covid diary: day 70

You're never too big to play in a shipping box.

This morning I had a phone conversation (hi Barb!) that made me stop and think about why I'm keeping this pandemic diary, and more broadly, the blog.

And really, there have always been only three reasons: Liam. Max. Henry.

The blog started out because I suck at keeping baby books with little milestones and snippets of their hair and all the miscellaneous ephemera that comes along with having kids. I'm not great at scrapbooking, I thought, but I can write, so I'll do that. From the very beginning, it's been a love letter to the boys documenting not just their baby milestones and the young men they've become, but the things we're trying to teach them, the values we want to instill in them, and the knowledge we want to leave them with.

I think about what they will be like as adult men, and how one day they will run into a set of circumstances that will seem impossible, and maybe they'll think to themselves that their parents never lost their cool when faced with tough times, and they'll wonder why it's so hard for them now when their parents faced more and it didn't seem so hard for them. And I want them to know that that is absolutely not the case. Sometimes losing your cool is the *only* logical reaction. Or feeling despair. Or anger. Or grief. I want them to someday read about this pandemic in their mother's words and know that it's perfectly appropriate to feel overwhelmed with grief and sadness and rage when circumstances warrant. And most importantly, that you can feel overwhelmed by those things and still keep going.

The thing about keeping this blog is that it's predicated on the idea that the boys will be around to read it later on, that they will treasure my words when I'm not here. It's an optimistic view that assumes that life will carry on, even when we feel like our democracy and maybe even our world are on the brink of extinction. Writing every post is an act of love, and just as important, it's an act of hope.

With every post, I'm beaming out a signal to Future Liam, Future Max, Future Henry. And that signal says: Don't give up. You've got this. You are loved. You are seen. You are brave, even when you don't feel like it. You can feel all the feelings, and express all the feelings, and still keep going.

This is true not just in pandemic times, but always.

Every post is a declaration of love.

Every post is a stubborn hope.


Nationwide cases: 1,548,646. Deaths: 93,163.