Hello! It’s been a few days.
The weekend was busy with Asher’s State swim meet. (He was a relay-only swimmer, Saturday and Sunday.) We met my parents for dinner on Friday night on the way into town, and then were up and gone pretty early both Saturday and Sunday for the meet.
He did well and it was kind of nice being a lower stakes situation with just the relays.
Saturday after the meet, Asher, my mom and I went to a big outlet mall right near the pool for some shopping. It was packed, which I usually can’t stand, but I guess I knew that going into it. It was a really mild, warm day for early March and, a Saturday just a few weeks before most spring breaks. A perfect combo for people to be out shopping.
We ended up spending several hours there. Asher talked me into some new sweatpants at Nike and also some on-sale shorts from Lululemon for him. (His first ever Lululemon purchase… I hope I haven’t just unleashed a beast.) I bought a splattering of things, including these casual ankle pants, which I think will be nice to bring along on our upcoming Smoky Mountains trip:
Saturday night was just a relax night at my parents…went in the hot tub, take out pizza, and some scrolling around still flight shopping for Hawaii in June. (Why are the flights so awful? Why? Been watching them for a long time now and they are just all around terrible for our dates…crappy schedules, ridiculous prices… what.the.heck.).
Anyway, we were home by late afternoon on Sunday. It was a fun little 1:1 getaway with Asher and a nice weekend all around. 🙂
Pandemic Flashbacks…
Also, as a random side note. I was thinking yesterday: I wonder if I’ll ever experience another early spring without thinking about the pandemic. Since, as you all know, things really unfolded here in the U.S. right around March 2020, i.e. early spring.
You know how certain smells can transport you back to a certain time or place? Well, I feel like the “early spring smells and sounds” right now remind me a lot of those early pandemic days. I was walking Charlie yesterday and suddenly had a huge wave of nostalgia wash over me. Like a big breath of…. covid lockdown. (We took a lot of long walks and scooter walks with the kids during those early days, when the weather felt just like yesterday’s, hence this particular memory.)
It’s such an odd, odd thing, really. That was such a highly emotionally charged time. SO many feelings. It was also a really lovely time in many ways at our house- the only time in our family’s history when we were home as much as we were, spent as much time together as we did, and life just felt so relaxed in a way it probably never will again.
I mean, I’m not saying I want a repeat!!! To be clear. But the boys were also at really sweet ages then (4th and 5th grade!). They weren’t yet into the whole teen thing and were still really, really happy to spend a lot of time with mom and dad. They still do, sort of, but not in the same way as it was then. They had a precious innocence about them yet. We were more “in charge”, I guess, of everything they did and when at that age.
We had so much great family time during those early days. I also feel like I magically had all this time for things- really great things!- that are just harder to squeeze in during normal life. Lingering on the deck with a cup of tea. Reading together. Game nights. Cooking. I feel like in many ways, that time was the closest our little nuclear family has ever been.
I wrote a very similar post in April 2022, also reflecting on sentimental early pandemic memories (see that one here). In that post, I jotted down a bunch of the specific memories that I associate with that hunkered down, lockdown period.
Here’s a screenshot from that post:
Anyway, like I said, I don’t wish at all to ever go back to lockdowns. But life is just SO busy and so full all the time again, now. There was something really, really special about temporarily hitting the pause button. But during that initial period, I’m not gonna lie, it kind of felt like a big, long, extended snow day. Like a free pass from all the regular daily activities, sports, obligations, etc. Or a big staycation.
I think on my last post about this, someone used the word “fondness” in the comments. That they had a lot of “fondness” for those early pandemic days. I think that’s a good way to describe it. (Which also feels icky to say, since there was also so much bad in the world at that time.)
But just as I always get a wave of nostalgia every fall when the air turns crisp and I can’t help but think of going back to school as a child, I feel like early spring is now forever going to remind me of those early pandemic days.
Anyone else?
