Ob La Di, Ob-La-Da, Life Goes On
My family went into isolation in mid-March alongside much of the nation. We surrounded ourselves with medication refills, Gatorade, toilet paper, and hand sanitizer — the ultimate trump card in any pandemic bartering. We turned on the TV, opened social media, and called friends to get the latest news.
And then we waited.
For good news. For bad. For anything that would tell us what to do, or what to expect.
Cases of COVID-19 spiked, then lowered, then rose again.
And we waited.
Our daughter’s dance class moved online. So did her daycare. So did our jobs and our church and our social engagements. Schools proclaimed they’d reopen on time, then retracted their statements.
So we bought third-rate hand sanitizer, and we waited.
It’s been four months of social distancing, and if we are — as a nation — hopefully anticipating a vaccine in early 2021, then we’ve got another (let’s estimate) seven months to go. That’ll add up to one year of living mostly at home. Even if schools and offices reopen, for many Americans privileged enough to have the choice, learning and work will continue virtually. And for those who must learn and work in-person, interactions may be limited to the imperative.
And so, we wait.
But something struck me today as my daughter and I painted and feathered a wooden rooster her Sunday School generously dropped off on our front porch — and that’s how many bloody kid crafts I’ve done during quarantine.
I padded around the house, my eyes falling on various items representing events that had felt — in the moment — rushed, disorganized, and second-best to what they should have been. But, oddly, that’s not what I saw now. And it’s not what I felt.
The toilet paper bird feeder my daughter made during a virtual summer camp reminded me how she cried when her last online session ended. And of her laughter as she made friends with kids across the nation, their counselor beaming on the other side of the screen.
The unicorn paper bag satchel took me back to virtual vacation bible school. I recalled her uninhibited, horrendous dance moves each morning as she was greeted by youth pastors, and the time we spent putting together the cardboard telescopes and marshmallow obstacle courses.
The new jazz shoes lying on the floor filled my chest with pride as I recognized how much she’d improved during virtual dance lessons — many more lessons than we would have taken in person because the studio is hellishly far from our house.
There are the homemade lemon cookies sitting in our covered pastry dish, which forced me to learn how to zest…anything. There are the photos on my phone of my husband and daughter swimming in our pool. And more of our family riding bikes and visiting the lake near our home — a lake we’ve largely neglected in the past.
There are the leaps I’ve made with my startup company, Scribbler — leaps I can tangibly see — since I have more available working hours, despite having to teach my daughter, because apparently weekends spent at Target and local pubs, which no longer happen, add up.
That’s the thing about the passage of time though, isn’t it? We’ve got those handy rose-colored lenses to peer over our shoulders with so that our miraculously-formed brains latch onto the good and lessen the burden of the bad. So that even when we feel like we’re stuck in place, feet cemented firmly in the chaos, life is still happening. And we’re able to see that passage of time.
And here’s the real ringer — more time will pass. Much more. New photos, moments, and occasions will be compiled. And on the other side of this virus, even though we felt stagnant at the time, will be memories of the milestones we spent together.
And a shit ton of crafts. There will be those too.
