Here are a few lessons I’ve learned over this Pandemic Thanksgiving + start of Covid Christmastime: On the Wednesday before your it’s-just-us-this-year Thanksgiving, it’s really nice to cook the big meal with your kids while also not stressing about cleaning the house for company. You’ll miss the family you won’t be seeing, of course, but you will absolutely appreciate the calm. And the discovery that your twelve-year-old likes to chop vegetables. On Thanksgiving Day, have dinner late so you can make a charcuterie board for lunch. No one will be upset about this. On that Friday, clean the house in the morning before you start pulling out all the decorations. Yes, you’re still going to have to vacuum up the needles after all is said and done, but you can’t beat decking the halls when they’re already sparkly. (Also, somebody spilled cranberry sauce on the floor yesterday. You have to get out the mop, anyway.) On that Saturday, there’s no shame in counting a masked-up early-morning trip to Lowe’s…
It’s 7:15 on Sunday morning. I’ve just sat down on the couch with a newspaper and the first, and therefore most precious, cup of coffee of the day. Cian’s already here in the living room playing, and he abandons his toys when I sit to climb up beside me and rest his head on my shoulder. He says good morning, and that’s where the expected slow start to my day goes into hyperdrive. “Mom?” he says. “If anything is possible, then nothing is possible.” I’m still in my pajamas. I’ve had one–one!–sip from the hot mug of coffee I still hold in my hand. I am not ready for seven-year-old philosophy yet, but Cian’s thought process moves at a speed that requires the under-caffeinated to catch up. I think for a second. Take another sip. “But, buddy,” I say, “think about this: the word ‘any’ can be all things. Like if we talk about ‘anyone,’ we’re really talking about all people. So what does that…
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–…
