Sunday, May 17, 2020

Broken

The Friday before everything shut down my engagement ring broke. I was at work with my hands in my back pocket when I felt something odd. I pulled the foreign object out and find it to be the biggest diamond from my ring. I searched on the carpet around where I was standing and in the folds of my pocket trying to hopefully find the last of the tiny diamonds.
That weekend, the first without my engagement ring in close to 10 years, was the last time things were normal. Thursday night, the night before it happened, was Elley's first soccer practice. She had so much fun and was so excited about playing a season with all her friends from school. Friday night was Bear's first tball game. The atmosphere around the ballpark was electric and the Boy couldn't help but look forward to the many nights and weekends we'd likely be there spent watching our kids play.
Saturday Elley was double-booked for birthday parties. The first was a pancakes and bowling party. Bowling first and then decorate your own pancake. She went with sprinkles, syrup, and strawberries. Ending the party by playing video games and spending seemingly houses trying to redeem her tickets for the perfect item. The party was at the mall and I thought about dropping my ring off to be repaired. But we were running late and needed to meet the Boy and Bear for lunch, so I decided I'd do it another time.
Later that afternoon, we had a party of the "Jump-y Place." It's the number one place we go for parties and still after all this time, she loves it, especially the balloon drop. Several girls from Elley's soccer team were there as well as the coach, who talked about his game plan for the season to come.
Sunday Elley went to Hebrew School in the morning. They got to make Hamentaschen that day in anticipation of the following week's Purim carnival. Even Monday things were still normal and Bear got to dress up as a dragon for his school's Purim party.

But by the end of the week, things week different. Soccer practice was canceled on Thursday night. Tball was canceled on Friday night. The St. Patrick's Day parade was canceled on Saturday. The Purim carnival on Sunday was canceled. Elley went home from school on Friday with a bunch of worksheets and a letter that an e-mail would be sent the following week outlining the next month of distance learning. Saturday I went into work to pick up supplies for working from home.

That Friday, I never would have guessed that two months later we'd still be home. The soccer season has been canceled. The rest of the year of school moved online. We've even had Hebrew School online sessions. Here in Louisiana things are finally starting to reopen, although we haven't yet ventured out, except for one of us heading to the grocery store.

It's hard to imagine what life is going to be like going forward. How will sports for kids happen? Or professional sports for that matter? What will school be like in the Fall? Even if it's in person, my heard breaks a little thinking that Elley may not get to see some of her closest friends if they aren't in her class and aren't able to play with other classes. It's just so hard with so much unknown.

And still I have my broken engagement ring waiting in a zip lock back in my purse. Maybe eventually things will be back to normal enough where it's worth bringing it somewhere to be fixed. But in some ways, it kind of matches the rest of the world, broken, waiting to be put back together.

3 comments:

  1. This is a really weird time and it’s hard to imagine life getting back to normal. Things haven’t been quite as bad here as we don’t get as many visitors as other areas. But obv Minnesotans were traveling elsewhere and bringing COVID back with them. But our total cases are around 15,000. We are still on an uptick but we will start to gradually reopen this week. It won’t change things much for us, though. We will be working from home for the foreseeable future and won’t be visiting my parents or seeing many people. We did do a play date with 2 families from daycare this weekend, though. We figure our kids are all exposed to the same stuff. It was so nice to have social plans. The adults had coffee and social distanced and the kids had a blast. I think we will continue to do that each weekend this summer.

    Hope you can get your ring fixed soon!! I have stopped wearing mine since I rarely leave the house. I just wear my wedding band (I always took my engagement ring off at night and back on in the morning). Phil asked if I was ever going to wear it again so I think it bothers him a bit but it seems unnecessary to wear it when I don’t see anyone these days!!

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  2. This is a beautiful post, the way you tie together your ring with life, and share the before/after of this world.

    A week before our anniversary weekend (March 22), I was calling Biltmore to make reservations for a wine tour. A day or two later, Dan and I started adapting our plans to be safe. A few days after that, Biltmore called me to cancel our reservations and let me know that the entire estate was closing.

    The change really did happen so fast.

    Dan and I are blessed in many ways to survive this lockdown more easily than others. But I'm also immunocompromised, so I have to be more cautious about returning to any sort of social activity. I haven't set foot in a grocery store since the day before our anniversary. I've only been to outdoor locations since then, save one visit to the liquor store. ;) Dan has taken over all shopping. I never thought I would miss getting groceries, but after 2 months, I do!

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  3. I like how you tied your broken engagement ring to our broken world. I know that both will get fixed eventually but it feels so unreal still.

    I remember when they announced schools would be closed for three weeks and it felt like an eternity. This past Tuesday they just announced we won't be going back until September...

    I really hope that next Spring will be much closer to our old "normal" so that we can make all the memories we would have made this spring -- watching kids play their sports and play with the friends and celebrate their birthdays all together again.

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