Like many of you, I’ve spent the entire year mostly only in the company of my children. While their school officially closed March 13th, and thus began my own true shelter in place, this particular week a year ago feels like where it all began… kind of.
Perhaps, it is because it’s where I’d like to begin again. This week last year, my children were on their mid-winter break and we spent a good few days in Miami. This is a trip we’ve taken as a family of three over the last four or so years. It has been a stop in the natural order of our flow. And when coming down off of the high that was packing and traveling with them, it was an avenue in reconnection and building up of winter resilience. This week, despite peers that have flocked to warmer places for this week or for months-on-end, we’ll remain in the city. I’ll work through their ipad hours and babysitter time, while cracking at connecting to the message from the memory of my body to my brain, that a vacation, this is not.
However, in spite of this, I think the beginning that I’m looking to reach on this wobbly week is one of resetting. Mentally, more than physically. Sure, I will very likely, partake in a project or two around the apartment when the time permits. But the relationship part that the Miami vacation did so dutifully, is the kind that regenerates our collective system.
How to do this when everything has stayed the same? Put simply, leaning. Leaning into letting the kids be. Leaning into late night glasses of wine, movies, bad TV and salty pretzels. A lean into, a safe-pod sleepover, sunnier days and double-masked train rides to infrequently visited, but previously loved, neighborhoods.
This time last year, was a gift. It is a gift. So is the time right now (albeit, difficult) if I am to reset that necassary system that gives it a little room to be.
At the very least, when looking back, while sitting on my stoop, with my gray hair, as they remind me to take my medicine and not to carry several groceries bags from the store, bodega, or robotic market (maybe we’ll have floating cars), I can holler about this endless year and how they owe me the moon and the earth, and how I never regretted spending this much time with them, so they best just let me be.
I have receipts!
