We have been trying our best to be careful. Or at least, I have. I wear my mask any time I leaving my bedroom or in the car with the kids. I have avoided the stores and made do with the food in our house. I’ve had us eat outside a couple of times so we can be together as a family, but distanced.
Yesterday, my mother in law (who lives with us) stayed home from work. When I texted her to ask if she was okay she said she’d started coughing the night before and stayed home just in case, but figured it was just a cold since the boys she watches had one recently. I suggested she take a test. It came back positive. 😞
It makes no sense, as she’s been around my husband the least of all of us. She only eats dinner with us once a week because of her second job. She says she could have gotten it from anywhere, which is true, but I think it’s a bit too coincidental to not be from my husband. She just doesn’t want him to feel guilty.
But if I’m being completely honest, I’m mad at him for putting us through this. I’m mad that if he had to go to this conference, which I know did a lot for his mental health, couldn’t he have been better about masking? I know it’s not rational of me to blame him, but I just can’t stop being angry. And at the same time, I don’t want to make him feel worse, mentally (he’s been struggling lately), so I keep it to myself.
I had him go for a walk with me yesterday because I thought it would be good for him to get some fresh air and conversation. He spent most of the walk venting about school and how he wishes he could just quit, but everyone expects him to finish. I struggled with how to be supportive. On the one hand, I understand he’s frustrated and falling behind and doesn’t know what he wants to do upon graduation, but he has less than two months left and then he’s completely done. I’ve told him he doesn’t have to find a full time job right away. But I also don’t want him to be doing nothing productive because I know that will add to his depression.
At one point he stopped and said “I’ve been venting this whole time. I’m sure you need to vent too.” I told him I couldn’t vent to him because I didn’t want to make things worse. I assured him that I had other people I could talk to. I don’t know if saying that made it worse anyway.
I’ve been on edge all week. I’ll seem like I’ve got it all under control, then just snap. Little things are triggering a blow up. I know it’s stress. I know it’s anxiety.
Yesterday I pieced together a meal with food we had in the house. I decided we would eat in the living room where we could spread out and my husband would eat in the dining room where we could see him and have conversation (mother in law stayed in her room). The first thing my son said was “Can we watch tv?” Then, when they finally took a bite of the food, both kids decided they didn’t like it. I told them I wasn’t cooking anything else and they would have to figure it out on their own. My son heated up some leftover red beans and rice, but there wasn’t enough rice for my daughter. So my husband suggested she make rice and she latched onto that plan. But by the time my son’s meal was heated I was done eating and by the time the rice was made, everyone was done.
I lost it. I yelled, “Tomorrow, everyone is on their own! There’s no point in me cooking if you’re all going to make your own food anyway!”
My son said “I’m confused. You seemed okay with it a minute ago.” I had no answer for him, but he kept saying it over and over again.
Eventually, I was able to work it out in my brain. It wasn’t as much about the food itself (though that stings too) as it was about not eating as a family. I have loved that we eat as a family almost every night. We did some before the pandemic, but my husband’s schedule meant he wasn’t home three days a week and my mother in law never ate with us, thinking she was imposing. When the pandemic hit and my husband went on disability (long story for another time) and my mother in law was furloughed we started eating together every night. I loved it.
As things have started getting back to “normal,” it’s taken more work to make sure we eat together. But I’ve still made it happen, even if that means using the slow cooker or grabbing food to bring home. But first my husband was away for a week and then he got Covid and couldn’t join us and I tried to make it possible to eat together and it blew up in my face and I just snapped.
My husband said he didn’t realize how important it was to me. And I guess I haven’t expressed it, but I didn’t really realize it until it has been so disrupted this last 2.5 weeks. I think my kids probably take it for granted and don’t care. But growing up, family dinners were few and far between in my family. We didn’t sit down at a table together and talk about our days. If we ate at the same time it was in front of a tv or in separate rooms. I don’t want that for my family. I want us to come back together at the end of every day (or at least most days) to reconnect to one another.
They are not mind readers and I know that. I need to tell them how I feel. But sometimes you don’t know how important something has became until you feel it slipping away. This afternoon I will talk to the kids. I talked to my husband a little this morning. Maybe once they know what it means to me, the will make more of an effort. Or not. They’re only 12.
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