Is anyone else starting to feel guilt or worry over how they spent the pandemic? I'm reading article after article about what we all learned, and how we were all gifted so much more time with our families. Shoot, I even wrote one. But now, like a true mom, I am second-guessing all my decisions. Did we make the most of our time together? Did I squander it? Did the extra quantity amount to increased quality? Did we grow closer?
We slept in an awful lot. Wouldn't it have been nice if we woke up early and went for a morning run together each day? That would have been healthier, wouldn't it? We started off playing board games and puzzles, but that quickly dropped off and we were back to vegging out in front of the tv, marathon watching shows and movies. I shouldn't have let that happen, right? Did we go outside enough? Once the kids extracurricular activities returned to "in person", my determination to push physical activity, despite their standard resistance, faded. So what if we hadn't left the house in three days, having a full day of soccer on Saturday seemed like a good enough excuse to let ourselves off the hook.
I have spent a lot of time contemplating what the long term effects of the pandemic would be on my kids and how I should be counter-balancing them, but the truth is, that they seem to be bouncing back as if nothing ever happened, and I've come to realize that it didn't really matter what we did with the extra time together. The gift was the time, in and of itself. Anything we did with it was a bonus. Sleeping in, may have been the best thing for them, as people are always reporting how teenagers don't get enough sleep. Maybe staying still on a couch, watching mindless television, while the world around us seemed to unravel before slowly rebuilding itself, was the perfect distraction. Maybe we didn't go outside enough, but we've all spent nine months (give or take) inside a womb and just as it served it's purpose then, perhaps cocooning up before delicately re-emerging into what will be a different world, was exactly the right thing to do to. Either way, I don't think the pandemic, and how we spent it, was the make or break moment we thought it might be.
Did we, as a family, grow closer? I think some of the independence, our kids would have been demanding at their ages, was postponed, but we didn't share grand bonding experiences, (though just surviving the pandemic itself has probably bonded us in a way like no other.) However, I've come to realize that all the big things I regret not doing with the extra time together, like travel, are things we will always carve time out for. Even the medium moments we've shared like baseball catches and shooting hoops occurred before the pandemic and will continue long after. What will be missed are the simple connections. The chance to say I love you between math class and reading, my husband giving me a kiss every time he comes to the kitchen to refill his coffee before returning to his "home office", my son running out of his room to tell me he aced his science test, watching Glee with my teen daughter in my arms during lunch break. These are the moments we will treasure, and of these, we had plenty. We didn't just become closer, we became intertwined! We became a part of each other's day to day that won't easily be erased. If our home became a metaphorical womb, we were quadruplets, and as such, developed an innate psychological closeness. Our individual and overall comfort and security became dependent on each other's presence and touch. Just as they say multiples are born with instant best friends, I pray that is the case for us as we resurface into our normal, busy, lives.
While post pandemic guilt is just another form of internal lies about how we were not/are not good enough, it is another chance to remind ourselves that WE ARE!
