I was so looking forward to doing a series of blog posts last month about our build a Christmas adventures… Until I realized that doing a step by step photo shoot of how to make my favorite 2020 Build a Christmas presents isn’t REALLY an obtainable goal when you live in a small house and homeschool two out of three of your children AND your third is your editor. So feeling a little guilty, since I had JUST vowed to love my blog more, I decided to just not do one. Sure, I could have written about cookies or fudge or the family bonding I force upon my Bacon Bits with fun family activities, but I didn’t. I decided to save those partially written blogs and photos for next December. They will be retro!
The beginning of the new year, for me, brought a sense of tranquility, as long as I stay away from the news or talk about politics, that is. Since last March I, and surely so many others, have felt like we have been in a kind of suspended animation. Big decisions were put off while telling myself “Let’s just wait a little longer, until we know what is going to happen next”. Even when forced to make decisions due to time constraints, you just take that one step. Then hold your breath. You wait. It is almost if you could see each decision falling like a stone into water and watching it ripple out, highlighting flaws in our plans, other questions that need answers. It all felt so big! Right? So you just wait. You stop dropping stones.
Last year at this time I was SICK. I was called into work for the first time in 15 years sick. I was call my sister and make sure that if I died she would take an raise my youngest as her own sick. I was looking at prices for tree urns when my family cremated my body sick(These are actually really affordable). I was afraid to go to the doctor. I knew I should probably be in the hospital. But I am a mom. Who would “mom” in my place? What do you do? I vowed to just not die. My lips were blue. My blood felt thick like sludge flowing through my veins. Can you feel your blood thickening? Maybe not, but I thought at the time I could. I couldn’t taste anything. My bones ached from the inside out. I had this deep body racking cough, like my body was trying to rid itself of something, probably my abused lungs, but just couldn’t. I was hallucinating. It was terrifying.
I bathed in practically boiling water. FOR HOURS. Multiple times a day. It was the only relief. I would fill up the water to the brim of the tub and try and let the heat soak into my skin, bringing color back to the surface. Letting it soak into my bones. I cried every time I got out, because even with the heat set at 90 and the fireplace on the world was too cold. I would move to the couch where our family pets would curl up in a row along my body offering me their warmth and the weight of them giving me comfort.
“I was lucky”, I would tell myself. I guess I still tell myself that. My big kids were old enough to take over doing the farm chores and house chores, even though I would drag my sore, blue lipped body around the house, picking up shoes and putting dishes in the sink once or twice a day, I could for the most part, parent from the couch. I would have the kids check the fridge and the cupboards while I put in my Shipt order. Stories were read, homework was checked, laundry was folded. The big kids took turns droping off and picking up my youngest from the bus stop while I watched from the window. Things could have been worse.
To my sisters insistence over the phone “You don’t sound good. I think you have that new virus that everyone is talking about. Maybe you should go to the hospital?” I would just reply “I am fine! I sound worse than I feel, really! I have Gatorade and Tylenol. I’m FINE! But if I die. You’ll take Thomas right? Haley is too young to take care of him. Gavin will go to Doug’s house and Haley is fine on her own, but you will take Thomas. Not that I’ll die. I’m a mom. I don’t have time to die. I will be fine.”
I gave myself a week to try and get better. I took a whole week before I went back to work. It was hard. I work from home and it was still hard. I was falling asleep between work calls. I was forgetting things even with notes and alarms, things were slipping through the cracks. At the end of everyday I would descend the stairs leading from my room to the living room and lay on the couch where the dogs and cats would take their self assigned spots on my body, getting up only to soak in the tub and then returning to the couch. I was failing. I felt like I was failing my work. I was failing my children. My body was failing me.
I lived, obviously. But I was sick for months. I was sick while prepping for a pandemic that I was already personally in the thick of. I was sick while trying to prep for a recession and the job loss that I knew was going to happen. I was sick while trying to plan birthdays and Easter and even Christmas months in advance. Because we really weren’t sure what happened next, but whatever it was, I would be prepared.
This year, I feel tranquil. A sense of peace. A Feeling that has been gone for so long. The panic and the angst that have been part of my day to day life, as either long Covid symptoms or due to the ins and out of living through a pandemic are lessened. I remembered that there is always an “Unknown”. It is a part of life. A year ago, or even two years ago, there were just as many unknowns. They just looked a little different than the ones that we have been living with. This realization helps things seem brighter.
I decided to not let the unknown define how I live my life anymore. It is OK if in person school never happens. My youngest will still learn. If my old company doesn’t survive? Well, my little business is still plugging along. There are family votes on what direction things should go. Should we just focus on shop sales, or push forward our plans by a year and start renting out bee hives? Maybe I will want to get a second form of income again. I can choose that. I can’t control the whole world or the things that we see happing on the news or with the government. But I can control the world around me. As the uncertain things that present themselves, I myself, and we as a family can shape and mold those unknowns to work for us.
UrbanFarmingMom 