2020: a doozy of a year, in review
<p class="">Uhhhhhhhhh, so that was a year. I saw a tweet where someone was like “I keep saying it is what it is but what even is it” and that about sums it up!</p><p class="">Bizarre, difficult, challenging, painful, inspiring, fortifying, eye-openin
Uhhhhhhhhh, so that was a year. I saw a tweet where someone was like “I keep saying it is what it is but what even is it” and that about sums it up!
Bizarre, difficult, challenging, painful, inspiring, fortifying, eye-opening. All that. I don’t want to forget this, so I decided to do a month-by-month review. Here goes…
January
Harry turned 2. We had just gotten over the Christmas season, which was marred by a norovirus sweeping through our household, but fortunately, nobody was actively ill on Christmas Day. So our precious boy turned 2, then Kobe Bryant and his daughter died and Australia caught on fire and I was like “whaaaaaaat?!” I was so young then. So innocent.
February
Mid-month, Ethan turned 12. Twelve!!! The final year before 13!!!! This is weird because I was recently 13. (I’ll learn this year that time means nothing, so we’ll get there. Jeremy Bearimy, amright? kudos if you get that reference.) The first rumblings of a weird coronavirus (nobody panic, coronavirus is the common cold!) We were so young then. So innocent.
March
I chaperoned two field trips in two days: one for Ethan, to the science museum, and one for Oliver, to the children’s museum. I bought Oliver a new plain green t-shirt to wear to school on St. Patrick’s Day. But uh oh…school closed for 2 weeks, starting on the 16th! Two! Weeks! We were so young then. So innocent.
Noah and his office started scrambling to prepare dozens of laptops so civilians at the police department (Noah included) could begin working from home.
April
As a family, we leaned hard into the screened porch which had serendipitously been completed the previous November. I joined a local volunteer group of mask makers, Project Mask Winston-Salem. Ethan even learned to sew by asking if he could help.
And oopsie daisy, school will remain closed through spring break!
April-Juneish?
We watched a bluebird family (among other bird families) nest, lay eggs, then fledge their young not 20 feet from our porch. I helped a little cardinal that was fledging and got its leg tangled in the rosebush.
I learned about the fledging of birds and how if they look like they’re not ready, never fear, they actually ARE ready. They’ll flap and flop about for a day or two on the ground, their parents keeping protective watch nearby until they finally take flight. The nestlings-turned-fledglings literally can’t be ready to take flight directly from the nest. They don’t have the strength. They haven’t had the space. They need the struggle in order to be capable adults. Birds, I’m still talking about birds.
During this time frame, we received stimulus money, and we used it to update our master bathroom, which was in desperate need. Without the money and without Noah being home so many more hours, we wouldn’t have been able to do it. And I’m still grateful for it every day.
Somewhere in here, my grandfather was in and out of the hospital. He has had bladder cancer, which was kept under control for quite a while, but sadly it’s now causing kidney failure. He went on hospice care at home. He’s continuing to hang in there, but his health is declining. I’ve visited them at home several times, always masked of course. Fortunately, they began receiving nearly full-time health assistant care for my Uncle Randy, who lives with them and has severe cerebral palsy and whose mobility has taken a nosedive in recent years.
June-sometime later in the summer, who knows for sure and also what is time
We let Oliver begin playing outside with his best friend, our neighbor Zoe. We put up the pool at the end of June and they love swimming together so so much, we just had to let them. Many hours of pool time fun ensued.
I also took the Statistics prerequisite online for future nursing school. There were a few moments of panic, but I ended up grasping the concepts and I did well in the class.
We couldn’t go out to my friend Lisa’s river house this summer because she and her husband Bob had decamped from the metropolitan area they lived and into the rural vacation home. Later in the year, they’d decide to move back to Rhode Island, depriving us of both Lisa’s proximity AND river camp. It was a devastating blow, particularly since Lisa offered us first crack at buying it but that was just financially outside the realm of possibility for us.
During this time Noah also became more inspired by gardening—amazing what being confined to one small parcel of land can do to your interest in improving it. He took the lead on researching and buying some locally-grown, native species that support caterpillars, butterflies, and birds. As is always the case, planting things is an investment in the future, and we’ll only enjoy the landscape more and more over time.
Also, our one remaining chicken, Brownie, was murdered by a raccoon.
August
The kids went “back to school,” again fully online. As most of you know, figuring it all out is quite the experience. Luckily with both of us home most of the time, Noah and I could help the bigs with their technical issues. I can’t imagine what less savvy or present parents are dealing with, and I’m sad for the kids who just aren’t getting the education they would’ve because of these problems.
We celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary on August 7, and I turned 37 on August 9. For the first year ever, we did not go to Carrabba’s for our anniversary dinner (it’s where we went on our first date and where we had our rehearsal dinner).
