Your Kids Seem Happy and Other Pandemic Musings of 2020

We say a prayer each night at dinner. When I was a kid, the prayer was God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food. But now we say God is God, God is God, let us thank God for God's food. Amen.

This means, God just is. Relieve yourself of any notion that God will bestow good things on you if you are good. Bad things happen to all sorts of people, no matter how nice or mean or generous or greedy they are. Pray for them. Pray for yourself. Nobody deserves anything more than anyone else and none of this is really yours. Thank you for all of it anyway. Let's eat.

Frozen Mud Pie

The pain of the pandemic has been unevenly distributed, and we have been very lucky. We did what we could to support local businesses and charities. We tried to help neighbors and family when they needed help. We wore masks and practiced social distancing, recognizing that we could play a small but vital role in reducing community spread. We connected with our loved ones in new and interesting ways. We kept the Girl Scout troop going. M still logged 2,000 running miles, although he didn't run in a single official race. Our family is good at pivoting when circumstances change and this trait helps a lot when the world is in upheaval. 

Several people recently commented on how happy our kids seem. I assure you, they experience the FULL range of human emotions. But they continued to grow and learn this year and are generally happy and healthy. Yesterday we took a walk with our neighbors and found an ice-covered pond. After the kids had been playing with the ice for a while and had broken through it in several spots, a red-tailed hawk soared down from a tree and landed just yards away from us to take a drink of water. One of the coolest things I have ever witnessed. An auspicious end to a tumultuous year. 2020 was filled with extraordinary moments extracted from ordinary daily activities. Everything was stripped down slightly. Less people around us, empty calendar pages, very little reason to rush the kids out the door. There were so many times the delight expressed by one of us was infectious enough to raise the mood of the other four. 

This is what I wish for 2021, an unstoppable pandemic of delight over frozen mud pie or the thrill of catching a leaf in your hand before it hits the ground. Plenty of time for everyone to experience deep breaths and deep sleep and deep laughter. Happy New Year!