Dad, What Did You Do During COVID?”

One of the benefits of writing this blog is paying better attention to daily activities and conversations.  It has created a space for better awareness of moments.  Talking and being better aware of what is being said.  A muscle being developed to catalog and hold for later.  To ponder.  Like mouthwash swishing around in the back of my head, cleaning and clearing gunk out.

Today was a playdate day.  It felt much like two kids, or for the past year, two adults, being on a clock with limited to talk and share and express and share and share and share and talk and talk and talk.  Timer. Set. Go.

Overall, it was great.  However, the hard part of conversations with people (for adults) is finding a rhythm.  Especially, for parents with kids jumping around.  It requires code switching from adult conversation, to answer kid questions.  From adult conversations to kids now playing next to you… so, new kid friendly topic.  Then, in either case, being able to pick up where the conversation had left off. 

(It makes me wonder if anyone has studied this code switching in parents.  Most likely, on some level. Code switching is a great brain skill to have.)

Where the conversation naturally flowed to was prostitution.  Kidding.  No. Really.  Just not the point of this post.

It fell to relationships and how well this past year went.  For me, it is hard to say what would have happened, or how things would have gone without COVID. It forced time and space.  Exactly what was needed, unfortunately, for me.  Blogging, podcasting, reading more. Probably things that would not have happened without the forced pause.

COVID has been horrible and many lives have been lost.  Being stuck at home.  Locked down. Fighting for toilet paper and hand sanitizer.  Being at the mercy of other’s choices and indecisions. We can and could only control ourselves.  In doing that, it was a matter of taking “alive time, or dead time”.  It took a while to pull my head out of my ass.  The choice was made… slowly. It was made deliberately, cautiously.

Whatever happens, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, in the next ten years; I will be better prepared to face it.  The choice was made to make this alive time.  To make it something more than Netflix and HBO time.

“Dad, what did you do during COVID?” 

“Sweetie, I…”

Posted.  Not Perfect.

A Vegan Father, navigating a non-vegan world.