the big sick. in Drifter in Zion

“Mama, when is the big sick going to away, so we can see our friends again?” Hattie asks me, and I hug her close.

A week into team-quarantine, the kids are restless. They miss school and friends, going to different parks to “run out energies” before bed, excursions to Legoland and the aquarium, play dates, and the big, blue cart at the grocery store. They miss Saturday morning soccer, our Target runs, eating lunch at Costco, and being out and about as a family.

I’m very much an introvert, and didn’t realize how much we got out, until we’re no longer getting out. Even amid coughing fits and breathing treatments, I feel a twinge of stir-crazy tug my toes; Tyson says it best, “I’m a hermit, until someone tells me to be hermit.”

We put the water table out front today, and let the kids play in the driveway. I snap a few photos of them splashing, pouring, exploring, and for a moment it feels like any other day at the any other time.

But it’s not.

To think, a couple of months ago, I knew barely anything about COVID19, only that it was spreading in Wuhan, and my typical anxiety-ridden-self was frazzled with Tyson’s upcoming business trip. “I’m not even going to that part of China,” he assured me, but I was grateful when, a week later, his boss nixed all travel.

So much has happened since then: empty store shelves, businesses and schools closing, a stock market roller coaster, as we fumble throughout days closed-in, trying not to break under tantrums and inevitable boredom, (how many times can I listen to Taylor Swift’s, Lover, at Hattie’s insistence?), while usually bustling streets the world over quickly turn quiet.

I’m not a cup half-full type of person. I’m typically a think-of-every-scenario-humanly-possible type person, and recent events – all of this chaos, all of the unknown, bites at my brain, picks at my soul, until all of my thoughts rumble and collide, my chest tightens, and I feel like I’m going to burst into a million pieces of worry. So, between copious amounts of Diet Coke and hot baths (Sylvia Plath said they cure most everything), I remind myself there have always been hard times; somehow, somewhere there will always be hard times, and it’s okay to acknowledge them. It’s okay (as a friend put it) to not be okay.

One of my favorite quotes is from Doctor Who, when he says, “The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant.”

We are going through hard times. We will go through hard times.

Acknowledge them. Embrace them. Learn from them.

When the storm clouds shift, and light breaks through, I’ll embrace that, too – even if only a glimpse: to hug my babies tightly, eat a cookie (maybe five), laugh with my husband, FaceTime family, walk to the mailbox, listen to the sound of rain against our house, read a good book, breathe in a gentle moment in a dark night.