Why we yell Quarantine Edition 1

Well, it took a pandemic to get me back to the blog. That, and my daughter Vianne, who said I should. Then there was the prompt to document was happening during our "shelter in place". It has been odd. Really odd. Then a lot of it is like Ground Hog day. It's like you took the part of the day when the kids were all home and played it over and over. There is an underlying sense of fear in place that silently keeps everyone in their place. Kind of. It's like when one grieves for the passing of a loved one. There is a sense of dread that looms over your head with the knowledge that your loved one is gone from this earth forever. You cry, or grieve in your own way, then life as you knew it peeks from around the corner and you let your guard down, then you remember. You remember that everything the way you knew it is no longer. That is the underlying feeling. Will everything ever be the same again? 
Now, I am not saying that things were perfect before this all began, but it was our crazy sense of normal. We were used to the way things were. We got desensitized to the droning hum that was going on in the background, like an annoying dripping faucet. That annoying sound, just becomes what is. We had our lives to live, we were busy. Running, running, running. Then, it just all stopped.
Like a crazy cartoon that stops the characters in their tracks, our lives just stopped. One grand pause. A pause that shook us. Then the rush. The rush to get toilet paper, food. Even I found myself wandering in the store, wondering what food my family needed to survive. What do I take with me? Do I have enough money to buy all the food I need? It was a sinking feeling to think that my family might starve. I know it sounds insane at the moment, but there was a gigantic sense of not knowing what to expect. Were the stores going to be open, were we going to be able to get food? I even bought a gigantic bag of flour! (News alert: I am gluten free) I just wanted to know that my kids would be able to eat. Ugh! There were so many unknowns. Would we be able to go out to the store, get more food or the essentials that we have become accustomed to in our everyday lives? Never in my life have I encountered such a thing as gearing up to go to the store and washing my groceries. It is like we are fighting an unseen enemy. We just don't know which way to turn.
Then- there is so much good that has come out of this "rona pandemic". The quiet. The kids who constantly fight finally having a glimpse of cooperation, just a bit of peace in the chaos. A realization that we are all in this together. That realization fosters a sense of cooperation like we have never known before. There are so many people coming out with a sense of unity as we truly are in this together. There IS unity in the insanity.
I am a bit of homebug, with a routine that shifts from home to choir to work and then back home again. A lot of my life was already happening remotely, so it was and was not a change for me. I am still home and now I just have a lot of company. I honestly don't hate it. I do things that I have never done before. There is a heck of a lot less rush and running. I am not sure I will ever want to go back to that, although the reality of it is that we probably will have it back again. My family talks every single day. We pray the rosary as a family every single night. Even my 14 year old sits down daily to pray. I guarantee you that there was none of that even once a MONTH! The unity that these crazy times has produced in our family is just, beautiful.  That unity- I never want to let it go.   I honestly don't think that it can ever go all the way back to the way it was and that could be a very good thing.