I had an argument with my husband a month into quarantine. I wanted to get some takeout and have an at-home date. His perspective was, what is the point? This isn’t normal. Why pretend by surrounding ourselves with trappings of normalcy? Just hunker down and wait for this to be over.
Going into month three, just pushing through isn't working anymore. Trying to pretend things are normal feels crazy and accepting that this is the new normal is depressing. Click To TweetWe’ve missed birthdays, Easter and Mother’s day. All typically special days when we would have done something to celebrate.
It’s not the lack of special foods or gifts or trips that is so hard. It’s the lack of acknowledgment or family togetherness. My kids complained that they didn’t get to do what they wanted on Mother’s Day. My daughter is already lamenting the lack of friends and family for her June birthday. Our anniversary is this weekend, and we can’t seem to even think of a way to mark it. Special foods, that we still have to cook and clean up don’t feel particularly celebratory. (My husband’s current diet precludes most takeout). We said maybe we’d buy bikes this year instead of exchanging gifts, but apparently that’s another odd pandemic shortage (along with flour, yeast, toilet paper and hair clippers) and it’s not like we can just walk into a store and try a a few.
I remember on Easter I wanted to cook a meal, not anything really fancy but something out of the ordinary (that I also had the ingredients for). I wore a dress. Because I needed to do something that felt like it should.
We don’t have to just accept that life is irrevocably changed. Some things may hang around longer than we’d like. (I can’t quite stand the thoughts of sending kids off to school in the fall wearing masks. It feels both cruel and futile.) But most of this will pass, we just don’t know when. Until then, we need to find ways to make our daily lives meaningful and manageable.
Find ways to feel normal
Whether that means getting takeout from a local restaurant. (Presuming it’s open), or driving through Starbucks (even if you just drive home again), do things that feel normal. I’ve had a couple in real life (though socially distanced) conversations in the last month. It’s been one of the best things I’ve done for my mental health. We’ve planned a couple of at home dates. (something we used to occasionally do even before this, since we couldn’t always get or afford a sitter). We ate dinner I didn’t have to cook thanks to gift cards we’d saved from Christmas and contactless pickup and then played a board game and ate a special dessert. For a little while it felt like normal life again.
Find ways to embrace the extraordinary
At the same time, these are not normal times. It’s Ok if you want to do something different. Can’t get away for the long weekend? Have a backyard campout. Take a scenic drive somewhere you’ve never been (bonus if you drive out to a local farm to get some groceries and support the local economy). Do a family fitness challenge. Teach your kids to cook, and have them each take over one meal a week. (even if it’s simple foods like scrambled eggs or grilled cheese).
Embrace the strangeness of this time and a small way to revel in it.
Weird is nothing new to me,
and it perhaps because
I’ve fought the world’s insanity
to serve the higher laws.
I’ve eaten dinner in the dirt,
a rifle by my side;
no fire, now, must stay covert
in the sniper’s hide.
A Baggie for a dunny;
that, the urge doth quell,
for it isn’t funny,
packing out the smell.
But the worst of noble ends
were shallow graves for my lost friends.
Another way to look it…. which I heard from John Eldredge’s podcast called “Expecting the Wonderful” on 3-2-20 (the entire podcast is great, but for this point, listen to minutes 7 to 9 or so) – rather than thinking of dates and celebrations as “normal” here, consider that
in heaven, feasting and celebrating, etc, will be the norm, so doing those things on earth is “true evidence of things eternal”, kingdom living in the here and now… from the first sin, there has been a war going on here, so doing eternal things now – like communing with those we love, and celebrating even when the world is falling apart – is “an act of defiance” against the enemy who is at war against us. Hope that helps you and your loved ones start celebrating joyfully again.