Given to my mother by me, Christmas 1979
Mother's Day 2020, it snowed, adding insult to injury. Not only could we not see our mothers or go out for a lovely brunch, we couldn't even enjoy a nice spring day. Our extra-large dog, Ellie, was the only one enjoying that morning, sitting outside and letting the snow fall on her. She also had no idea that there was anything wrong in the world. She was thrilled to have all her humans around her all day, every day, and a nice hike each afternoon. Ignorance can be bliss; ask a dog.
By the time Mother's Day rolled around in 2020, the world had come to a standstill. Our president suggested that his top health officials research injecting the human body with bleach to kill the virus. Stores were devoid of paper towels and toilet paper. Everyone worked from home except those considered "essential," as though most of the rest were expendable.
I kept a journal during this time. I have been keeping one for years, but it helped to soothe some of the fear and angst this time. It is the only journal I read occasionally to remind myself how much better it is now, even when it may not seem like it. I wrote daily during our lockdown period. When I went back and re-read some of those entries recently, it reminded me how hard it was. I am glad we are four years out, but the aftermath has devastated many, especially our young people. Motherhood was never so difficult, as I discovered from some of my entries.
March 16, 2020
The world has gotten pretty crazy in the last 72 hours. Kids are home from school for at least two weeks. My guess is it will be longer since this virus has not yet peaked. Store shelves are empty, and we are being told to distance ourselves socially. Events have been cancelled, colleges closed, students doing "on-line" learning. We went to the mall on Saturday and it was eerie. The parking lot was near empty. The highway even quiet. I pray this won't go on too long
March 20,2020
Today I am going to school to collect my laptop and policy binder. We are now being told we will be home through April break. My mood is not very buoyant this morning. My poor kids sitting in their rooms all day, learning through internet connection, without the chance to be social, to be "face to face" as they put. I pray this won't go beyond April break, but I have my doubts.
March 21, 2020
The world is quite upsidedown. The governor is shutting the state down come Monday morning.
April 8, 2020
Grocery shopping is a fearful chore now. It used to be just a chore now it leaves me emotionally depleted. Seeing empty stores shelves- no vegetables, no ice cream, no paper products and only one butter per customer. Greg just can't believe it when I tell him the shelves are empty, all he can say is "C'mon!" like I am joking with him. It must be nice to live wherever he lives but I can't find my way there.
Now, in Greg's defense, he has been working from home for years. Not too much of his daily schedule was disrupted, and I was making breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week. He enjoyed having us home all day. It was like having co-workers to chat with during breaks and lunch.
Recently, a friend and I were commiserating about how difficult it is to be a mother and a parent today. The pandemic seems to have shone a light on just how tough it is. Between trying to help our children navigate a pandemic, being socially isolated for months, and the toll that has taken on everyone, mentally and physically, we have the constant challenge of trying to navigate social media, cyber-bullying, and just the loss of kids being kids. When we think we have a handle on the technology, we find out something new is out there, and our children know all about it well before we do. Keeping them safe and happy seems like a daunting task most days. We agreed this is probably the most difficult time to be a mother. But then, there have always been challenges for mothers. Famine and war: looking back through history as far back as Eve, there is always struggle and pain, but there is also love, joy, and faith. Being a mother has never been easy. It isn't fair to think we have it the worst; it is just a different kind of tough.
About 20 years ago, when I was working as a home care nurse, I met a woman who had grown up at the orphanage my great-grandfather founded. She was there when my grandparents ran it. She told me she had been born in Chicago, but when she was about 8, her father died, and her mother couldn't care for her and her three siblings. Her mother put them all on a train and sent them to an orphanage in New Britain, Connecticut. Her story stunned me. I could not imagine what it felt like to put four children onto a train and wave goodbye from the platform, wondering if and when you might see them again. As this woman, who was now in her 80s and had raised a family of her own, told me about meeting my grandfather for the first time at the train station and how kind he was, how kind she always found him to be, she did not sound angry for being sent away. This is not to say that she did not suffer from this separation. I do not believe she had an idyllic childhood in the orphanage, but the experience did not harden her. She said she never did see her mother again. I did not ask what happened to her. My imagination went wild all on its own. How did she survive after putting her children on that train? When I told my mom this story, she explained that there were many children who came to the home to live even though they had at least one parent living. Children were sometimes taken in for short periods if a parent could not care for them. I have thought about that mom from time to time. And the woman who herself was a grandmother when I met her. She had seemed to be forgiving of the decision her mother made. She said simply, with kindness in her voice, "She did the best she could."
That is what we do as mothers. We do our best. We hope things will turn out okay and that tomorrow may be better than today. That tomorrow we will use what we learned today and maybe get a better handle on this mothering thing. As I tell my children often, "You did not come with a manual!" There are no directions. My mother did not have a manual on how to mother her children from a wheelchair. Her mother wasn't given a manual during the polio epidemic when my uncle was sick in the hospital. They didn't know if he would survive. I do not know how to mother children who know more about the technology that surrounds us than I do. I did not know how to mother my children through a pandemic but somehow, we managed.
There is no manual; there is only a blueprint, and what is on that blueprint is love. Love is where it all begins. Without love there is no courage, without love there is no faith and without these there is no grace nor forgiveness. Mothers are full of love. It is the only blueprint we get.
During our lock down time, the best I could do was try to keep things light. Each afternoon, when my daughter was done with school, and Ellie had been taken for her walk, we watched a Marvel movie complete with a hot fudge sundae or popcorn, and some days both. ( which was part of the reason Ellie got a daily walk). The boys played many video games, but it was the only way to be social with their friends. My husband and I did our best. We followed the only blueprint we had: love.
In July of 2020, my daughter and I were able to go to camp as we had done many summers before. Camp Eagle Wing was one of the few to open and operate that summer. There were many things in place to make this happen. Cabins were cohorts; we wore masks inside and ate as many meals as possible outside. Then we became two cohorts, a girl's camp and a boy's camp, when no one showed symptoms. And a week into camp we tested the entire camp for COVID. If we all came back negative, we would ditch the masks and be one big happy camp for the remaining time.
My journal entry the day after we received those test results:
July 29 2020
Today is a beautiful day! We are COVID free. We found out just before dinner last night and it was announced to the camp. The kids went wild! Yelling, hugging, some crying , throwing their masks onto the ground and stomping on them. It felt so good. It was a very charged dinner for sure. We all gathered in the dining hall as a whole. I cried as I watched everyone break into song, just as they did every dinner for every summer we had been at camp. We all felt lighter, happier. It is going to be a good day.
My daughter and all those campers had some sense of normalcy return. I felt buoyed by their response. We followed the only blue print we had that summer, love. I knew then, watching those kids revert back to their "normal"that it would be okay, we would climb our way out of this mess, somehow, and find ourselves on the other end, a little smarter and little better at mothering.
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