2020

My calendar stops on March 14th, the week before the State Meet. The reds blues, and greens mark my work schedule and Beach's work schedule, our appointments, Beach's gym schedule, MVP, social activities, bills due, chores, all of it frozen on a whiteboard.

Has it really been a full work week? A Monday to Monday of life altered? That was fast...

I can say that safely because no one can come close enough to me to punch me in the face.

But yes, we have had a lot going on.  I have friends on the frontline working to save as many people as they can.  And I have elderly parents sheltering in place.

I have a partner still working, trying to do it as safely as he can for everyone.  Trying to keep work going for the workers who rely on him to put food on their tables.

My oldest son is a plumber, and he is still working.

My oldest daughter has an underlying medical condition and is in quarantine, fearing for her health and her life.

 Our youngest son was sent home from college last week, but he got stir-crazy in the city so he returned to the organic farm he lives and works outside of Cedar City, Utah.

During this time, BC was forced to travel 2x.  While he was gone, we had an earthquake of 5.7.  The aftershocks are still rolling in. 

The gym sent a conditioning program to do at home for Beach.  She began running for cardio and seemed hooked.

Utah's social gathering number is 10.  As of yesterday, our death count is 1. We are the state with the highest hoarding rate in the nation.  Police are patrolling inside the stores.

We have had to shop (3x) mainly because the grown kids keep showing up (and for care packages and RX's for Alexis), and also for fresh produce.

We have socialized thoughtfully and carefully.  We have chosen our contact risks.  We have a small circle... but they also have small circles... and their small circles have small circles.  It causes a lot of jokes about Sally; if you sleep with Sally, you sleep with everyone Sally ever slept with.

When someone leaves the yard, we yell, "Remember, don't sleep with Sally!" The way I see it, it makes just as much sense as yelling "wash your hands" to someone getting in a car.

I have seen a lot of good.  I would almost say the world looks better this way.  It's slower; it's more thoughtful and more focused on what is real. Resources are respected. Errands consolidated.

I see families out on walks. I see happy dogs. I see friends and neighbors reaching out to each other. Love and caring and kites flying.

This is the slow life that I have been living behind the fast life of being a Gym Mom for nearly a decade.  We plant a big garden, we raise hens for eggs, we homeschool, we bake (a lot), and we live close to the land.  We have a freezer full of meat that BC hunted.

I feel safe in this slow world. When I look up and out over the rim of our little farmstead, I get sad.  I think about the long stretch of not having choices about living little and slow or living big and fast.

I wonder about the surrealness of an earthquake in the middle of a pandemic.  Unbelievable. (How much I would love to be able to laugh about this with Wendi; so many things she didn't live to see...)

Those who know me have been joking that I have been preparing for this my whole life.

When I was little, I had a dollhouse. Three stories high, my dad had made it for me.  The year before that, he made me a huge train track on a 4'x8' sheet of plywood and turned it into a table attached to a pulley system so I could raise it to lay flat against my bedroom wall. When the train table was down, it was level with the third floor of the tiny house.

I would set up the dolls. Tiny bottles, plates, toys, books, mini forks, tables, beds, and porcelain dolls. Then I would run the train full throttle at a blocked track calculated to derail it straight into the dollhouse and play out the disaster.

Sometimes, I would set the dollhouse up and just shake it and play an earthquake.  Or bunker the family in one room of the house and play out a blizzard.

The disaster wasn't the fun part it was the hunkering down and the gathering of resources that I liked.  I liked to feel safe by playing out survival. I am a planner, an organizer, and a caretaker.

In adulthood and in a world of real people, I know too much to be having fun. This isn't fun. But it is what I am good at.

Only in very small moments do I get scared.  Mostly, I am sad.  I'm sad for those suffering.  I'm sad about the loss of things we haven't lost yet but soon will.

The gymnastics community is my window to the wider world. It is unimaginable these young athletes are not in the gym training. The end of the Season without warning was shocking. 

I happen to have Beach's very last floor routine from her last night at practice. Right now, I am too sad to watch it. How they will pick up and go back, I don't know.  It will cost so many of them their futures in this sport.

I look at the kids, and I wonder what happens next for them. There are a lot of unknowns. What I hope for is that when we are called out from our hiding places, we come out with renewed hearts.

Life is beauty.  Good is winning. We just need to all hold on. Take turns breaking down and building back up. There are people among us who will not see the other side of this. It's important that we walk this path in a way we want to be remembered for.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. ~Robert Frost