Finding The Moments Adds Space

So in all this togetherness I’m beginning to realize that there’s not a lot of space left. Space for a breather, space to take a minute. Like to exhale. That only comes at night when everyone else is asleep. But the sun is gone and the mosquitoes are out so there’s no outdoor anything happening, not even to the small patio.

I can’t imagine what a family of five must feel like. Not any one … A working-class family of five. Oof. Or maybe just three kids under the age of five. Dude.

Parents out there … I feel you. I feeeeeel you. You have to tag out sometimes just for sanity’s sake. But what if you have no partner? What if you can’t just leave when you need to?

That’s a rough one, that’s when the grays start popping up and you immediately try to remember how to take deep breaths so as to prevent a heart attack, because you feel it rising up inside of you. The frustrations of parenting in this tight environment gets to you. I mean it makes the small space you inhabit even smaller.

Quiet always feels good to parents after sustained chaos. But I also hear that loneliness takes its toll if you’re single and don’t have the loudness surrounding you 14 hours a day. Company and conversation are missed as you can only take so much alone time or online meetings. Connection is missed. And your space feels small.

Everyone’s struggle is different. Sometimes someone else’s plate looks better. But that’s for everyone.

Hang in there parents …

So you just try to find a moment … something that made you laugh or something that ended up right after a whole lot of wrong. Dude.

Listening to good poets slam their beats and touch a heart string to create a smile. That felt good, even if it was just a couple minutes while the kids played Legos. Finding a funny sign and it making you laugh, not just smile, but laugh.

Planting a garden from scratch for Earth Day felt like an accomplishment. It will be a while before I see any results but we still took steps in the right direction.

Talking to friends on the phone in a video chat gave a few of them a very needed outlet of expression and relief.

Finding the little moments add up at the end of the day, or week … Homeschooling distance learning week three went well as all work was finished by Friday and the kids continued to learn something new not just go through the motions. Sparta and Athens. Fractions and order of operations happen in real life, like when measuring and baking banana nut bread muffins, and step two needs to happen before step 4. Clouds have names, like cumulus, and they mean something to the weather. Learning to play the Star Wars theme song on your saxophone. Recycling old crayons was the best surprise moment as it was something new and in the process we created art for Earth Day.

Baseball was still the funnest lesson as Abbott and Costello informed them on who was on first.

Finding the moments helps expands your space.

Buen Camino my friends!

🙂

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Outdoor Fitness Fun, Bob Ross Art Breaks, 80s Dance Jams, Netflix, and Looking for the Last Toilet Paper Roll

Normally I would have been excited to have gotten two weeks of Spring Break with the kids. That opportunity never happens. We made plans for another Outdoor Adventure to see big Sequoia Trees, Redwoods, lakes and trails on a road trip that would have produced Rainman-like photos from in and out of the car.

I felt rejuvenated with the outdoor love as we returned from Colorado the month before, but just as with everyone else Coronavirus changed life and we found ourselves hanging at home and preparing for this thing called distant learning and searching for the last toilet paper role.

Yesterday marked the 30th day my part of the country hunkered down and tried to protect its people with social distancing and Stay at Home order. Our governor and mayor are rocking it, trying to help people stay alive, bend the curve, even if some aren’t smart enough to understand the severity of the situation. We are all chipping in and there are more highlight reels of Good Samaritans than of ignorance and greed. And that’s been positive and uplifting because even if some people in position of power can’t lead the regular moms and pops, young and retired are stepping up and hitting homers out of the park.

Moms or dads are educators now, they’re still in parenting mode in search of the last toilet paper roll, but now in addition to working from home they’re part time teaching. And that right there is a recipe for an 80s sitcom starring Jack Tripper as the dad or Laverne DeFazio as the mom.

That is my current state of existence. We just completed Week 2 of Distant Learning in The Guat household. And while a lot of moms who had big back yards, trampolines, pools, multiple electronics, siblings in different rooms, laptops, iPads and desktops complained about boredom in their houses and were suffering bouts of massive anxiety I paused for a moment…

Small apartment. One computer. Two kids. It would be epic.

And it was.

At least we had a patio. Legos. And enough sporting equipment to open up a Big 5 Sporting Goods.

