Reset Storm
Covid sucks. It’s exhausting for those of us with young ones at home in ways nobody’s talking about. It’s taken our parent-child relationship and twisted it up into too-tight of a knot and I can’t find either end. Like the thin chain of a once beautiful gold necklace put away wrong, now so tangled, it feels impossible to unwind.
Has being her home teacher stripped me of my special role as her mother? Am I now just a nagging omnipresent force from which she doesn’t ever get a break? At first, I felt lucky to have the extra time with my girl, just before upper elementary when kids really start to prioritize friends. But with enough time, we were driving each other mad. With still no family gatherings or playdates, having only been in school nine weeks the past year, my daughter yearns for the spontaneity of being a child, for the freedom of what her childhood is supposed to feel like. She misses the choice of extracurriculars she used to have as outlets. She’s lonely and I can’t fill that hole.
The dry winter doesn’t help. When the arctic freeze took hold and there were still no storms, we went monochromatic grey - inside and out. We’ve both grown weary of mom’s inevitably mixed roles, tired of the hyper-vigilance, worn out by holding back kisses and hugs. Sick of the incessant talk of COVID and its hold on the world.
It’s another night of many tears. Tate feels everything so strongly (which she gets from me). I’m drained from it as I can’t hold space when I’m the one she needs to blame for it all, while I’m feeling it all so acutely too. I’m scrolling through Instagram before bed, admittedly to numb, until I notice, in the streetlight outside, it’s dumping.
As I watch the snow fall, I remember the heavens, from which it comes. This is all so hard. Really hard. I sneak in to kiss Tate on the cheek and watch her sleep, beholden to her beauty from my rawest, selfless self. I see her when she was two months old. I can see her as a woman. As my eyes fill and my shoulders let go, I know not how upset I was with her before, only how what she feels is so real. How real I feel, too.
When we wake, our neighborhood glows white under our Colorado sunshine sky and I’m bolstered by it. After a day of working, trudging through the forest with the dog, shoveling our enormous corner lot, I’m still in my bright green bibs when I pick her up from school. Sleds are in the back.
Pulling up to the hill, I’m grateful to see the families who’ve beat us there, mostly masked.
“Honey, I think we might mask here, just being around these other families. I’m sorry. I’m sure after being masked all day, that’s not what you want to do. I’d die wearing a mask that long; I can barely make it through the grocery store.”
“I don’t care, Mama. Race ya!”
She’s off, bee-lining to the top of the hill.
I follow her light like a trail behind her. I take in the other families smiling faces, the friendliness I feel on the hill I don’t remember from other years. Kids who don’t know each other build jumps together, maneuvering their way around each other with such ease. This was just the reset we needed.
As we scream down the hill, I laugh as hard as I can. So grateful to be alive. To be a kid at heart. Despite the exhaustion or how sore my legs are, I race her back up. Over and over and over again. Wearing ourselves out with happy.
My only clock is Tate’s giant grin. We stay until the sun falls behind the mountain ridge, far longer than the hour I told her we had. I’ll take this afternoon and tuck it right up under my arm, for the grey days yet to come.
