We are going on 130some days of what Mike and I are referring to as FGP, Freaking Global Pandemic. Our world, just like everyone else’s, has changed so much. We really felt so unprepared for what the world gave us. I felt like one day we were hearing the news speak of illness in a faraway land as if telling us an old tale from a history book, then boom phone calls and emails informing us that school was closing at the end of the day and would not open again for a few weeks.
The suddenness and uncertainty was unnerving. But it still felt like it was going to be a very short term inconvenience. Just a couple weeks with the kids home from school. Then employers were starting to do the same, the State was mandating that everyone stay home, now things were feeling a bit more scary.
All was still ok, remember, in the beginning, back when there was a sense of hope that this really was just going to be a few weeks? Everyone was doing what they could to be helpful and kind. We could do all the hard stuff, we could handle the panic buying that led to a toilet paper shortage, we could handle the isolation, we loved that celebrities were doing great youtube series and we were reconnecting as a family. The forced slowing down and reflecting was ok, yes it was a challenge, but it was ok, we could see this through.
But then it didn’t end.
Those couple weeks have now turned into a couple months.
The end is unknown.
This new stress of facing the hard realities without an end in sight, yet living in a world that is planning for the next step, oh, whew, I get panicky just trying to find the words to type.
I think one of the hardest things to cope with right now is the tug-of-war and balancing act of having personal opinions, having respect for leaders’ opinions, and just trying to ‘do the right thing’ all the time. It’s complicated and exhausting. I feel like I don’t even know how to be me.
By nature everyone who knows me would classify me as a rule follower, a by the books, to the letter type. But also, many who know me would completely recognize that I am a questioner, and sometimes my questioning leads to me being a rebel.
This is where watching television with my kids is helpful, they would so perfectly tell me that I am complicated like Keith because I am a ruley like Stick, but also a sloppy joe like Mya. And they would be right.
So what does that all really mean? It means that I want nothing more than to follow all of the rules. I want to wear the masks, I want to stay six feet apart, I want to truly only socialize with my family bubble, and I want to follow all of the arrows on the ground while grocery shopping. It also means, I want to know why. I want to know why the masks and six feet are important, I want to know why we shut down certain industries, but not others, I want to know why we rank certain benchmarks as more important, I want to know what decisions led us to making these mandates. Just thinking through this is making me tired.
So I stayed home, and I bought a mask, and I took an extra hour grocery shopping because I only walked down the aisles in the direction the arrows were pointing in, and I only met in person with the people I live with and I discovered that hoping two ten year olds would follow online learning instruction independently was a lofty hope. But we did it, and we tried not to let it all get us down.
A rule following, silver lining finding girl like me, oh we got this.
Until I didn’t any more.
It is such a hard game to keep playing when the rules seem to keep changing. It is hard to justify social isolation when you know how much it is damaging your health. It is so hard to follow the rules when it seems like it is all for nought. And it is So.Much.Harder. To keep up an optimistic attitude. I couldn’t do it anymore. I had to escape.
So I ran away. I threw my arms in the air and said I’m leaving. One child heard me, so she got to come too. And without packing anything, literally no cooler, no towels, no sunscreen and no bathing suits, we left. We stopped for a road trip coffee –the first coffeehouse coffee in four months– and hit the road. We picked out our destination after we got on the highway, and to the beach we went.
About an hour into our drive Em got a text from Mike wondering what we were doing. While our GPS location told him where we were at that moment, the destination was not clear, but he knows my complicated self, possibly better than I know myself. So he defaulted to asking if we were headed to the Sears on that side of the state that the internet says has the washer that we are looking at. Makes sense, a good ruley like me would be taking a free couple hours to shop for the washing machine that will need to be replaced soon. When told no, he jumped to the beach and instead of being upset that we left without even so much as a goodbye, he simply said, “good, mom needs this” and was Em ever shocked. I hope that it is moments like this that help to mold her perception of a good marriage, and true love. To prove how much I needed this, the moment we approached the lakeshore, I looked over and said, can you smell it? The lake smells so good today. When your teenage daughter replies with questioning eyes and nope, I do not smell water, but wow, mom, you look really happy right now. This is for sure what I needed. I needed the sloppy joe in me to break some rules and step outside of the rigidity. So we sat. For two hours we sat in the sand with the blanket we found in the trunk and we listened to the waves and felt the sand between our toes. I truly believe that sand on a beach is magical. It is so grounding and the sound of waves is balancing and relaxing. It is like feeling a zen moment. I think, especially during moments like this, how could God have designed this any better. Perfection.
It was the perfect escape from reality. It was completely impractical. We were in the car for twice as long as we were at the beach. But, it was the perfect escape. And, I am sure that I will get back to being a good ruley in the morning, but for now, I am going to relax in the perfect escape.