When it’s safe to leave our homes again

An unspoken feeling of dread consumed our house this morning as we groggily reassembled our home office space and tried to imagine ways to get through this day as painlessly as possible. Our very perceptive four-year-old says ‘is it a school and workday daddy?’ ‘Yep’ he replies as he punches the security key into his new work issued laptop. His next questions follow along a similar benign track acknowledging the rainy day, mentally preparing all the gear he will need to stay dry, expressing extreme excitement to be able to wear his new Spiderman rain boots. We transition downstairs to the safety of their bedroom/playroom and while my youngest starts lining up his mini paw patrol figures my eldest is rifling through drawers, trying to find his school uniform. My mind did a speed rewind back to his first question of the day, ‘is it a school/work day?’ And I realize that he’s just waiting for us to tell him that it’s time for things to go back to normal. At first it made me really sad to have to let him down. But the next thing I thought about is that every single day since his first day of daycare when he was 14 months old, until his second last day of junior kindergarten before the quarantine he would cry, strike that wail, every single drop off. Now I’m looking at the same boy but he’s not just ready for school, he’s excited. As much as I long for these public health measures to be relaxed and for my children to re-enter the public sphere, I am not ready to trust a world that previously was scary but now has become a thing of nightmares. It brings me a lot of comfort to see that perhaps these fears and anxieties that I’m sure will linger within me long after it’s safe to leave our homes again do not have such a strong hold on my babies. The world for him was overflowing with love from all the family we are lucky to live so close to, his teachers who I have always considered family and even friendly strangers who go out of their way to say hello. I hope that I can use his courage and wonder to remind me at the world has always been this way but to truly live means to face those fears in order to embrace all the amazing opportunities ⭐️