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New Normals with Covid 19

Love is making Smores around a fire pit.

When Our New Normals Disappoint

COVID19 has certainly made us redefine our life styles.  More and more, I become convinced nothing is going to change any time soon.  I am convinced it will take a long time to develop a vaccine, prove it safe and effective, manufacture enough for all, and finally distribute it.  So how do we make it OK?  How do we make the months, important months with our kids, meaningful and instructive. 

It is a little awkward for me as I think about how MS always leaves me wondering if I will be able to do tomorrow what I did today.  For our older kids, they think about all they have lost and are losing.  For a kid, their world exists within all of their social contacts.  The world is what they experience and with whom they experience it.  COVID 19 has drastically shrunk their world as social means with their brothers and sisters. So how do we make it OK? How do we expand their horizons andnot waste their time to grow?  Did I mention the challenge of doing this without going crazy or dropping from exhaustion and stress?  They want new experiences and are tired of the same things day after day.  Then they get annoyed at new announcements of things they can no longer do.  I get it.  

My boys and I dress up for a fancy dinner at home.

For years, I lamented the things I could not do anymore with my MS.  I could not play soccer, and for a while I couldn’t run. I could not even hold a bowl of oatmeal in the cafeteria without dropping it.  I could not swallow without things getting stuck in my throat…The list goes ever on and on.  I said to myself I did not ever want my family to understand. I thought the way they would best understand is to go through it, and why would I wish that on family.  Now it seems we all get to live through some of the same uncertainty and loss of control over our losses.  It sucks.

However, there is a lot to be gained too.  I just don’t know how to make my kids understand it.  More and more it becomes necessary to look around at what we still have and enjoy it.  Then find new ways to enjoy those things we have always enjoyed.  For example, I have always enjoyed going for walks, and now we as a family go for walks every day.  Now walks that were about escape into the solitude of my mind have become family bonding and exercise for all of us, including the dogs. 

We have a beautiful yard with a swing set and trampoline.  I love watching all four kids on the trampoline together playing silly games.  We have always done dinner as a family, but now we have it on the screened in porch every night.  Frequently, we have desserts J makes with the kids.  We have even played around with a fancy dinner night where we all dressed up.

Family walks provide bonding time when we are all together. However, things are rarely this harmonic which is why I snapped the picture.

As we continue through this time of uncertainty with schools opening remotely again, and uncertainty around how and when we will be able to visit with family and friends again, it seems the only way to find any peace is taking the time and put in the effort to enjoy our new normal.  It is not how we imagine we want it to be.  However, we are lucky we still have our home and our loved ones. We still have a lot. 

It just takes stepping back, taking a breath, and looking at our situation. That is looking at our situation as it is, not as it was, or could have been. There is a lot of good…even if if it is not what we thought we needed to be happy.

It is time to stop griping and start living our new normal.

 

l.    

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The 4,5,6 Challenge

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Having a goal matters.  Every five years, I try to set a goal that seems like a “stretch goal,” or something I will be unlikely to reach without a lot of effort. Further, I find motivation from writing out my goal. It is as if writing it becomes a contract with myself. It is a commitment to attempt to be the person who can aspire to remake myself back into the fit person I was before MS. It is also a challenge, and I hate losing.

Five years ago for my 40th birthday, my wife gave me a gift of a trip to Yellowstone so I could run a half marathon and see Old Faithful that was on my bucket list (things to do before I die).  Of course, running a half marathon there is no joke.  It is a long run at altitude.  So for months before the trip, I trained as hard as I could in the D.C. humidity.  My brother-in-law who went with me asked, “what if you can’t finish the run? Will it still have been worth all the effort?”

I told him the answer I still use when trying something hard, “Failure is not an end point.  It is simply a way of measuring my next attempt.”  I finished the run in the top third of all finishers.  I may have fallen a few times, but I finished thinking “not too shabby for a 40 year-old.”  The effort paid off, and it would have paid off whether I finished or not.  Having the goal gave me a purpose to keep running when I was tired or just didn’t feel like it.

Now as I approach my 45th birthday, the question was what shall I set as my “stretch goal.”  With Covid 19 upending all of our lives, it may seem petty to think I need some physical goal.  Travel is out as three of the six in our family are high risk patients.  I needed something that would stick in my head and keep me moving.  Then my little kids were listening to some old kids music, and I heard “It’s as easy as 1,2,3 baby you and me…” 

The “4,5,6 challenge” is on! In October when I turn 45, I will have 6 pack abs.  That challenge is just what I need to keep working out and even doing the 10 min ab burn at the end of the workouts.  After 28 days with Chloe Ting, I am on to the “Beach Body on Demand” 21 day fit routines.  Dropping  the sodas down to at most 2 per day, eating healthy, and walking/running after our four kids has me well on the way.  If I don’t have the 6 pack abs by the time I am 45, I will certainly have a healthier body than when I started.  However, I plan to reach this target.  I already went from 234 lb in March to 197lb now.

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