One major silver lining of the pandemic is the amount of time my family is getting to spend together.
Pre-COVID, my daughter and I woke up at 7:30 a.m. while my husband, who had finished work at midnight the night before, dreamed on. He’d wake right when we were heading out the door to spend the morning at the playground.
Lunch was the family meal we enjoyed together before parting ways again. My daughter would be in bed by 7:30 and I’d soak in several hours of time all to myself, sometimes waiting up for my husband to come home, but never able to stay awake long enough to spend time together.
As a stay at home mom, I had plenty of time with my little one, and on my husband’s days off, I had a fair amount of time to be with him. But there wasn’t a whole lot of time when all three of us were together. We had a weekly family hike and Sunday mornings were always the three of us, but it always felt like there wasn’t enough family time.
Until COVID. Now we have so much family time that I sometimes take the long way to the grocery store or pretend to be busy in the bathroom just to get a breather. I am a highly sensitive person with two very intense people in my home and I have had moments where I felt like their voices were bouncing back and forth against my skull.
But I’m grateful. I’m grateful because it’s good for my daughter. I’m grateful because every night I can cuddle my husband until I’m asleep in his arms instead of staring at the ceiling waiting to hear his key in the door.
I organize and plan like I breathe, so I have designed special “events” for us to look forward to doing each week:
- Sunday: family hike and picnic
- Thursday: puzzles
- Friday: pizza and a movie
- Saturday: family board games
Story time before bed has always been my domain, but now we often sit all together in the living room and trade off reading books. Sometimes my husband does it all while I clean up the kitchen.
Whenever my husband is off work for a period of time, I laugh about how it’s nice to have him home but it adds so much work to my life. But the truth is, the work is worth it. Even the moments of overwhelm that I go through are worth it. Our family is facing a world-wide emergency and we are scared. But we are together, and that I cherish.
