From Gabrielle, March 26
It isn’t the saddest thing about rarely leaving our homes except for exercise and fresh air and the occasional run to the grocery store. Some still go the doctor or get a blood test or do essential work that puts them close to other people.
For me, one of the most worrisome aspects of our homeboundedness is that children are spending days almost antithetical to every best developmental practice; and that our eldest neighbors are living more solitary lives than we can imagine. This is hard and sad…and out of alignment with human nature.
To have the distraction of sports has always been a luxury, but one since the beginning of time. So I mark today, not as a loss, because I can’t bear to call it that right now, but because there are more things ahead of this particular absence in my loss column.
I am someone who would have been at the game or watching it on TV, it connects me to my life before corona. And it reminds me, before it gets too far away, to ask you to describe with paper and pencil/crayon/marker/pen, the last “normal day” you had. Invite your children to draw their last day at school and add any words to the image including names of all the people on that day. Maybe listening to this recording or this one helps. When you finish, listen to this one.
Part of my last normal day was working at a job I love, and spending some babysitting time with my grandchild, who I adore. I spoke with my mother and appreciated my husband coming home early. Even though I suspected what was coming, it was a good and perfect day. I think of this day, and some parts of others before it, because they sustain me —these days will come again.
Taking stock of that which makes us sad is not something to spend all our time with. But to not pay attention to our sadness, the loss, encourages both to find a hiding places and burrow into our hearts and minds.
Let’s find a way to, every so often, let it out. We have to make room for happiness.
Baseball would have opened today and it will. I’ll be watching.