Day 34- April 15, 2020

Day 34- April 15, 2020

Today marks 155 since Abraham Lincoln died, and 108 years since the Titanic sank. It's important to remember that things could be worse.

Quarantine is almost starting to feel normal.  We wake up, telecommute, the kids do their school work, and go about our day.  Sometimes, like today, we try to mix it up a little bit.  The girls are having a really difficult time with missing their grandparents.  While faceTiming is nice, all R. keeps lamenting is "I just want to hug them!"  So we drove to my mom's house so we could at least see her and Popum in person.  E. was very excited to see her frogs- Biggie, the largest of the frogs, and Harold were out- she has names for all four of them- the other two are George (my kids really like Captain Underpants) and Little.

The house has a huge yard- almost two acres- so there's a lot of space to socially distance ourselves.  Mom suggested we take the girls' scooters home with us, and of course, that meant E. had to try hers out and play on the hill in the far back for a bit.  I stayed close to her while R. chatted with Nana, and took in the yard that I spent so much time in growing up.  My mom is putting her house on the market this spring- at least, that was the plan before the pandemic hit.  It's been an emotional roller coaster for all of, getting it ready for sale (Jeff and I finished the basement as a surprise for her in February), coming to grips with having to say good-bye to a place I still think of as home, and then the uncertainty of actually selling it.

But these moments, of watching my daughter dodging fallen tree branches while zipping along on her scooter, remind me of all the fun I've had in this yard.  When I was in second grade, my best friend Alexandra, who lived down the street, moved into the new cul-de-sac that had been built a few doors down.  Her new backyard abutted mine.  She and I spent more hours than I can count (a lot of them with my little sister too) playing in the woods between our houses, to the point where our dads cleared a path through them so that we could more easily get from one place to the other, starting right behind where the where E. was riding, and ending where her mom's rosebushes edged her lawn. At some point in the late 80's, we transplanted a small sapling that we were sure wouldn't get enough light, and moved it to the start of the path.  It was tiny, less than a foot tall and rather puffy, like a small green Christmas bush. Today, I took a photo of it- it's about about 20 feet high, skinny and reaching up-up-up.


In those woods, we would pretend we were building houses back there, picking up branches and attaching them between trees (with vines and crawling plants like ivy) to create "rooms".  At one point, we took an old yellow plastic table and chairs set to accessorize our living room, and there was a hole that we deepened to make a pool in the middle of everything.  That table and chairs is a little duller, covered in over 30 years of dirt and a decent amount of leaves, but as a nod to to how plastic will never decompose, they are still out there, a testament to our childhood that still lingers.

We climbed trees, ate wild blackberries off the pricker bushes bordering the wood, and swung from a giant vines that hang from the hundred foot tall oaks.  When we got older, one of the vines snapped while I was flying on it, but I got lucky and was still on the backswing, so it was only a couple of feet drop.  My dad hired a family friend who did tree pruning to hang a tire swing from about a hundred feet up, and we would do "underdogs," where one person would climb onto the tire, and the other would push them by running full swing, ending up underneath the swing and releasing when it got too high to hold onto.  Our hair would fly over our heads, our giggles would trail back behind us, and our shirts would fill with wind as we flew.

I miss those days.  Everyone says they miss childhood in some respects- the freedom, the lack of responsibility, the fearlessness.  I have to say, mine was relatively idyllic- my parents did an incredible job of maintaining fun in our daily lives, and making sure that my sister and I were free spirited and believed (truly believed) we could do anything.  Alex and I still talk almost daily, and have maintained our friendship through phone calls, video chats, road trip adventures, and pure sisterly love that withstands a bicoastal, 3000 mile apart separation. 

One of my favorite things now is that we can bond over being moms, about the adventures our kids are having and how much fun it is to introduce them to aspects of our childhood.  She sent me a photo recently of her son hugging her stuffed hippo Barnabas, who I remember she used to sleep with every night.  I'll send her videos and photos of my girls, and every time I say "look at them- do you remember when we used to __________", she always knows exactly what I mean.

One thing I'm excited for when we can get out of isolation is getting my girls back together with their best friends.  We've kept in contact through video chatting, and even playing invisible catch across the street with friends, but it's not the same.  These are formative years for life-long friendships, and I'm hopeful that they can get back to forging theirs.

And Alex owes me a visit- she was supposed to head out here a week before my birthday, and we were going to celebrate with two of our other oldest friends.  But with the lock down, we are going to have to wait a bit longer to see each other.

Meanwhile, since the house isn't on the market yet, I get to create some more memories with my kids in this yard, running around and swooping down the hill.  You have to find the silver lining to this whole thing, and making some new memories while crystalizing old ones is definitely one of them.