September
Ummmm….I don’t know. More of the same. We all stayed healthy. Nobody went anywhere or did anything. Oh! I think that Oliver’s soccer resumed in September, with strict practices of mask-wearing off the field, outdoor stuff only, no parental spectating from sidelines, etc. We were glad he had the opportunity to play, because he’s so very active, and he needed the exercise. It also gave us something to do two evenings a week, even if that something was sitting in the car watching him from a distance while listening to a podcast.
October
I’d been doing regular weight training with hand weights for months, but I had to stop because of back pain. I assumed I was just aggravating the disc I’d herniated a few years ago, so I went to the doctor and he ordered x-rays. Turns out I have degenerative disc disease and facet joint arthritis. So that was a big bummer. Add those to my list of old-person issues that have struck prematurely. At least I know now, though, and can be proactive about dealing with it.
A positive that came out of it was physical therapy—again, somewhere to go! something to do! My physical therapist was almost my exact age, she met her husband when they were in college in Nashville (although they went to Vanderbilt) and now they’re here because he’s a resident at Wake Forest Baptist Hospital. She also has a 2-year-old son, whose name is Noah! And she’s pregnant! As a thank you to her for getting me feeling a lot better, I used the fabric remnants from the two quilts I made for Ethan and Oliver yeeeeears ago and made a baby quilt for her soon-to-be-newborn son.
Leading to another positive: I’ve gotten back into quilting. I’d only ever done the two for the boys, which took me over a year because I did them in fits and starts. But after getting back in the swing of sewing with mask making, and also participating in a Vote quilt quilt-along, my interest was renewed.
I even finished these corduroy bags that I started making…11 years ago.
In October I also secretly started working on a giant quilt for Noah as a surprise Christmas present. (He’d mentioned wanting me to do a traditional patchwork quilt for him one day.) I used my mom’s credit card to order the fabrics, then worked on the quilt on Thursdays and Fridays while Noah was at work.
I also began knitting my first cardigan, the CardiZen by Denise Bayron.
November
So there was an election, I don’t know if you had heard. That was a stressful time, and the victory of the candidates I backed was dampened by the fact that our elderly cat Zoe, who we’d had since like two months after we got married, died at home on the day the election was called. We watched the victory speeches, and while I was intellectually glad and hopeful, I couldn’t feel those things for a couple of weeks.
Then a couple of weeks after that, our neighbor died. He was older and had chronic health conditions and had been ill for years, but it was one of those situations where his health could fail at any time or he could just keep on keeping on indefinitely. We were awakened by ambulance lights in the middle of the night, and a week or two later we heard he’d passed. I think it was pneumonia that caused the cascade in the end.
I spoke to his daughter one day last week while she was at the house cleaning it out, and I learned something amazing. The family that lived there before him had a middle-school-aged daughter and a younger son. We liked them a lot and were sad when they moved. But their daughter is now a grown woman and married, and she and her husband want to buy the house! The house she lived in as a little girl! This has the stamp of approval from my deceased neighbor’s daughter, so hopefully, it’ll work out.
December
This year we managed to be well-prepared for Christmas (after we struggled financially with car and hospital bills in 2019, Noah realized he hadn’t updated his dependents on his W2, so he was getting way too much taken out of his paychecks. That led to big ol’ refunds, but we were struggling month-to-month). So this year we had more financial flexibility to pay for those annoying home and auto upkeep things that arise, and we were able to buy all our Christmas presents by the very beginning of the month.
Also, because he hadn’t taken any vacation this year, Noah took off several days around Christmas, allowing us to really relax and enjoy the time. Exceeeeeeept Noah’s dad was in and out of the hospital this month with breathing difficulty, including over Christmas. He lives in Mississippi, so nowhere near where we could easily and safely visit, AND he’s a semi-retired teacher at a private school that is still meeting in person. Of course, we were worried it was Covid, but apparently it isn’t. He’s home again and receiving supportive care, and fortunately the principal at his school is also working with him to preserve his health as much as is possible.
I managed to make some Christmas presents for my nieces (a superhero cape for Evie, a stuffed kitty for Marybelle), which led to a cape for Harry. And I wrapped up the year creatively with a quick baby quilt for the premie daughter of an extended family member.
So many crazy/horrible/unreal things happened this year, personally and in the world. But I’m also very grateful for my little family’s continued health and love for each other. I’m grateful for the creativity that was sparked—mine and also Noah’s. Noah renewed his interest in guitar and chess, even taking online classical guitar lessons. We also learned we’re going to be godparents next year, as our best friends Nick and Megyn are expecting their first child—a daughter!
This has been quite a year. I truly am focusing on gratitude. But let’s not do that again, mkay?