COVID-19: Month 1

Monster post warning.

So the first couple weeks were overwhelming. When would this end? How was I supposed to work all day with the kids constantly interrupting? Was the house ever NOT going to be a mess? Is school…over? Is life…over? I admit, my stress level was really high and if you’ve ever had tension headaches, you know that they laugh at any OTC meds and then persist. I had some bad days. My sister put it the best way and I love how spot on her points were. She said the problem is, any moment of the day could be spent on one of 4 things:

1)  House needs – dishes, laundry, mopping, general tidying. The constant flow of stuff and things that need to be cleaned and put away. I personally can’t function is a messy and disorganized house but fighting this, when you have four people that share four walls, 24 hours a day, often seems futile.
2) Work (like, our actual jobs that pay us)
3) Our children: engaging them, playing with them, giving them our undivided attention whilst thinking about numbers 1 and 2
4) Self-care (exercising, quiet time, or anything that is focused on ourselves. It is #4 on this list for a reason because it almost always comes last, even though it’s critical)

Once the struggle was defined in those terms, I learned to let go pretty quickly because you can’t do those 4 things at one time. No one can, and no one is asking you to except yourself. So there was that. And I’ll also admit, there was an underlying ease in the fact that we were not supposed to be anywhere, see anyone, do anything. We were home, and then home, and then home some more. And so was everyone else. There was no fear of missing out, no “everyone else has plans, is out doing XYZ, being productive/having fun/whatever.” Pretty much everyone we knew took the stay at home order very seriously, so there were no hard feelings about not seeing neighbors or friends. We were all in the same boat. Or actually, all in separate boats on the same ocean. ?. Whatever. It looked like this.

 And generally, things to keep us busy. Games, old Halloween costumes, stuff with wheels, house and tree work, and eventually we got so bored we started walking the neighbor’s dog.

 

On March 25, Natick launched remote learning/online school. It was huge – it gave the kids their teachers back and little did they know, they would not see their classmates in person again for the rest of the year.