I remember going to my Grandma Dotter's house as a child and always thinking the same thing, "why do these people, who obviously have money, act like they don't have any?" This question would come about after various things would happen, like my Grandmother rinsing off the same piece of saran wrap multiple times, rinsing out ziplock bags and tin foil, not letting us tear the wrapping paper off our presents so it could be reused, using glasses that were originally jelly or meat jars, or never using the dryer (which they only had because it had been left in a rent house). As a kid who didn't grow up with a lot of money I felt sure that if at some point in my life I did have a lot of money I would do none of these things. I would throw away saran wrap with abandon. I would buy glasses to drink out of, use my dryer daily, and most definitely would not wash plastic silverware.
Here is what I didn't understand at the time. My Grandparents grew up in the midst of the dust bowl in the panhandle of Oklahoma. They had nothing and barely survived it. My Grandmother's father died of dust pneumonia. I can't imagine what they saw and went through as children. That feeling of loss, of never having enough, of saving every last thing because you didn't know how you would afford to buy more, that all seeped into the fiber of their being and sixty years later they still saved their tin foil and placed their cups upside down in the cabinet so they wouldn't get dust in them. From that scaring experience as children they learned to scrimp and save and they learned a deep gratitude for what they had.
This month as the deluge of end of the school year activities fill up my calendar I am trying to remember the stillness and sadness I felt last year as my calendar was wiped clean overnight. As I rush from one baseball game to the next and coordinate different clothes for each dress up day at school I will remember each day I that wept and mourned all the experiences my children were losing. I will remember all the times we vowed to never take these things for granted. I will fight the urge to be annoyed by our busy evenings and let the lessons of the pandemic soak in. The lessons of deep, unending gratitude for every normal thing that we had lost.
My hope is that after experiencing this year of loss my children will have gratitude seep into their very being, just like my grandparents had the idea of never letting anything go to waste seep into theirs. That became part of who they were, something they couldn't shake no matter how much money they had in the bank. My hope is that my children will always remember having every ordinary thing taken from them. May they never take for granted a five day school week, hugging a teacher, play dates with friends, a busy social calendar or sports schedule. May they always remember, deep in their soul what it was like to have it all taken away. When they find themselves complaining about school starting, may they remember the months when they would've given anything to be in a classroom with all their teachers. May all those tears and that pain stay with them for a lifetime.
The pandemic broke us all open in different ways and as we come through the other side of things it would be so easy to just try to forget it ever happened. To block out the nights I spent alone, crying, and praying for my sweet babies. Scared of how this would affect them, scared that I might not be there to see them grow up, scared of all that was unknown. This month I will revisit that pain and let it teach me something. This month, as all the pictures from quarantine pop up on my phone saying "one year ago today," I will be grateful for every last thing on my calendar. I will be grateful for every last dollar I get to spend doing something outside of this house. For every evening I get to drag tired boys to the ballpark, for every school activity, every alarm that goes off, for every last thing that we missed last year that we get to do this year. May the pain of the pandemic not be wasted. May it change us for the better.
