On what we've lost

9/27/20 

We went to the park where I used to have Tinkergarten classes. I thought it would be a good "pandemic park" because there isn't a playground close by, or really much of anything other than green space and walking trails. I forgot about the shelter nearby, which was hosting a massive birthday party. Between that and the other small groups of people gathered on the hills and walking on the trails, I've never seen so many people there. How could I have not realized? I've never tried to guess which park would be most deserted for a Saturday night picnic before, especially during a pandemic. 

The anxiety was instant. How was I going to keep my kids away from the people, the lake, and the poison ivy? They were uninterested in food, preferring instead to run (toward the people, the poison ivy, or the lake). 

I couldn't do it, but Caleb took over, graciously navigating the hazards and allowing me to sit and eat my dinner on the picnic blanket alone. 

I looked out over the park and wondered if it was really just over a year ago that I was welcoming and inviting families I didn't know to gather on a tarp and read a story before launching into that week's activity. It was then that it struck me, how much we've lost. 

We're not good at mourning or grief as a society. We're excellent at avoidance, numbing out, putting on a fresh face until we get home. And we've only been home lately. 

It's always felt like work, good work, important work, but a lot of work for me to talk to people I don't know, to connect with others in a crowd of strangers. Both my parents are outgoing and effortlessly launch into conversations with new people, seemingly without any racking their brain for a good topic or overthinking their first line. When I was little, I assumed this was just something all adults were capable of, but it turns out that it still is hard for me to think of what to say, even though I desperately want to connect. 

Now it's a pandemic, so in addition to overthinking, I am trying to keep myself and my kids 6 feet away or more plus evaluating what the risk is of striking up a conversation with someone who isn't masked outside. It's just easier to stay quiet or only talk to my kids. 

It was within this very year, from January through the first week of March that I gathered in that same spot to take a Tinkergarten class that I wasn't leading, meeting families without having practiced their names to try to memorize parent and child each week. 

How could so much have changed in such a short time? This is a rhetorical question of course. I know how. I watched it unfold, with much anxiety. Too much anxiety, or maybe just the right amount for the situation.