The Coronavirus: Choose Your Attitude

Week three of the COVID-19 quarantine. I pause and read what I just typed knowing that this might be a quarter of the time we will be inside and away from school, work, and social gatherings.  If there are months left to "flattening the curve" then we need to be honest with ourselves.

COVID-19 will test us down to the person. Families will discover their strengths and weaknesses.  Communities will rise up while others struggle. As a friend said, we will discover the best and the worst of us.

Here in the Brown family we have settled into what seems to be a routine.  The boys go to school.  I work from home. Lisa has started her new job. We find time to workout, take Lucie on walks, and get things from the store, but, for the most part we are confined to the house.

Thirsty Thursday - Virtual

One of Lisa's saying is to choose your attitude. Find that positive mind set whenever possible. She usually says it when I am frustrated with things.  In the midst of this pandemic it means looking out for one another. When the boys get frustrated with one another, an adult steps in to redirect them. When I get snarky, Lisa encourages me to go for a run. If Lisa gets into her zone, I let her go into the office, close the door, and keep the kids away. 

You have to be careful not to get cabin fever.

Yesterday, we had an online version of Thirsty Thursday, when our local gang gets together to vetch, laugh, and enjoy a cold adult beverage or two.  

We continue to send messages of hope, resiliency, and humor in our sidewalk chalk messages. "What do you call a bear with no teeth?"  "A GUMMIE bear!"  More than a few neighbors have commented that they enjoy the dumb jokes.

Both boys have started to help cook dinner. I mean they are really learning how to measure, pour, cut, simmer, baste, and serve a meal. Grant made a marinated, slow cooked pulled pork.  TJ made tacos for Taco Tuesday. We call it home economics, but we really just look at it as time together, well spent.  

Last night we watched a documentary on US National Parks. The boys actually sat through it and seemed to appreciate seeing places and wide open spaces that we might visit one day. 

When I need to take to take out my frustrations I head outside and whack on the stump of the tree that used to stand in the front yard.  The tree's root system was growing into the sidewalk and would have broken the sidewalk eventually.  Our neighbor James had a chainsaw and I had the desire, so I took it down.  Grant has been helping me dig around and chop at the trunk for five days now.  It is a long term project that I could easily hire someone to do in about two hours, but where it the fun in that? This way I get some exercise and purge any negative attitudes.   

I have started showing them flash mob videos; the Do Re Me song from The Sound of Music in the Central Station Antwerp train station and Ode to Joy from the plaza in Sabadell, Spain.  In part because its fun and in part because it reminds us what we are supposed to be like as a species; connected in physical space in a communal experience.  

Not every day is easy and not every easy day is easy all day long, we are getting through this.