The other day I was feeling off. Maybe my neck was sore? Maybe my throat? Body aches or muscle soreness from the workout out the day before? I sneezed.
Is it my turn?
I read the news far too often and apparently I shouldn’t be going into stores, wearing cloth masks, or spending time with anyone indoors.
Sigh.
I don’t want Covid. I don’t want to go to the hospitals right now for any reason. But I do miss the parts of life that filled me up and I’m trying to find a balance of health and sanity.
I do go into stores. I do send my kids to in person schooling. My youngest and oldest will only keep cloth masks on but the rest of us wear K94 masks or N95. I just enrolled my oldest in Tae Kwon Do and my middle is in Gymnastics. Should we be more careful? Yes, we should. But each month that ticks by of this crazy pandemic feels like yet another month of real life. And how do we want to live real life?
As it is play dates are rare or outside. You’ve already read a blog about how I no longer linger in coffee shops. Activities are mainly outside (in our lovely MN weather) and school is…not the same. My husband continues to work from home and I continue to juggle the various sick leave the boys are given because they walk down to the nurse’s office and any symptom (even symptoms created by vivid imaginations) are taken seriously – as they should be in a pandemic.
Remember when we were young and unless we had a broken leg or we were throwing up, Mom sent us to school. Maybe that was just me.
Somedays I feel like tossing my hands up and yelling. I can see myself swinging our front door wide open and scream into the -5 degree wind chill, “I can’t do this anymore!!!”
But thankfully, I have lived a few years and I have had many moments when I’ve been on the verge of collapse.
After my mom died.
When I was a teenager (choose a year, any year).
When I had babies.
When I had toddlers.
The list could go on. This is hard. There aren’t any clear answers (what works for you won’t work for me) but on the days when I contemplate tossing in the towel I remember all the other moments I almost caved but chose not to.
“Go to bed,” Dad used to tell me when I said I was done, “tomorrow will look different.”
We can do this. This is the rough part of being alive. But we keep at it.
The sunrises can be stunning, especially those particularly -20 degree mornings.
Snuggles from babies are undeniably tender.
Toddlers show the greatest and most innocent kind of love.
Those who knew the ones you loved and lost tell you that you look like her. You have her laugh, her smile, her eyes.
I might get Covid. I might have Covid (with testing these days, who the heck knows) but I also carry with me perspective.
After the trying days, the end of times kind of months, the longest shortest years, there is another chapter.
Embracing Next 