Okay.
Week Three.
Week Three brought some fairly disappointing news. School is closed. Until September.
Damn.
When I was being honest with myself, I knew the kids weren’t going to go back this year, but that didn’t stop me from twisting and turning my thoughts into the idea that there was a chance. I desperately gripped that lingering hope that maybe, just perhaps, somehow, just maaayyyybee….this would all end and they could go back, even for a few weeks.
Obvious reasons I want to them to go back:
1: please go away from my face
2: yes, I’m dumb because I can’t do your math
3: You can’t be hungry all of the time in all of the days
4: the fighting
5: the fighting
6: the fighting
7: the dishes
But the real reason I was holding on so tight to that lingering hope was everything else the return of school would signify. That maybe we could see the light at the end of the tunnel blinking faintly. Not fully able to bask in it’s glow, but to just feel a simple sliver across our faces to begin to heal this heaviness in our hearts; to be able to regain a few of our basic freedoms we now cherish so deeply. Each day I wake up searching for some sort of validation that we’re going to get through this; each day I text or chat with various friends and family trying to find that angle, that silver lining, that light at the end of the tunnel but each day still ends just as the last. I got that email from the school and I cried. For all the things it signified. For all the memories stolen from us, big and small. For that light I’m still squinting to see.
These weeks, they go by day by day and within each day is a whole week it feels. We have our ups and downs. An endless, hopeless day has been followed with a lighter, more content one, which makes the next day more bearable because we survived the one before, so we can survive the one tomorrow. It’s this mindset that keeps me from falling down the rabbit hole of anxious, fear-riddled doom. I can’t control this. I can’t control what’s going to happen, I can’t control this economy, I can't control the future. What I can control is making choices that do not put others and my family at risk. What I can control is this day, hour by hour. What I can control is how much Minecraft Son can play each day.
Just kidding. I can’t control that and I stopped trying. And that feels right.
We’ve all been through dark times, some darker than others. I look back to the very darkest of days I had during my divorce where it felt like I was drowning in the blackest of waters and although it’s painful to reflect upon that period of my life, it’s also a gracious reminder that time marches on. Bad times turn to good. Hard things become easier. Black water becomes blue again. Together, we’ll just sit afloat for a bit until this, too, shall pass.
And who knows how we’ll reflect upon this time when the dust has settled and we resume a new normal. Will we miss the afternoon forced family walks that sometimes end with belly laughs? Will I see as many families riding bikes together, destination endless? Will all the neighborhood kids once again entertain themselves with a big game of hide and seek? (Is there a more perfect social distancing game?) I daresay we will look back and we will miss it just a bit. Just for a moment. A very fleeting, brief moment while we run our kids around, do our jobs, make the dinners, go to the games, yell for shoes to be put on, over schedule our lives; I daresay we might close our eyes and remember that really, really, really long summer we once had where we could hug no one but our children but oh so many hugs they did get and we might smile.
Like a-teeny-tiny, barely perceptible, blink and you might miss it-smile, but a smile nonetheless.
Until then, we march forward. To Week Four we go.
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