(Here’s another post I found from May 2020 (written more in real time, during the pandemic) where I actually had the forethought to jot down things that we were presently doing during that time.)
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful for sleepy puppy snuggles:
GRATEFUL KAE 
Correct, we don’t ever want to have to lock down again, but it was such a sweet time for our family. In many ways that spring was the happiest time of my life.
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I feel the same way! I definitely think this was NOT the case for everyone, though.
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I was just chatting yesterday with my colleagues that looking back those days were so special. Yes we didn’t know what future was in front of it, but we were forced to live in the moment, to be grateful, to make the best of quarantine time at home as a family. We bounded so much and I actually miss it, not the pandemic, but the family spirit at the time.
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Exactly- I don’t miss the pandemic at all!!! But those first days were good for us, I think in part because we assumed at that time that it would be short lived. We didn’t know how long it was all going to go on and all the other repercussions, so at that time, we were able to just enjoy the positive aspects.
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Agree, flights are stupid expensive these days! I also live in the Midwest and am trying to buy tickets to southern California in late June for a family reunion and the dates/schedule/prices are sooo bad. I never know when to just bite the bullet and buy vs. hoping they’ll get better.
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I know! It’s so confusing!!! And then if we find anything slightly “less bad”, we’re never sure if we should buy or if they’ll come down, AND we then also worry that maybe those particular tickets will disappear and/or drastically increase, too….
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Yes, I guess we’ll all associate March with that initial period of lockdown for a long time. Those early day WERE nice. Like everyone, I have mixed feelings about the pandemic in general. I’m still really upset that my son missed his senior year of high school (he’s totally over it- I’m still upset.) On the other hand, I loved having him home all the time- but THEN, when he went to college the next year it was almost harder- I went from having him home 24/7 to him living in a different state. Okay, I have to get a grip and move on.
Congrats to Asher, and that does sound like a fun weekend. I love those pants, and they are a great color. Every time I buy pants I end up getting black. I keep thinking I’ll try another color but I never do.
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Oh I would have been SO disappointed to have a child miss their senior year!! I feel like my kids were at least in sort of in-between years that didn’t matter “quite” as much. But my heart just broke for those seniors missing out on graduations and proms and class trips and all of those things you can never get back.
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I haven’t been thinking about the pandemic much at all and the spring doesn’t trigger those memories at all but I can 100% see why they would.
There were some VERY sweet moments, but in general it was just…so hard and awful for my mental health. Having the kids home (preschool + Grade 3) was a pretty terrible time in their schooling cycle. Ugh. I would NEVER want to repeat that phase and fondness is never a word I would use to remember that period of life.
That said, there were some incredible opportunities to spend time together as a family.
But mostly *SHUDDER*
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I totally get it! I think it definitely depended on the ages, situation, etc. I think the consensus was that the younger the kids, the worse the home schooling stuff was. Mine were just old enough to be mostly independent, but we even still had challenges. I think the good memories I’m remembering were really mostly during the very first 2 weeks. We had traveled to Mexico right before the lockdowns started, so Ivan was required to isolate at home for 2 weeks before returning to work- but his job isn’t remote, so he was just home. That meant I had tons of back up with the kids, I was able to do MY job in peace, we had lots of family time… it got progressively harder once he went back to work and then I was juggling more on my own again. The “fond” part for me was really just the very beginning when the schooling stuff wasn’t fully sorted out yet (so they weren’t even doing that much, really) and Ivan was home fulltime- mostly felt like a couple weeks’ worth of vacation almost.
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I can see how those days can bring some sweet memories. For me it was not like that. I just gave birth to R in January so he was 2 months old when pandemic happened. Our daycare for L never closed (thank god) but my mental health was terrible at that time. We knew so little about co-19 and I kept worrying how the virus would impact the most vulnerable of us. I was on maternity leave and T was laid off, then rehired the next day. I was teaching from home, with a new born and a toddler. Ugh, terrible just terrible.
