Social Distancing Diaries: Day 365

Dear Diary: To commemorate the one year anniversary of the beginning of the pandemic I am reviving the Social Distancing Diaries for one week only! I’m not sure what direction these posts will take, but I’m pretty sure there will be a healthy dose of reflection! And hopefully humor. Eden is my Humor Critic. She lets me know whether or not my entries are funny. If you need to catch up on the beginning of the Social Distancing Diaries, you can start here.

Stretching our legs at the park while visiting the cabin

8:30am: Online worship service. After a year of live-streamed church services it’s become very familiar. That’s not to say we haven’t been back in person at all this year. Our congregation opened up to in-person worship in July and our family went back in September. Then they shut down again in November during the pre-holiday surge in COVID cases, opening again in January. We just went back in person last week but we spent this weekend at the cabin so today we were back online. There are some perks to Living Room Church, as we call it, especially since we worship as a family. It would feel quite different if I was alone. Worship is best experienced in community.

11am-12pm: Lunch rush. Since this was our last day at the cabin we had a smorgasbord of leftovers to finish off for lunch. Then I madly washed up the dishes as Tom packed the car.

12:12-2:15: Ride home. This was our seventh trip to the cabin since July. That is remarkable. This cabin has been in my family since way before I was born and I have never visited as frequently as I have this year! It’s been so nice to have a place to go that is safe and still feels like a vacation. I wrote in another blogpost that we’re not Active Cabin People. We don’t fill our days with hiking, four-wheeling, or tubing down the creek. We sit around the cabin and read books, do puzzles, color or make crafts, and watch movies. It’s the change of pace and change of scenery that we really appreciate. Especially this year!

2:30-Bedtime: Laundry. Did I mention we spent the weekend at the cabin? Sheets and towels…

I’m pleased to report that whatever this “Availability” system is, it didn’t last long! I never did understand it!

4:00-6:00: Zoom Small Group. After taking a break for about a month or so after the pandemic began, our small group Bible study needed to figure out how to continue to meet together and connect. Like the rest of the world, Zoom became ubiquitous to us. Over the summer we met together outside, bumped our meeting time 2 hours earlier in the day, and continued to meet around a campfire through October. Then it was back to Zoom. We look forward to warmer days to meet in person again. And someday <gasp!> we’ll meet in homes again!

6:00-8:00: Supper next door at my parents’ house. Having my parents in our “bubble” has been awesome! During the initial weeks of the pandemic we did take a break from visiting in each others’ homes. I think it was late spring or early summer when we resumed indoor visits. Being able to spend holidays with them was extra special when we observed so many families staying apart this year. Now they are both fully vaccinated and we breathe a sigh of relief! Tom’s parents have been ever so cautious throughout the pandemic and we have not had indoor visits with them for a year. In warmer weather we visited outside a few times. In cooler weather the outdoor visits were brief exchanges of gifts or food with quick face-to-face catch ups. We even surprised them with Christmas caroling in December. Instead of spending our weekly Sunday afternoons in their home we spend an hour long Zoom together each week. Later this week they will both be fully vaccinated too and we’re looking forward to having more contact together.

8:00-8:30: I helped Eden with homework. Wow, has this become a significant part of my life! I could write multiple blogposts about school, so I’ll probably touch on it throughout this week. We elected to keep Eden and Lily home for online school this year. At first we were taking a more cautious approach, not knowing how in-person school would affect infection rates. As time went on it seemed that the school was doing a very good job at preventing spread, but the risk of quarantine is ever present if they get exposed to someone who tests positive. We prefer they don’t have to deal with the back and forth of in-person and online. We always left open the possibility of returning to in-person. But I think both girls have realized that by now (almost 3/4 of the way into the school year) going to in-person would feel like the first day of school and that’s not so appealing.

Before I began writing this post I read over the first week of blogposts from 2020. It’s humorous now to look back and remember the blanket of uncertainty that seemed to settle over our lives so quickly. I remember longing for the privilege of hindsight, which now I have. Some of the emotions we felt in those early days have stayed with us, revisiting us like layers of a cinnamon roll. Just the other day Lily was revisited by the sadness of missing peers and the daily interaction with schoolmates. Tom and I are fatigued by the constant decision making about what activities and interactions to allow and which to say no to. And one year into the pandemic we face another summer having no clue what we’ll be doing. In the spirit of 2020’s Mantra: We’re All Just Doing the Best We Can!