Skip to main content

This Quarantine has Cheated Me

Can I be real and raw for a minute? This quarantine has me feeling cheated. When I elected to be a stay-at-home mom for the year, this isn’t what I signed up for. Up until March 13th, 2020, I loaded up the kids each morning and we had an outing or excursion every day. Every. Day. Story time at the library. Play time at Tumble Beans. Weekly mommy-and-me gymnastics. Free play at the Jam Time indoor playground at the Natick Mall, followed by grocery shopping at Wegmans. After six months of staying at home with my emerging bilingual littles, we had a schedule and we had a groove, which on the best day resulted in a tandem nap that gave Mami some much-needed reprieve and “me time” during midday, before the 9-year-old got home from school and our evening schedule and responsibilities commenced. Life was smooth, life was good. And then it was all wrenched away in a moment by COVID-19. 



The first day of mandatory social distance quarantine was awful. I knew it would be horrible to be cooped up inside with everyone from 7am to 7pm by myself, and it proved to be just as bad as I expected. The kids cried a chorus, nap time barely happened, the house was destroyed by 10am, the girls fought incessantly. I melted down. The sense of claustrophobia overwhelmed me, and my inner animal lashed out. Now I know how the tigers at the zoo feel! When my husband finally came home, I first said thanks be to God that we have our health and nobody in our family has the virus. But other than that, my day had been my worst nightmare.

Nothing has been quite as bad as that first day. I think God pushed me to the breaking point that first day, so no other day could break me. But that still hasn’t made any subsequent day easy. 




















Why does a disaster have to happen like this when I’m already on maternity leave??? If I were working, I would RELISH this time home with the kids. (And be getting paid for it.) But stuck in the house with them all day every day for the unforeseeable future like this sounds like a morbid type of torture right now.

And I know that is horrible to say, because we are lucky to have our heath and we are all OK, but it’s how I feel. Now the quarantine has been extended to May 4, and very likely will be extended further. I know some school districts all over the country have canceled the rest of the school year. Quarantine life from now until summer sounds unfathomable tedious. 

Last night I was catching up on some of my favorite TV shows (how is it possible that I’m stuck at home all day for more nearly two weeks and have actually watched less TV than usual???) and I found it surreal to see the TV show characters and story lines continuing as if the world hasn’t completely stopped. The Big Three celebrated Kate’s son’s first birthday on the season finale of This Is Us, and the besties on The Bold Type had a bachelorette party for Sutton. I found myself overcome with jealousy to see these characters getting to go out and leave their houses!


I know we are going to get through this time, and that we’ll grow stronger for it. But when I pulled out the tiny ball pit for the kids to play in a few days ago, I couldn’t help but pine for the giant ball pit at Tumble Beans, and all the days when leaving the house was the norm, not a punishable offense.

I’d like to offer this platitude to all the other stay-at-home moms who can relate to my bemoaning. It’s okay to feel sad about being cloistered in the house with our kids. It doesn’t mean we love them any less, and it doesn’t mean we don’t love spending time with them. Of course we do! It just means that this situation is inconceivably hard. But this is a time for immeasurable growth for our countries, our families, and for us as moms. Just remember, growing is hard, and that’s okay.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is 5 Little Monkeys Racist?

I’ve seen a lot of Tik Toks debunking children’s nursery rhymes lately. I have two toddlers, so now whenever I hear one of those rhymes, I think about their unsavory origins. But my son loves, loves Five Little Monkeys. He’s just learning to talk, and can almost say it by himself. I’ve thought about telling him to stop singing it since I learned in the original lyrics it’s not monkeys jumping on the bed, but he just gets so much joy from singing it as he jumps up and falls down, I thought... no harm, no foul, right? As long as he thinks the song is about monkeys, it’s ok.  Until my niece came over one day, and the three toddlers were playing on an old mattress we have on the living room floor for them to jump around on. My son asked me to sing 5 Little Monkeys. At first it was cute, because they literally were jumping on the bed, but then I took a good look at the three of them.  My kids are half-Guatemalan but very fair, like I am. Whereas my niece is half-black, and her skin happens
Post a Comment
Read more

Why You Should Travel with Little Kids

I took my first cross-country road trip when I was six-weeks-old. My parents loaded me up in an old Ford Wagoneer and drove me home from my dad's hometown of Pittsburgh, PA, to my hometown of Ojai, CA. After that, we traveled back and forth between the East Coast and the West Coast every summer of my life. A few times we flew, but most years we loaded up the car with the suitcases, the dogs, and the children and drove 3,000 miles across the country. This early exposure to travel instilled within me a joy of seeing the world, and since that first trip I have visited 34 states and 14 countries. And I hope to share that same joy with my own little ones. Traveling with children can be hard--it disrupts their nap schedules, may involve crossing timelines, and definitely pushes everyone beyond their comfort zones. But seeing different countries and different parts of our country as children gives them a greater appreciation for cultural and regional differences, and it widens their exper
10 comments
Read more

Reflections on Immigrant Life and the American Dream by a New Citizen

  Buenos días estudiantes de sexto grado. Mi nombre es Audelina Barrios, and I am a former student of Fuller Middle School. Soy de Guatemala, y viví mis primeros trece años de mi vida en mi tierra natal, pero desafortunadamente perdí a mis padres cuando tenía 12 años. Mi hermano y yo fuimos huérfanos por un año hasta que tomamos la decisión de empezar nuestro viaje hacia los United States to meet our oldest siblings.  In August of 2014 we finally arrived in the land of our dreams, the United States. During our first 4 months in the US, we lived in New Jersey with my oldest sister, Rosa, and went to a school where ESL didn't even exist. I was paired up with the only Latino in the school y sin saber una palabra en inglés. I felt like an outsider because I had no other friends and like I wasn't even part of the school system.  In January 2015 my older brother Francisco and his wife, Mae, adopted us and we moved to Framingham. My first school in Framingham was Fuller Middle School
Post a Comment
Read more