We recently had a COVID scare in my house, when my son had a sore throat.  His brothers immediately distanced from him, and he felt really badly about it.  He shared how sad he felt to have them turn away from him and not want to be near him.  Then he shared how much fear he had about COVID and what it would do to him.  Finally he shared his concern about me, as “an old person”, thinking maybe his illness would land me in the hospital on a ventilator or even kill me.  It was a heavy and productive talk.  [By the way, his sore throat was related to allergies and easily treated with anti-histamine medicine.]  

The entire process of evaluating and medically clearing him was strange and unsettling.  He had one symptom, so he wasn’t eligible for a test.  This advice revealed the different strategies employed by different health systems.  Some require more than one symptom and some do not. Some advise that the whole family quarantine while others recommend that only the symptomatic person needs to quarantine.  The school district policy differs from the healthcare policy, as do the opinions of various providers and professionals in both realms. 

I was thinking about how we are all managing this according to our own values, our own calculations of risk versus reward.  I’ve had many discussions about our kids and their social and emotional health, how they need to see their friends and feel “normal” or at least “like a kid”.  And I understand that.  I also think this time, where we have distanced from each other, weighed risks, and paused to think before we act, is LIVING.  This is the hard stuff of life that we were able to dismiss before COVID, by building up our busy schedules.  We were living on auto-pilot before, and now it feels like we are living in a recurring dream.  Time moves so slowly, and we spend a lot of time inside our own minds.  

It’s hard, but I don’t think it’s all bad.  I’m looking for silver linings here, and if our kids struggle, my hope is that it’s rooted in experiencing and coping with what’s happening.  In having the time and space to make decisions about who they interact with and what they do based upon what serves their highest selves.  I don’t know about you, but I spent much of my late childhood, adolescence and even adulthood, trying to mold myself into what I thought I was supposed to be.  I lived in reaction to judgements from others and grew apart from myself.  These socially distant times are an opportunity for the grown ups to reconnect and for the kids to strengthen their connections to themselves. It gives me a little comfort to look at it this way.  It’s another case of both, and.  It’s a terrible, lonely time AND a time to mine our way back to ourselves.