Full Disclosure: That photo is from chemo days at Duke Cancer Center when some kind of highly toxic drug was being administered into my husband’s cancer-ladened body. My currently healthy self is not walking around with a mask on, I know the rules. I just thought it was an inappropriately funny photo to use.

Who knew that 2020 could almost be worse than 2019? Almost. For our little family anyway. It’s almost as if us Joneses were preparing for this quarantine for the last year and a half. While we were still able to travel and go and do for much of Ash’s battle with cancer, we did mostly hunker down, isolate ourselves from others, watch a lot of television and not leave the couch. We held our children tight, kept them to ourselves, limiting play dates and sleepovers and time away. And it wasn’t for the health reasons you may think. It’s because we knew death was imminent and we wanted to just be together as much as we possibly could. So while I see so many parents struggling, their kids struggling, mine have been taking it in stride. Do they fight? Of course. Do they get bored? Obviously. Do they get on my nerves? Undoubtedly. But my little champs are handling this just like they’ve handled all the other curve balls thrown their way. With resilience, humor, a few nagging questions and with a mostly positive albeit somewhat know-it-all-esque attitude.

It’s actually a good thing, in a way, that Ash didn’t live to see this crazy time in life, a pandemic for future history books. Before the dreaded cancer, my husband was a goer and a doer. He did not sit by idly waiting for life to happen. He couldn’t handle that. He always needed a plan, always had to have something to look forward to, always had to be moving, working, playing, focusing (or following many, many butterflies) on something. This “social distancing”, had it not been for the cancer and subsequent pneumonia taking him out, literally would have killed him. Or he would have killed us. Or we would have killed him. Something catastrophic would have happened in our family. The boys and I even joked the other night that it was a good thing daddy didn’t live to see this. He would have been an utter mess, filled with much restlessness and grumpiness.  (Please take this for the joke that it is. I clearly do not wish my husband were dead. He just happens to be dead, incidentally.)

I do want to say, to my fellow single parents and widowers, cheers to you. It’s not easy to be the only source of learning/entertainment/discipline, etc. to our children. It’s not easy to not have a partner to trudge through this heaping pile of corona shit together. Being in isolation fucking sucks. Being in isolation without your partner fucking sucks even more. Have a drink when you need it. Take a rest when you need it. Send those assholes to their rooms when you need it. Hug them tight when you need it. The goal is to get through this, heed the advice of the PROFESSIONALS, and come out the other side a. with minimal damage to the human population and 2. with perhaps just a tiny shred of our sanity still in tact.

Online school starts next week, which could totally throw a monkey wrench into everything I’ve just said. Seems to be the way things go these days anyway. Haphazard monkey wrench throwing in every direction. I’m glad we’re through long division in the 4th grade math, otherwise Jack may have flunked, unless, of course, calculators could be used, which defeats the purpose because he wouldn’t actually be learning it. So, cleared that hurdle, thank you for your patience COVID-19, and waiting until that unit was buttoned up before making your very unwanted presence known. It will be interesting to see how elementary online learning all unfolds. So far this week, we’ve only been focusing on physical education and field trips (at safe social distances of course) because this mama is not quite an overachiever and did not feel like attempting homeschool when not asked to do so. I think we worked on fractions one time for 8 minutes. Next week the real fun begins. I feel grateful that I only have one child in school (Colt is in preschool, and we have activities to do, but I can handle the ABCs and the counting. I think). I feel for you other parents out there with multiples in multiple different grade levels. Same rules above apply to you.

Stay safe everyone. Keep to your bubble and maybe, just maybe, we’ll get out of this isolation and social distancing sooner than later.