It’s Wednesday of last week, and I’m writing this to you from a pool deck along the ocean in North Carolina. We’ve turned an idea to get away over Columbus Day weekend into a week-long stay in an oceanfront home in Corolla. We took the kids out of school for the first extended time ever, because David found this house, a re-book, through an internet ad, and it came with a pool and a private walkway to the beach and clean linens already on the beds when we got here, and we didn’t have to go anywhere else but where we are, right now. As I write this, on Wednesday of last week, I do not know that this time next week, we will be sequestered in our own house for fourteen days because Pennsylvania will have added NC to its quarantine list two days before our return, and I’m glad I do not know this, because right now it’s a sunny 78 degrees and Quinlan is on her dad’s shoulders dunking a basketball into a poolside hoop while Saoirse and Cian try–…
I shared this to my personal Facebook page on a whim the other day, but this is something I want to remember, so here we go, blogged for all posterity (er, or just for my archives): The other morning, I woke Cian up for school, as usual, at 6:15. He opened one eye. “What’s for breakfast?” he asked. I told him, and he nodded with approval. Then: “What’s for lunch?” I told him, and he nodded again. There was a final follow-up question: “What’s for dinner?” I told him, and this time I got a smile in return. He opened the other eye and motioned me off his bed. “Okay,” he said, this time with a sigh. “I’ll get up.” I’m still wondering what would’ve happened if he hadn’t liked what he heard…
You guys, my kids are climbing the walls. They’re threatening to dig a hole in the backyard and fill it with tap water from the hose and call it a pool. They’re saying it’s too hot to play outside when it’s only 78 degrees. They’re daydreaming about places to visit, with the caveat: “some day–but when?” They volunteer to go with me to my mom’s because it means they get to sit in front of Hot Bench and Judge Judy, and maybe just maybe we’ll go get ice cream afterward. You guys, they’ve stopped complaining about us taking them on hikes. That’s how bad it’s gotten. Morale is down in our little corner of PA. We’re slowly starting to venture into the world again, but it’s slow going, and there’s not much on the horizon except more of the same. On a very hot day last week one of the kids actually got upset with me because we’ve never made friends with anyone who has a backyard pool…
