I Miss Everyone

 Yesterday, I took my youngest four to a makeshift Drive-in Movie put on at our parish.  

They enjoyed it but what I discovered is, nine months of quarantine have made me jumpy.  Every time someone came by the car to see if we wnated to buy popcorn or just say, "Hi." because people do that, and it used to be ordinary, I'd feel anxious afterwards.   Not because I thought I'd get Covid-19, but because being isolated this long, warps the spirit, and I hadn't realized how warped my own had become. 

I do worry about Covid-19 though, because there is so much that needs doing in this family, for my husband and me.  We can wipe things down and limit our going out, but there's just the reality, it's a scary thing.  It sounds cowardly to be frightened of life, I've never been before and I don't want to be now.  Every cough makes everyone worry.  Every symptom other than fine, alarms.  We've become triggered to worry, to presume the worst, and to view everything as a potential threat.  I hate it.  It's wrong. 

I am tired of this damn quarantine.  I am tired of not seeing people's full faces. I am not advocating being dumb, but I am admitting, I am tired.   I need the more of Everyone.   I miss the more of everyone.  My mom, my brothers and sister, my inlaws, friends from across the country, all the ordinary contact that came within the course of a year, hasn't happened this year.   Busyness kept that from being too keen an ache most of the time, but when they'd come to visit, or we'd go there, I'd be reminded, this is more what should be happening.  

Now even those reminders are missing, and it is like food without salt, dull and missing what should be full of flavor.   Now even being busy doesn't prevent the missing --and I know that is a good thing.  I am grateful for all this stollen time with my husband and my adult children who otherwise would be off being busy themselves.   We wouldn't notice the time passing or the distance being created but it would be there.   So there are gifts with this time of trial, even here. 

It's just, I miss everyone. I'm wanting something of normal of being able to connect to return --and hoping with that return, we'll return to something better than what was normal; that we won't leave kind words unsaid, or put off lunches or visits or letters or phone calls; that we'll check in on each other willfully, because we love them, rather than just at holidays or when we're not busy.   I hope we'll learn, I'll learn, to not let things that shouldn't consume whole swaths of time, take over, that we as a whole, and I in particular, will cease being anxious about many things and choose the better portion with all time we've been alloted.  

I know this much, we'll be at the next Drive-in Movie offered, to remind myself not to forget.