Snow Globes and Turning 45 in 2020

Rainbows are supposed to be God’s way of saying tomorrow will be better, right? After 2020, is there a big enough rainbow?

It’s easy to think 2020 has been a disaster of a year.  I mean it started with forest fires ravaging Australia, and it never seemed to get any better.  In February, I started warning my work we needed a plan for when COVID 19 made it to America.  By March, we heard from my sister-in-law in WA that we needed to be taking more care because when it got to us, it would be bad.  By the end of March, my work offered people as much work from home time as they wanted.  Two weeks later, we were 100% telework.

With the stress of the election three weeks away and turning 45 today, it got me thinking about this year of isolationism from the rest of the world our house has endured.  It is a time I will remember for many things, and not all of them are as bad as I would think for the year.  Here are some of my favorites because I want to be able to look back years from now and remember how we got through the pandemic year 1.

I loved the night we all dressed up in our fine attire to eat as a family because we needed something different and fun to do. 

I love thinking about our little kids in the baby pools in our backyard, even if I am bitter about the reason.  We don’t have a real pool because a dishonest contractor took our money and ran. 

I love all the dinners we ate together on our screened in porch.

Blindfolded twister was a big hit with blindfolds and textured circles.

I loved some of the games we played, like blind twister.  My oldest son is a master of that one as his body control and balance is incredible. 

Then there were all the nights my wife and two youngest kids did feats of strength and balance.

There are times where looking at a book isnt the best way to teach letters. You need a strength and balance test.

I love my two oldest kids going back to school at desks used by their grandfather and great grandmother.  I just imagine them sitting there bored thinking their grandparents must have been bored at that very same desk at one point.  Then I think of them learning the same things because the most important things taught in school haven’t changed in the last hundred years.

O’s computer sitting on his great-grandmother’s desk.
A sitting at a desk made by her grandpa when he was in 6th grade.

I also love my wife and I doing the same daily on-line exercise routines.  She would do them early in the day, and I would do them at night.  Between those, cutting down on my soda’s and not eating out much at all, I dropped 40 lbs. and hit my 4-5-6 goal.  Lilly Sabri and Chloe Ting have been my favorites thus far, but that is just because I am a glutton for punishment. Still, I am moderately proud of meeting my goal, not to bad for a 45 year old man who has had Multiple Sclerosis for the past 15 years.

My favorite memories of the past year have been all of our family walks.  Every day from March through September we walked as a family come sun or rain.  As school starts again, we have not been able to do them every day, and I think I will miss those walks the most.  Just walking around our neighborhood and the surrounding areas, we got to see a fair amount of nature and spend a lot of time together.  Granted, I spend a lot of time on those walks prodding our youngest to keep up and not get distracted, but I enjoy our walks. They calm me.

Every anniversary, I write to me wife, “Stay with me. Walk with me. The best is yet to be. This I believe.”

So, I think it is more than fitting that on my 45th birthday, we would go for a walk at a park my parents used to take me for walks 35 years ago.  I didn’t remember that until my mom told me it was one we used to visit frequently.  I only remembered the racquetball courts and pool.  Still, it is one more thing this year with ties to the past, and ending the night thinking about all those ties seems fitting.  The best of life today is built upon so many past efforts and memories.

One of our many delays on today’s walk was when R deciding to climb rather than walk.

Maybe that is what I will take from this year of 2020.  We have so much to be thankful and enjoy even when we feel like our lives have been turned upside down and shaken like a snow globe.  Maybe we all need to harness our inner snow globe in an effort to enjoy the beautiful sights of our shaken-up world.     

Snow globe of a boy raying for a rainbow or just an end to 2020?
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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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Our Family's Stories of Growing Up

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