The Full Suburban: COVID-19 delays an empty nest for now
This was supposed to be my year. Since 2003, my waking (and non-waking) hours have been spent at the beck and call of my children. One would head off to school, and there would be one or two (or three!) behind them still at home with me all day long.
Staying at home with my children is the life I chose, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything; it’s truly been one of the greatest joys of my life. But I wouldn’t turn my nose up at a little break, which was just what the public school system was about to offer me.
Yes, 2020 was the year my youngest child was going to head off to kindergarten, and I, for the first time in 17 years, would have a span of uninterrupted hours each weekday to spend as I saw fit.
Finally, there would be no one begging me to have a pillow fight when all I really wanted to do was finish making the bed; no more cleaning up a mess just to see it re-created within minutes; no more running across town to mid-morning ninja classes, or schlepping an unwilling preschooler around Costco, or looking through the entire house to see why it suddenly got so quiet during an otherwise rambunctious playdate.
And now, it’s all gone up in smoke. COVID-19 made sure of that. Instead of all my children finally being gone at school during the day, they’ll all be home. Constantly.
“You’ve waited for this moment for so long,” Logan lamented last week, feeling sympathy for me similar to that of a husband gaining weight alongside his pregnant wife. “They were all going to be out of the house, and now it will be the exact opposite.”
It’s true. Part of me feels a little robbed of this long-awaited rite of motherhood. But another part of me is completely relieved that I don’t have to experience it yet. I’m sentimental about simple times and moments that I can never have back again. The pillow fights and schlepping kids through Costco that can bring me so much angst also are things I miss when they’re gone.
When my second-to-youngest, Emmett, went off to kindergarten a few years ago, I was a mess for half the morning, alternating between sobbing at the kitchen counter and wandering through the house clutching his forgotten toys to my chest.
“Get a grip,” I could almost hear my mom say. “When you and your brothers finally went off to school, I did a dance at the bus stop with all the other moms in the neighborhood. Enjoy the break. You deserve it!”
But what exactly should that “break” look like? What does one do with huge swaths of time for uninterrupted thought and activity? Once my kids do finally go back to school (In January? In a year? For heaven’s sake, someone please just tell me how long this is going to go on!), will it be the time to finally get that master’s degree I’ve always talked about?
To perfect my baking skills so I can someday open the dessert shop I’ve dreamed about for years? To write a book, volunteer somewhere or learn how to tend miniature goats?
I’m not sure. Right now, my main concerns are: 1) Where did I save the emails that have the passwords for each of my children’s Zoom classes? 2) If I lay on my bedroom floor and play dead, how long will it take my kids to ask me what’s for dinner?
And 3) If six kids are sharing four chairs and one bench while they sit at a medium-size dining room table for five hours of online school, and one of them starts humming loudly and three of them retaliate by kicking the table legs, how many minutes will it take for the kindergartner to clog the toilet in the bathroom with an entire roll of toilet paper?
As you can see, I’m all booked up for the foreseeable future. I’ll have to wait a little longer to see if the old adage is true, that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Until then, anyone up for a pillow fight?
Julia Ditto shares her life with her husband, six children and a random menagerie of farm animals in Spokane Valley. She can be reached at dittojulia@gmail.com.