Letter to my children: These are not normal times (and yet...)

Dearest Beloveds,

Before I dive into the list of what makes this time so different than any other time on our planet… I want to relive the morning with you.

First, it is an odd day (as in today is the 11th), so the Dragon gets to open the door of the advent calendar. After finding a snowplow to attach to one of the Matchbox cards (thank you Mimi!), you both wanted to put on your Colombian dancing outfits from last year’s talent show.

I cannot properly express how wonderful it is to see two small children with beyond full skirts twirling and jumping and laughing at 7:10 am in the morning. Your joy is my huge overwhelming joy.

So, breakfast, hair braiding (Dragon, your hair might almost be as long as your sister’s at this point), more twirling, more jumping, looking at library books, and then Math class. I am a huge huge fan of Right Start Math (small side note, there seem to be two directions that Homeschooling Curricula take with parental directions… the finely detailed and the less so. I am big fan of the former.)

Then, it is time to walk to horseback riding lessons at the property next door to us. I cannot even believe that sentence just happened in my life. I grew up on Capitol Hill - no horses. My beloveds, you can walk down our gravel driveway, over some grass, through a small wooded area, behind our neighbor’s house and end up at a horse barn - with horses. The horse barn has lessons. As my father would say, the whole thing is preposterous. We live such a blessed life.

So, riding lessons. Technically Dragon you are not big enough to be on a horse (in terms of your legs being not so long yet), but it is so much fun for you to do it together that we started. Your lessons usually involve a lot of walking, but today you were bouncing (learning to post is easier with longer legs) and trotting along! Bean, you are practicing posting as you trot and steering the horse (driving? not sure the proper equine nomenclature). Such a big smile you have over your mask and always a calm nose rub for the horse afterward.

Then we walked home, all holding hands. First the Dragon was the hand tunnel (in the middle), then the Bean, then me. Towards the end of our slow walk, hearing our feet on the almost frozen ground, feeling the sharp chill of the winter blue sky, breathing the verdant air, I started to sing. When I was a child, one of my mother’s friends from Australia visited and taught me Waltzing Matilda. So that is the song we sing. The Bean has her part where she counts on the third verse the number of troopers. One Two Three!

Just when I could feel the Dragon’s imminent “Momma, can I go on your shoulders?” we turn the corner and there is our greenhouse.

“Let’s go see what is going on in the greenhouse!”

“Oh yay!”

“Hold on, let us only open the door once, it is chilly out here and we want to keep the plants safe. Ready, one, two, three.” We all tumble into the humid fecund space.

“Look how big everything is!” You two immediately rush over to the row of Tatsoi and begin to snap off leaves for a lunch salad - a tuna lunch salad, at the Bean’s request.

So, there it is, our morning. Here are the parts of the morning that were not normal courtesy of our pandemic reality. We all wore masks to the horse barn. We showed up 30 minutes early so you two could play with Clemente from our pod and we were told that we are not allowed to be near the barn or visit the horses - so we hid behind the trees to not confuse the issue. Your father dropped off a Kn95 mask this morning to Meme’s house because I mislaid her’s yesterday when we were doing our curbside pickup of vegetables from the farm stand (shoutout to Hearty Roots!)

Instead of wearing your flowing talent show costumes this year in the big auditorium of the church with the glorious stage, with food, with singing and clapping… we will do it on Zoom. Zoom - a verb, a noun, a part of our life that one never anticipated.

The library books in our house come from Momma going to the library for 5 minutes and quickly denuding a shelf. Unlike last year where we would all sit and choose together and there was story time and lego time and snack time and socializing. Yes, there are new library books coming in the house - unlike March, when I was portioning out the 20 over 2 months - but we don’t know how long the library will be open. It all depends on statistics and hospital beds and families being torn apart.

That knowing is the most not normal part of this for the adults. Nearly 300,000 people have died from this pandemic and the trend is going in the wrong direction. The small changes that we make day to day are due to the larger story that is happening all around us. I don’t know what history will say about this time when you two are reading this - but I am sure that it will be kind about some things and unkind about others.

It seems almost unfair that we can live such a morning with such a maelstrom going on around us - but I am hugely grateful that we can and I am hugely grateful for you both.

I love you more than you will ever know.

PS… Two days later… Oh my goodness! Momma realized that I blithely put in the word pod without unpacking it. A pod used to refer to a peapod… or a pod for moving… or a pod of insects/animals. Now, as Zoom, the term pod is one we use daily. Who is in the pod? What are the exposure rules of the pod? Can a member of the pod go to a massage? Acupuncture appointment? What happens when the gossamer wings of the pod have been pierced by an unexpected exposure? Oh my dears, pod… a small innocuous word that has taken over much of our lives.