If I had written this at the beginning of March it would have looked something like this:
Once again, I wish I was a morning person as I rush out of my house with three in kids tow, hoping to avoid traffic on the dreaded morning train across Tillotson. (Thankfully we have this timed out well and can usually avoid getting stopped.) I pull up to daycare for my youngest child and rush her inside, wondering if she would gleefully go into daycare or if one of the amazing workers would have to pry her away from me. Next, we make it to the Ball State parking lot with enough time for my kids to run into Burris and for me to run into my office and get clocked in.
Then I would go on about my workday, picking up all three kids from various locations, rushing back home to make dinner and convince the older kids they need to do their homework. Then probably something about bath and bedtime for a preschooler being the hardest chore in the world.
But I’m not writing this in March. I’m writing it on April 29 – 5 weeks after schools, daycares, and the university closed its doors.
I had high hopes (dreams, delusions?) of what working-from-home would look like. I thought I would have this great schedule for everyone to follow that included family breakfast/lunch/dinner time, dedicated work/school time, and a nap time for the youngest. Oh boy, was I wrong.
Our house has operated as a free-for-all these last few weeks. The preschooler doesn’t sleep. The older kids only want to sleep. Suddenly I have more meetings for work than I’ve ever had. I don’t know where to begin on reigning in the chaos.
My husband is an essential worker for a hospital, but thankfully can work from home. I say thankfully because he at least he isn’t bringing home the germs from the hospital. His job keeps him very busy in his office, so he isn’t able to help with daily life much. I dreamt of splitting parenting responsibilities with him, but his workload said otherwise.
So now I manage the house, three kids, full-time job, and my own college classes. Please note the loose meaning of the word manage. My main job is to make sure everyone finishes the day alive and fed. That’s where my expectations stop.
My morning looks a lot different than it did a month and half ago. Now I wake up in just enough time to get whatever cereal isn’t stale (or still left after the kids make an 11 p.m. raid on my kitchen) into my stomach, get coffee going, and clock in for work. Then I attempt to quietly wake up the older kids while hoping my preschooler sleeps for another hour so I can get my day planned. Sometimes I’m successful, sometimes I’m not.
My first meeting usually starts at 8:30 a.m. I pray my preschooler doesn’t run downstairs naked or screaming. You never really know at this age. Thankfully, most of my coworkers have kids, so we all just laugh and play along when our kids interrupt our meetings.
During the rest of the morning I attempt to balance life. I try to get some work finished while helping the big kids navigate their eLearning work. (Oh, I’ve learned through this experience that I am not cut out to homeschool my kids.) On a good day the preschooler will color, paint, or play with toys while we work through this, but more often than not I cave and turn on Netflix. I’ve given in our screen-time rules for the sake of my sanity.
Evenings seem easier now. I think turning off the computer and reducing one activity I’m trying to manage makes the world of difference. I used to think evenings were the hardest part of my day, but now I look forward to our evening time together. Not much has changed in terms of needing to fix dinner and do bed and bath time, but we’ve reduced the need to do homework during this time. The kids get to help out in the kitchen or take the preschooler outside to play. I find this time more relaxing than it used to be. I’m wondering how we can keep this time just like it is when we go back to work and school.
Today I have to go to the grocery store. Normally that would not be a notable moment in my journaling, but now it is. At the beginning of the month I planned an entire month of meals and created freeze meal bags so we could reduce the trips to the store. Now it’s the end of the month and we are starting to run low on freezer meals. I know it’s all in my head, but each time I go I start to feel my breathing get off and my chest starts to hurt. I’m pretty sure it’s my anxiety rising. I know it is. My doctor and I have discussed increasing my anxiety medication, but I’m trying to find other ways to manage this feeling – like only going to store once a month. For our perishable foods we try to get a Wal-Mart grocery pickup time, but those are hard to come by. I am audibly excited when I find an open time slot.
I have friends who own small businesses or have been laid off, so I try to remember to count blessings each day. At first it was hard. Really hard. Everything changed so quickly, but also so slowly. I felt like restrictions and guidance should have been set sooner, but still felt like everything was constantly changing. I’ve never felt this feeling before. Here are some of the things my kids and I have counted as blessings during these last few weeks:[Text Wrapping Break]
- Internet
- A big dining room table
- The ability to afford so many types for entertainment (Hulu, Netflix, Disney+, cable, etc)
- Our steady stream of income
- All of the museums who put their collection online or who offer online tours of their museums. (I know it’s not in person, but seeing artwork in The Louvre is not in our family’s budget.)
- YouTube so we can learn new skills
- Organizations who offer homework help to students
- Books
The list goes on, but these are new things we’ve added to our gratitude list during the last few weeks.
I don’t know how the rest of this school year and summer will play out. I’d like to say that we will find a rhythm that works, but I think our rhythm is just going with the flow. I anticipate lots of change during the coming weeks, so today’s normal could be drastically different than next week’s normal. What I do know is that it’s not easy. This is hard. Our lives are not set up to work from home full time while managing a house full time. We had systems set up to make this work before – kids went to daycare and/or school to learn, we had offices or workplaces to separate us from doing dishes or laundry during the day, we were able to take moments away from the kids to rest our brains. We have none of that right now. We are going stir-crazy. Our kids are going stir-crazy. We want to be able to find a normal that helps us have balance again, but we know it will never be like it was.
We know we have to stay home to keep ourselves and our families healthy while our scientist and medical community figure all of this out. Knowing that our generation is called to stay home in order to make our country safe is an odd thing to wrap our heads around. In theory it sounds easy enough. It’s hard though. But it feels wrong to complain when things could be so much worse. I keep reminding myself that it’s ok to not love every moment of this while acknowledging the sacrifices others have to make. I know we will get through this as a family and as a society, but right now we live in uncertainty and instability.