I never really had much growing up, and my kids have more than I did but we’re not high rollers. However we’re not suffering hardships that many other families might be going through right now. Foster care. No jobs no income. Domestic abuse. No internet access. Language barriers. Coronavirus makes situations like these more intense.

So we make the most of what we’ve got and I’m always emphasizing life lessons and love. And even though I got my Zig Zigler vibe going on as we start the days, there are frustrations and whining episodes that add more gray hairs to my new salt and pepper silver fox look.

They miss their friends. They miss being part of a team. They miss walking through the hallways with construction paper art on doors and seeing the everyday faces of kids in the crowds. They miss laughing at inside jokes during recess by the red playground, or walking from their lockers and headed towards lunch with their friends. They miss playing in games. They miss high-fiving and hugging their teammates when they score. They miss the energy, the cheers, and the vibe. They misssssssssssss it.

But we get through it, through it with outdoor exercise breaks, indoor family fitness fun, books, Bob Ross art sessions, Mo Willems drawing workshops, old school home economics, Monopoly battles, 80s dance jams, Netflix, humor and eating breakfast in pajamas.

Week one was for setting up a routine, getting the hang of online assignments, moving into the groove of homeschooling and still searching for the last toilet paper roll. Week two revved up the material and tested my flow. But we’re fine. It’s more laid back than our regular schedule of massive homework with soccer, hockey, baseball, and softball practices. There’s no more GO-GO-GO-GO we’re gonna be late! Do your homework before we need to leave. Don’t forget about your report. We’ve got to be on schedule! That schedule that’s written in a rainbow of Sharpie markers on the calendar that all moms and dads live by because if you didn’t the whole day turns into a disaster of epic proportions!

There’s none of that now. No Sharpie Marker schedule. We have nowhere to go, nowhere to be. Things slowed down. And we’re okay with that. Today we’re okay.

Buen Camino my friends!

Hibernation and Boosts

You know, when bears awake from hibernation it takes them a minute to get situated. I mean they just don’t jump out of their cave and be like Yogi where are you at?! They have a sleepwalking period where they kind of ease out of it.

And this is where I’ve been … hibernating writer hiatus. I hadn’t planned it of course, I hadn’t planned any of them. Certain life events hit you harder than others and it takes you a minute to rebound from certain setbacks or bouts of depression. Just they way it is sometimes.

But life keeps moving even if you’re standing still.

After catching my breath, and as I was revving up to make my comeback, this unexpected series of unfortunate life events of blockbuster proportions landed on us all and we found ourselves in different roles with added workloads and no MacGyver-like gadgets to help save the day.

And I was okay. I mean I had concerns, just like everyone else. But because of the rough patch, a different perspective provides the specs for me on this. The Resilience. I was able to find that special place when community connection seemed to have been put on pause.

There’s comfort in knowing that many selfless people like doctors, nurses, janitors, educators, farm workers, grocery clerks and other community members stepped up to bat for a lot of people. Humanity found in the little crevasses of the cities brings hope to a profoundly troubled time, like when you hear of the college student down the street buying groceries for the elderly lady in the pink apartment building, or the teachers in a small caravan of cars driving through the neighborhood to say hello to their students, whom they hadn’t seen in a couple weeks, or to the multiple chalk artists taking to sidewalks across town trying to brighten someone’s day, or the Italian restaurant owner 15 minutes away giving away free spaghetti and meatballs with breadsticks because he felt the need of his community when there wasn’t much left at the markets.

It’s the small things that can create cataclysmic shifts. And so I find that practicing gratitude creates the little boosts needed for the big take-off.

Boosts.

That’s where I found myself. Returning to my Word of the Year and finding that I had picked the one that was right for the moment … Boost!

Everyone could use one, especially now. A physiological, psychological, spiritual, and intellectual uplifting And you can always get that from the good spirit of people, the grace they show for others, as well as for themselves, and these you can find in the tiny cracks and crevasses of communities. The feel-good stories that don’t always make the front page, but should definitely highlighted.

So keep your eyes open and when you find the feel-goods share them. Their impact could be what someone needs to come out of hibernation.

Buen Camino my friends!