The Screen – Free Quarantine – Day 24: Where the Coronavirus Isn’t
I think we all hit emotional and physical barriers during this crazy time. And we all make impact with these different walls at different times. When living in a family of five, with different people making impact with different emotional and physical barriers at different times, life can be challenging.
That was Day 24 for us. Daniel hit a definite wall. I have been relaxed with their sleep schedule because they are not required to be away from me at school all day. Plus, I like that they have been sleeping until 8:30 am every morning. So, as long as they are quiet in their beds by 8:30 pm, I’ve let the flashlights and the reading and coloring commence. No harm. Right?
Wrong.
Keep in mind that my kids have no access to screen devices in their rooms at night. No television. No cell phones. But they have books and coloring books, and apparently, that is enough to entice the youngest of my clan to pull an all-nighter reading ahead of our family in “The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles.”
Sounds innocuous enough, but the late-night reading party caused him to fall behind in his schoolwork, and we were struggling to finish social studies until 4pm, and he was falling apart into a puddle of tears. His behavior was terrible, too.
Meanwhile, Kasie took her much anticipated Precalculus test (still no final score on that yet). And when she woke up in the morning, she chose to wear a pair of leopard print shorts to “blend in” with the woods better when we play hide and seek. So it was assumed that we all MUST play hide and seek at the end of the day.
Fast forward through Daniels tantrums that included him going out into the garage with boxing gloves on, beating up the recycling bin and yelling at the top of his lungs (sorry, neighbors), I told Daniel that he could not play hide and seek with us. Sorry. There must be consequences. His school work was not complete, and he gave me a hard time all day long.
Kasie, Jacob, Mike and I, played hide and seek while Daniel lay in a puddle of tears in the garage. He pulled himself together after the game of hide and seek was over, apologized and everyone went to bed well enough. But it was a tough day. And I must admit that by bedtime, Mike and I are completely exhausted.
Still, something inside of me tells me that when this is all over, I won’t remember much about the Coronavirus, except all the places the Coronavirus isn’t.
Like in my backyard, when we’re playing hide and seek. When Kasie piles leaves up over her bright orange shoes so that we won’t find her. When Mike calls out, “Empress Found!” when he finds me because I refuse to dirty another outfit in order to blend in with my environment. Like when I run as fast as I can in green glitter rubber boots through the woods that I never imagined being quarantined in when I first walked through them in high heels after church only a little more than a year ago.
This home has served us well during this time. It’s provided us shelter, AC, running water, and hours of entertainment between #thebookfarm garden, Kale Canoe, growing mangoes and lychees and lemons, the Kasie Nature Trail, numerous piles of animal excrement to examine and analyze.
It has been a blessing.
All the places the Coronavirus ISN’T is what I hope my kids will remember about this time. How they learned to love each other and their sister, how they learned to be a family, how we all learned to fall apart and pull ourselves back together in the span of a day or an hour or a few minutes. Whatever is needed.