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YES that sounds terrible. I cannot imagine. Like I said above, I think a big piece of it was my kids’ ages. They were old enough to be independent but still young enough to be easy going and sweet. It helped my husband was home for 2 weeks (not working!) in the very beginning, too. For us it was really nice. But I can 100% see that it was not that way for most people. And it got more challenging for me, too, as things dragged on….
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Oh for sure! It was like everyone was forced to take a “staycation” of sorts. But yeah those ages are fun!
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I have some level of nostalgia for VERY early covid – like, March/April 2020. It was when we got into the NEXT academic year (2020-2021), where all 3 of my kids did distance learning all year (which yes, was a choice, but it felt right at the time) AND both parents were working from home? AWFUL. My kids were in K, 3 and 5 that year and seriously it was quite bad. Actually far worse for the older 2 when I think about it!! The first 1-2 months of covid was really this standstill and I do have fond memories of it, but when reality hit? Not great!!!
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Oh definitely- as it stretched on it definitely lost any and all appeal that it every had. To the point that I remember feeling very almost desperate for the situation to change. Fortunately my kids were able to be back in school that next year for “most” of the year, but there were still plenty of days and stretches off, and their activities were all weird for a really long time… I don’t miss any of that later period, not one bit! I really only miss that very very beginning when my husband was home and it was all new and novel and felt basically like a vacation. At that point we also had no real concept how long it was all going to last, either. Like at first we assumed for some reason that it was just a short temporary thing and would likely get better soon, right?!… Never imagined it would be what it actually was!! It was a hard thing to comprehend having never lived through anything like that before.
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You will love the Smokies! I live a pretty close distance so have been there many times. I think we went on Spring Break a few years ago, but the weather was surprisingly warm then…it can still be quite cold in March there. Have fun!!
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Paul’s birthday is March 1st so I do tend to think about the pandemic and his birthday as it was kind of the last sense of normalcy that we had for a very long time. I also found out I was pregnant at the end of March 2020 after many months of trying to get pregnant – Phil was like ‘well of course we are pregnant now that we are in the middle of a worldwide pandemic’. I can’t say I have great memories from that time… Paul was home with us for 7 weeks so I was juggling caring for him with work (which luckily was not as busy as it is now but was still kind of busy). Navigating a pregnancy during a pandemic was just tough.. I ended up having to go to therapy to deal with pushback I was getting around boundaries we were setting. But 2021 was actually a great year for our family. It was nice to in have a newborn and not deal with an onslaught of visitors. People dropped food at our door and waved at us through the window. Paul still went to daycare but he was barely sick because people weren’t out and about as much. And I WFH when I went back in April 2021 through March 2022. So I never had to pump at work which was amazing. I would just hook up my pump and work. So there were some positives to that time frame. I just would not want to relive 2020. One of the hardest things was that Phil couldn’t come to the 8 week ultrasound due to Covid protocols. We had found out at the 8 week US the previous October that there was no heart beat. He was there for that appt. I was terrified it would happen again and he wouldn’t be there to help me hear that news. But it all worked out – I did FaceTime him in and told them you to tell me right away when she saw a heart beat. I ended up getting to know that tech so well as she did all of my other US and I had a lot since I was high risk due to a blood clot in Paul’s pregnancy. (And wow I just left a novel for a comment – ha!)
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We’ve moved state since the pandemic which might be why I don’t get reminded of the early pandemic days at this time of year, but yes those early days were nice! In Sydney we had a second lockdown in June 2021 that dragged on for 4 months which was decidedly traumatic, so unfortunately that clouds my memories over the pandemic. But that first 2 months in March-May 2020, when I only had one kid (my daughter was 2 – by 2021 I had a 4 year old and newborn!) was a novelty and nice to hit pause on normal life for a while, especially being newly pregnant and struggling with fatigue. Even though that time was also filled with uncertainty and terrible stories from around the world, which did cloud the experience somewhat.
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