It’s been a week.
To be fair, the kiddos are handling it like troopers. The adults are not so much. The youngest has been battling an ongoing fever/congestion that sent us back to the doctor’s office yesterday. They recommended mucinex, which I think is doing good work to clear out the congestion, but in mobilizing the congestion it’s also making her cough and gag and barf up mucous. (She has always done this when she has congestion/drainage so we are used to it by now but still. Alarming.)
This morning the alarm went off at 7:00 a.m. and, like most school days, all three kids were still sleeping peacefully. (They wake up at 6:00 a.m. on weekends. Every. Time.) I rolled over to my husband and said, “We have to wake everyone up,” in a voice that clearly communicated I did not want to do that thing. He responded, “Do we, though?”
That was all the permission I needed.
There is so much illness going around right now in addition to the one causing the global pandemic. Other schools around the area have closed periodically because of the number of students and teachers absent. Our district called off school for Monday to “give anyone who is sick a chance to recover”. (Kind of weird to make that call a week in advance if you ask me but I’ll take it.) There is so much stress and uncertainty right now on top of the usual seasonal darkness and after ANOTHER week of doctor visits and sick kids and no sleep my husband and I waved the white flag. The youngest already wasn’t going to school because of her fever/mucous episodes, what’s the harm in keeping the other two home for the day as well and stretching that three day weekend into a four day one?
I love our schools and I’m so grateful for them. And at the same time, my middle is on her third round of antibiotics because we’ve gotten one cold after another so relentlessly that she’s had an ongoing ear infection for months and is in danger of needing ear tubes if we can’t get it under control. My youngest is in preschool and missing a half day isn’t going to hurt her. And my oldest brings home daily stories from middle school of the things other kids say and do that horrify me. I know the goal of all this is to prepare them to be out in the world, and we are doing that. But part of learning how to be in the world is knowing when you need a break from it.
So we are staying home and being together because that’s what our family needs right now. There’s a lot I can’t and don’t need to control. But I can control this. I can drop the anchor and give us all permission to stay safely in our calm little harbor while the storm rages around us. So I will.