Hello there. It is winter outside my window and we are eight months into life with covid.
I have thought so often about writing here during this time and have overall talked myself out of it. What importance are my words right now in a world dealing with a pandemic, climate change, racial reckonings and oppressions? There is so much noise already. Who needs my writings on my quiet, comfortable life here in Canada?
The answer to that is likely no one but myself but I’ve come to realize this past few weeks that is reason enough to type them up and post them to be remembered.
Aaron and I were scheduled to fly out to Maui the day after Canada implimented it’s international travel guidelines. We debated back and forth and in the end decided to cancel our trip as we were worried about getting seperated from the kids who weren’t coming but not too much about this virus we hadn’t heard much about as of yet. That started three plus months of us being all at home, almost all the time just like most of us in North America. Our story isn’t unique but it is significant, at least to us. In what now feels like another lifetime we thought we would be done with covid by now, whatever we thought that meant.
Then about a month into covid Aaron was temporarily laid off. I was restricted to online work and this also felt very stressful as we weren’t sure if or when Aaron would be called back as his work is linked to the restaurant and travel industries. We were very fortunate that he was only off for about five weeks. Despite my anxiety around job security we managed to enjoy ourselves. Like a lot of us we baked up a storm, we walked outside, everything moved onto zoom and we plowed through our house project list in a way that having three kids not in activities allowed us to as we had more free time since having our third kid ten years ago. I deep cleaned the entire house. We had memorable birthday parties and Easter at home, just us.
Our kids being homeschooled were not on the adjusted learning schedule/hours that all their public schooled friends were. Liam especially had to keep up his work load being full time public schooled (live online classes from home) as his board decided to keep on going as normal and we managed to limp over the finish line at the end of June and breathe a massive sigh of relief to have the summer off just as things were starting to open up in our province again.
We had somewhat of a normal summer. Aaron worked tons as his company scrambled to replace their lost business and we didn’t go visit my family in BC like we normally would because so much was still unknown but in retrospect we should have gone while cases were so low after some quarantine time. The two soccer players got to do team practice with their cohort (no games) and I spent a ton of time in the garden and growing flowers. Our baby turned ten and we went camping off grid with some of Aaron’s family. We celebrated 22 years of marriage. Our love story that started so young has grown to last us to middle age.
We spent weekends driving to clean water to swim in and we made an early september trip to BC where we rented a cabin on a lake just our family. We took all our food with us and fuelled up outside to not inadvertently spread covid and managed to find some space to metaphorically exhale even though the air was choked with smoke from the fires in California. Just one more sign that our planet is screaming for us to pay attention.
We have adjusted to the ‘new normal’ or so people keep calling it, although I find myself occasionally thinking how bizarre this all is when I see masks in the laundry or when my husband sleeps/eats/doesn’t leave our basement for three days while he waits for his covid results after feeling a little unwell or when I drop my kids off for a sport and wait in the car because no parents are allowed inside or when I haven’t seen my siblings in person for over a year. My heart still breaks when I think of all the people who have died without their family by their side, all those who have lost jobs, for all the hugs we have missed, for everyone who doesn’t have a home or for whom home isn’t a safe place. My heart breaks that covid mostly takes the lives of those already marginalized- the old, the disabled, the chronically ill, minorities. I have thought a lot about collective empathy and loving our neighbour and what that looks like and what Jesus might do during a global pandemic. I have sifted through a lot of my beliefs and while some have become more certain, some have been discarded as privileged or inaccurate or selfish. I feel lighter and also heavier.
The prayer podcast I sometimes listen to reminds me that those of us who follow the liturgical calendar are in the 32nd week of ordinary time. I’ve always been enamored with the idea of ordinary time. I think as culture we have glorified the extraordinary, perhaps more than any other time of human history, leaving us uncontent with the rhythms that make up most of our lives. I’m doing my best to live through covid as an active protest to that. Bake some bread, teach some math, do some work, look at the marvel of the sky, laugh or cry with the people you love the most.
Allow yourself to feel the frustrations that come from having a middle class life during the midst of a pandemic in a world that has literally been on fire, yet being still relatively comfortable. Have a vent session with a friend. Rage and take a small doable action at the injustice you see. Feel the joys of learning a new skill, reading a book aloud by the fire, having time to think about what your future holds, of seeing your kids happy and healthy.
This morning I stood on my deck and took three deep breaths in, three deep breaths out, face turned up towards the sky. These days, they may be unprecedented, a lot of our hope and dreams and rewards that fall into the extraordinary may have been shifted and that is worth mourning. But these days, they are also gloriously ordinary. Cold air moves in and out of our lungs, the neighbours rooster crows, sleepy kids are waking up ready for a hug, there is cinnamon toast and sledding and just being together.
