“Laughter, Tears, Anger, Gardening and Remote Grandparenting”

Laughter: It’s one way we navigate this horrible crisis together. We laugh at and with each other- a lot.  Our silly jokes, the goofy things we do, even our mispronunciation of words make us burst out laughing- just silly day-to-day things we notice that crack us up. Of course, it’s been that way for our 22 years together – we make each other laugh often. Big guffaws, tear producing, belly shaking laughs.

Tears: It’s so hard to watch the news every morning and not tear up or just burst out crying. Hearing stories of the doctors and nurses fighting to keep us alive is both joyous and heartbreaking. Stories of loved ones not able to be with their hospitalized family member at the end of life makes us cry. We cry thinking of our own family members that we can’t be close to or help out. It breaks our hearts.

Anger: We cringe and get angry over the stupidity of people not taking it seriously, over the person supposed to be leading us out of this mess who requires subordinates to kiss his ring and ass in order to get the necessary help needed to actually save lives, over the greed of people hoarding supplies unnecessarily, over the ignorance of people gathering on beaches and in churches that will just prolong the crisis. A special anger for me towards the church gatherings – I guess I missed that beatitude at seminary from the sermon on the mount “Blessed are the selfish and egotistical”.

Gardening: We have done a couple new things this week during our 4th week of self-imprisonment. I purchased flowers and plants, picked and paid for online. Then we drove to the nursery, got loaded up and drove away – no human contact necessary. I needed to be doing some yard work and found a way to get product without people. Just being able to be in the yard doing “normal” things is helpful after so long. It is cathartic.

Remote Grandparenting: We have been Face Timing & Zooming with our distant kids & grandkids and even with our closer ones just an hour away but this weekend was different. We had a unique grandparenting experience indicative of the way of life we are now faced with. One of our daughters needed something we had but would be silly to drive an hour to pick it up.  Solution- we would meet halfway in a shopping center parking lot and exchange items. The 2 granddaughters came so we would stay on one side of our car while the kids played and talked to us in the parking lot. We got to have a good visit but never could get close enough to hug our grandchildren. “Social distancing” is not a Grandparenting trait. It was fun, joyous, and very sad all at the same time. Giving invisible hugs when they had to leave was hard. We would never have imagined such a strange visit even just a month ago.

Stay safe, be smart – I’m sure we have another 25 days to go.