By the end of week three I pronounced myself a failure. I couldn’t keep up with the parenting posts on Facebook, my kids were up to an hour and a half of screen time a day, and I was still eating chips.
I live in the village of Creemore, and the view beyond my gnarly Crabapple isn’t much different than before this pandemic sunk its fierce claws into the world, plucking pieces of normalcy from our daily lives. Gone is the weekday morning march of children down our street en route to the local elementary school and their frenetic afternoon rush home with the 3 p.m. bell, but dots of life outside my window remain intact. The garbage truck pulls up weekly, the grass continues to grow, and the spring robins arrive on cue. But the normalcy ends there.
The pandemic hit many of us like a cast iron pan to the head. In the first few days it knocked me into a frenzy of self-improvement. In week one I vowed to drink hot water with lemon instead of coffee first thing; walk the dog two times a day, every day; practice yoga three times a week; get busy with crafting, fixing, baking, upholstering. I stopped eating chips.
Egged on by social media, I created a ‘parenting improvement plan.’ We would cook from scratch, play board games, spend hours outside, make our beds every day, and limit screen time to 45 minutes.
The ‘wife improvement plan’ came next. I turned into a 1950s house frau overnight as I cooked, cleaned and homeschooled our children while my husband put out constant fires and mediated endless Zoom chats to make sense of his organization’s new normal.
Finally, I implemented my ‘friend improvement plan’ as daily walks with ‘my ladies’ decreased from five women down to two, using a social distancing walking wheel we constructed to rotate who would walk with whom and when. On these hour-long walks, I would listen more and make affirming statements like ‘It must be hard’ rather than consistently believing I had the solutions to every problem. It seems in a pandemic I couldn’t make sense of my own fears and anxieties, let alone everyone else’s.
By the end of week three I pronounced myself a failure. I couldn’t keep up with the parenting posts on Facebook, my kids were up to an hour and a half of screen time a day, and I was still eating chips; in fact, truth be told, I was eating more.
My eldest sister, Melissa, has been on this planet eight years longer than I, and she has wisdom and strength that I still look to in my forties. When I shared my mounting anxiety, she asked me, “Are you happy? Are you healthy? Do you have a roof over your head?” And with that I calmed down. My heart stopped racing, my shoulders dropped. My lists were tossed in the blue bin and I began to practice a mindfulness of simply living in the moment. We were living in a pandemic and each day was a new beginning. I would make the most of this strange time while easing expectations.
Though our March Break ski trip to Maine was cancelled, the pandemic started with a sense of excitement. For starters, school was cancelled and my boys, aged 10 and 13, felt as if they had won the lottery. I spent hundreds of dollars on craft supplies, board games and puzzles. The kids built lamps out of popsicle sticks, felted woodland creatures, and made homemade bread. I was also learning new skills, like depositing cheques online and revisiting old tricks like making linguine with my mom’s Italian pasta maker.
Puzzles became an addiction. My back ached from hovering over elaborate landscapes in search of the appropriate puzzle piece. I was seen running into the street, pyjama clad, stopping neighbours and asking for a ‘fix’ because our puzzle dealer, the toy store, had sold out. Neighbourhood puzzle exchanges soon exhausted themselves and a community puzzle exchange depot was constructed out of old newspaper boxes outside our local paper, The Creemore Echo.
I found challenges in the weirdest forms, such as epic grocery shops trying to feed my family for three weeks at a time. We ate beets for five days straight and discovered long-lost grains in the pantry. Our grocery bills doubled, as did our waistlines.
By week four, it was time for me to go back to work, and the best laid plans finally toppled. I felt more grateful than ever for my job as an elementary school teacher in these unsettling economic times, but now I had to juggle teaching a class of eight-year-olds, homeschooling my own children, being their primary playmate, and keeping the household going. The apron came off. I said goodbye to June Cleaver and embraced our new reality of two parents working from home with two boys underfoot. My parenting improvement plan became giving my boys space to be alone and learn how to be bored.
Left alone, but together, they thrived. In two weeks, they went from working a glue gun on their own to operating a chop saw unattended. They constructed a tree fort, with plexiglass windows and mismatched siding, in the old maple in our side yard. We mounted targets on the barn, which they shot at with a pellet gun using safety glasses we purchased. Yes, the ‘new normal’ meant kids with guns and power tools.
I grew to embrace the changes. I’m known as an extrovert, but for once my immediate family seemed all that I needed. I was no longer anxious about not having Friday night plans; instead, my kids set up forts at the end of our bed for family sleepovers and we all stayed up late together because we could. For our little pod, the ‘great pause’ has reminded us how much we enjoy each other’s company.
It isn’t always rosy. As the weeks add up, my boys become more lethargic and ask with concern, “What’s the point?” The novelty of distance learning has worn off; we are no longer motivated by large bags of flour; the boys haven’t seen their friends in months; and the Houseparty app has run its course. As I write this, the Covid blues have set in.
Around the dinner table each night, we try to remind ourselves how fortunate we are. We ask each other, what we can do to make this better for others? We make plans to grocery shop for elderly neighbours, cook extra meals for people living alone, do yard work for those who can’t, and write to grandparents isolated from their loved ones.
As we begin to come out of lockdown and start venturing outside our own family bubble, we weigh physical health versus mental health, and social norms versus our own comfort level in making the right decisions for our family. I have learned many things during the pandemic, and one is that so much is out of my control. The more I try to control things, the more difficult life becomes.
So, I am taking it all one day at a time. I am enjoying the warmer days, not worrying about the long-range forecast. I am watching my salad greens sprout, not fretting over whether I’ve planted enough. I am beaming with pride as my 13-year-old becomes a young man working a chop saw, not worrying that he will miss the experience of a grade eight graduation.
For now, we are happy, we are healthy, we have a roof over our heads, and we have each other. These things I know, and the rest will just have to wait for tomorrow. ❧
