Some Days

Some of these days, these isolated but crowded, boring but loud days, some of them are like this:

• Third grade social studies research that leads to YouTube samba lessons in the family room;
• A video for Kindergarten art class that inspires a boat made of egg cartons, a cardboard box transformed into an ocean;
• Sourdough starter frustrations that result in a delicious loaf of bread, even if it doesn’t rise quite enough;
• Collecting worms in the driveway between rainstorms;
• Early morning yoga as the day brightens, the cat snoring on the couch behind me as I try to ground into another week – week 5 here at home. Inhale, exhale, repeat;
• Painting at the table together when I can’t focus on work for a minute longer, talking about mixing colors, warm and cool, and how they land on the page;
• Negotiations over watching a show ( “how about two episodes if we fold laundry while we watch?” Ok.), and then more negotiations over who holds the remote;
• Arguments over which music to listen to, which dance choreography to learn, Easter candy ownership, and who didn’t pick up the Barbies;
• Zoom rehearsal for Moana, Jr., Shiny heard across the house, over and over;
• Sad moments leaning into one another, remembering everything and everyone we miss, what else will be cancelled, the uncomfortable unknowns, acknowledging that this is really so very hard;
• The rain and wind pounded against the house today. Inside, it’s just us, together. We hold hands and say grace before dinner, like we do every night. Gratitude for our food, family, and friends, sending up prayers. These days, no one is rushing off to dance class or missing dinner for a meeting. We’ve had dinner together for the past 32 nights in a row, and counting. We pass the slightly-flat freshly baked sourdough bread and the Easter dinner leftovers. We talk about what we’re reading, plan our next movie night, dream about what we’ll do when the sun returns.

Today, this is what it’s like.