Together and Apart

My family.

Hubby is not working due to COVID.

Boys are up ALL NIGHT playing video games and handing in the essential assignments so that we do not get emails from their teachers.

This morning I woke up earlier to get a head start on work.  The boys were up.  Frazzled, no sleep and the oldest worried that he had told his teacher NO I can't pick up my text books from school, only to realize that he could because he had gotten the days wrong.  Who can fault him?  I thought today was Monday and I work all week (even on the weekends- maybe that's where the confusion comes from).

I tried to find a way to recall the email he sent for one hour and finally had to give up.  Gmail does not have a recall function.  It has a recall per email, every email, i.e. before you send this email I will give you one minute to change your mind.  That's it, a timed recall.  This rarely works for anyone.  

The fifteen year-old said, "I did it on Outlook," but I had very clearly determined it was Gmail transferred to Outlook.

And bless his heart he said, "Thank you Mama for trying."

I love these children, these teenagers, more than anything, more than myself.

I went to give my son a hug after he came back from getting his stuff from school - only one child was allowed to get in at one time to pick up their things.

And my son said, "Hold on, Mama, I have to wash my hands first."

My kids, our kids, are not perfect, they use some pretty not that nice language while they play their video games and they cross socially acceptable lines (without knowing the consequences) when they say certain things, but I do what I always do and I let them know what is okay and what is not okay.  They may not change overnight.  Nothing does and peer pressure is real.  Kids say a lot of things and they have no filter.  They haven't started the Big Lie of pretending to be someone they are not.  I have good kids.  Beautiful kids.

And they have saved me.  They have saved me on more than many occasions.

I want to be around for them for as long as they are!

I want to be there when they get their first job, first girlfriend (kind of), first everything...

They are both soon to be young adults and they are not perfect.  I am not perfect.  My husband is not perfect (he may disagree... :-) )

When my boys were little,  I have to be honest there were some grand stand owns between us, between myself and a toddler.  I never would have believed I would have been that person.   The person that lost their shit, that yelled and they were kids, only kids.  I was so hard on myself.  I still haven't fully forgiven myself.

But life is never how we think it should be.  People are not always what they think we should be.

We are.  We are love.  My heart sinks into my abdomen, my heart raises up into my brain and shakes back and forth for these children.  LOVE.  SO MUCH LOVE.

At the end of everything.  During this Pandemic we have dinners together.  This is the beginning.  This is something I am going to do my darndest to keep going.

Even though we are all together in the house, we don't see each other because we are all on different schedules, but we are not the same schedule for dinner.  I don't fight them to get their sleep schedules in order.  They will figure it out.

And really when their Mama sleeps till 4pm on Saturdays.  No word of a lie.  Well,  I've worked hard all week, and so have all of they, fighting bosses, capturing cities and creating worlds.

We are all in this together.

Sandra XXOO