Sunday.
I keep wanting to look back and see what I did and how I made Connor’s last summer home special and think about all the amazing fun things we did. Sadly, that wasn’t the summer we had. Instead we’ve had, well, this one.
But, I really need to be kinder to myself because; honestly, what I did was:
1) Work from home for three months while helping the children wirh school
2) kiss my oldest/third child goodbye not knowing when I would ever see him again after lockdown, and find a way to trust in a system which has let me down repeatedly before.
3) run the household while trying my best to support my husband in the most stressful/overworked time in his life.
4) support caring for my father through a few medical concerns... from a distance.... while missing his bear hugs more than I ever expected.
5) parent my youngest through mental health crisis after mental health crisis and advocate for meds and therapy and all the things.
6) love on the kids and help them through countless wave after wave of disappointment
7) attempt to celebrate birthdays and graduations and special events to the best of our ability.
8) maintain the strictest ideals of social distancing wile also recognizing when I needed to bend them for.... everyone’s sake
9) tried my best to help my children understand the changing world around them and tried to Instill in them the importance of using their privilege to help those without.
10) held my children while they cried and understood when they couldn’t.
11) sat in the stillness with them.
12) recognize when decisions needed to be made that weren’t what we had planned. And worked with everyone to get more comfortable with fear and unknown.
13) found joy and humor in long forgotten games and experiences.
14) tried to instill in my children the understanding that it’s okay to be afraid and it’s okay not to know but it’s never okay not to communicate.
15) loved on the children so hard I was in danger of smothering them.
This is uncertain times. The emotions of each and everyday have me constantly second guessing myself. I long for a typical summer and I long for memories of normal things like camping and day trips and the ocean. But I need to remind myself to celebrate all the things we’ve done as a family. We’ve thrived during this time. We’ve gotten closer and we’ve learned how to communicate. We’ve learned things about each other we couldn’t have known before now.
I’ll always be sad that this final summer couldn’t have been what I wanted it to be, but I’ll give myself permission to celebrate what we had. And what we had was lots and lots and lots of love.
And also ice cream.
