Fully Human...
The pandemic of 2020 has afforded me the grand privilege of spending more time with my grandchildren. Two preschool children and 7 adults (4 parents, 2 grandparents and 1 uncle) - all in quarantine, all the adults have full-time jobs, everyone committed to trying to keep their jobs and enrich the lives of these two little humans. I suspect in the years ahead we might remember these as the sweetest of all times. And it is. But it is also a challenge. (If anyone knows how to get glitter out of my grandchildren’s hair, applied with glue, I’ll gladly make you brownies with gluten, real sugar and butter.)
As a family we check and cross-check our decisions. We have conflict. We argue. We judge one another. But we also figure out work arounds. In the pandemic, we decided that we would vote on what decisions we find acceptable risk, and which ones we are not willing to take a chance on. If a decision to venture out of the safety of the bubble (as defined by the family) is required (sickness, protesting, counter-protesting, medical emergencies, “accidentally” getting our hair cut), that person agrees to a 2 week quarantine from the larger family unit. I have been extremely grateful for the way my adult children navigate these waters with mutual respect and a commitment to honoring the person with the biggest feelings on any given decision - sometimes loudly. We are all quite well aware that we do not know what we are doing, but frankly, our decision-making is not being driven by the pandemic so much as it is our commitment to love one another. Imperfectly. Awkwardly. With a lot of glitter.
I watched yesterday as my daughter took care of her niece’s poopy diaper with such gentleness and loving care. “And I thought to myself...what a wonderful world…”
I observed my son playing football with his nephew. Throwing and catching and fetching and running...over and over and over. “And I thought to myself...what a wonderful world…”
Cooped up, covered in glitter and other unmentionables - I know that I am a lucky duck. So many are so far away from their loved ones. Others are not aligned in terms of how to think and respond to this unprecedented time in history. And to be clear - we are not all in alignment in thought, word and deed either. But what we will not compromise is LOVE. And that means we give and receive, take and take back. For the next few blogs, let’s return to some basics in search of the sublime. It’s possible, I believe, to see the beauty in struggle if we put on our God vision goggles and buy a lot of glitter.
