boo'd" a few times, and their reaction to it each time is extreme excitement. I know that they'll dress up in (expensive, guilt-induced) costumes and parade around the neighborhood, and if trick or treating doesn't happen, I'll throw some candy at them myself.
I hope what my kids are learning during this time is that you can and should be grateful for what you have, even if people around you are concentrating on what they don't have and what they can't do. I know it's easy to think about what we've lost or what we aren't able to do anymore, but I hope they see that concentrating on what you do have and can still do, is what will get them through any difficult time they come across in their lives.
