Stitched on the Heart

Several years ago, I wrote a blog that I can't find to dig up about a conversation I had with a Mom (hi Marta!) about the biggest gift I could give my children. 

At that time it was probably only one kid and I was thinking about worrying about sleep or potty training, or waking the baby or not waking the baby or feeding vegetables every three days before fruit every three days and about that rash...

... but I believe then what I will blog preach now-- and the gift is that of resilience.

++++++

So here we are.

That's basically the statement that we all are thinking daily.

And, frankly, pre-crisis, thought daily.

Here we are and were.  

Life right now is so very difficult to unpack because we are in a VERY CORONAVIRUS crisis, without the crisis bearing down on us in tangible ways... yet.

Friends: you and I have lived and functioned through the snipers in DC, where we didn't know if we were most vulnerable at a gas station or in a Home Depot parking lot.  

We (or me), also were in DC on September 11th, very raw, living three blocks from the Capitol, watching the sky, and listening to the quiet, and wondering what was coming at us next.

We lived through burnt mail on the Hill, and holiday cards that arrived three months later when anthrax showed up.

Hell, we had a house fire, and lived in a hotel for a few months, while we are talking about resilience.

We worked to feed and support our neighbors when the government shut longer than our safety net could handle without community support.

Those memories are the things that those of us in DC have seared in our memory and on our hearts. And those are the BIG things.  The ones that made the news. The ones that our big adult brains could at least try to rationalize through. 

The things that may not have made the news are the food insecurities when the housing market dipped, when Medicaid funding didn't make it through to the states in time, when the rules changes on indigent care... when we (hold your breath, because this word makes everyone uncomfortable... when our privilege and life circumstances covered our gaps...)

And you guys, we were adults through all this. With big adult brains.

And here we are with lives that we are in charge of molding.

No pressure, ya'll.

But THESE TODAY DAYS are the days that could be stitched on the hearts of our kids, and I am so unready for it.

I tell to others the stories of my personal resilience... that came at the intersection of having moved a lot in my childhood and having to blaze through and show up in new situations, along with having the gift of parents who gave me a good core foundation of confidence.  It could have been the "Free To Be You And Me" minivan tapes (we were so hip), but it was also being parented by resilient parents who always showed up when it was hard and when it was easy.  They gave me a good model of what it means to be in a community.

We've been honest with our kids about what the next couple weeks to months might entail.

We went to a National Park today that was completely empty, and we likely were the adults overcorrecting our kids to ensure they were six feet away... social distance.

They know what a social quarantine now means.  And the different between social quarantine and social distancing.

They have their personal favorite verses to sing for 20 seconds when they wash their hands.

But they also saw me, and heard me, asking and pleading them to back up, stay away, elbow their coughs.

Their hands are bleeding from the washing.

We are on the precipice of stitched on the heart moments as parents, and I'm not sure I'm ready to rise to the occasion.  

We've had a family meeting about what social distancing means: 

1. What we all need to do to stick together. How we need to be a team
2. How teams don't race to finish first, how real teams finish together.

But best laid plans led to lots of time outs at the national park today.

We've worked together to create a "morning work period" so our Montessori kids can feel comfortable, and hopefully, Mom and Dad can telework as required.  

We've had to shift around financial resources to find the space to buy a Chromebook for the kids, something we've previously resisted.  

These moments are going to be stitched on their hearts. 

I'm not confident I'm the seamstress for it.

See me in a few weeks, and until then, we are each other's virtual village.

My friends at Webster think stitch is also a verb: "to make, mend, or join (something) with stitches.

Let's stitch together and be models of resilience for our kids.

Real team.don't race to finish first. We finish together.