A Year Far from Normal

A year ago this week, lots of things changed. Over the course of a weekend and with little preparation, my kids’ schools moved to remote learning. My boss called to say the office would be closed until future notice. Ski season ended early and abruptly. All matter of plans were canceled or indefinitely delayed. At first, I thought this everything-is-shutting-down phase would last only a couple of weeks, then the whole pandemic thing would blow over, and we’d be back to normal.

Is that the light at the end of the tunnel?

A year later, I’m not sure what “normal” means anymore.

In the first weeks of “isolation,” we did, indeed, feel isolated. I took to doing the grocery shopping only once a week – no swinging into the store on the way home for a gallon of milk or a carton of ice cream, especially since we weren’t going anywhere anyway. I’d drive straight there, then straight home. The only other stop was the gas station if I needed to fill the tank, but I was driving so infrequently that those stops were rare.

For weeks, we hardly saw anyone other than ourselves. We’d occasionally walk over to my parents’ house or stop by my in-laws’ to visit outside. There was a group of five or six college kids who spent a couple of months in the house around the corner after their campus closed, and they’d come through the front field chasing frisbees. Virtual meetings hadn’t become the norm yet, so we only saw other people, even through a screen, maybe once a week or so.

Until April, when two friends who happen to be next door neighbors to each other – my youngest daughter’s pal, and my son’s buddy – had a drive-by birthday party. A line of a dozen or so cars gathered on a side street off their quiet road and waited for the allotted time. Then we drove by their houses slowly, honking like crazy and waving out the windows of our cars. It was so strange. And so wonderful to SEE people, our friends, folks who not so long ago we’d interacted with face-to-face almost daily, even if only in passing.

I hadn’t realized – not fully – how much I missed that interaction. I cried most of the 10 minutes of that ride home, hiding behind my sunglasses so I wouldn’t have to try to explain to my kids something I didn’t quite understand myself. On that drive home, my youngest, who had a daily school check-in with her class, said she wished she could see her friends in real life, not through a computer – or out the window of a moving car. My older daughter lamented the fact that she hadn’t seen any of her friends in weeks, virtually or otherwise. My son said he missed his friends, too.

As summer arrived, we started venturing out more, meeting friends at the river on hot afternoons or for hiking adventures or outside movie nights. It wasn’t quite “normal,” but it was close. I took my kids on their first backpacking outings, and we camped for a few days near the ocean in Maine. I embarked on daily walks through the woods, a habit I continue, in large part to maintain my sanity during these ongoing strange times.

Some of these things – the hiking and backyard fires and gathering outside – probably would have happened over the course of 2020 anyway. But I think I cherished this season – the pandemic summer that came after the spring of so much weirdness – even more than usual. I was so grateful to live where we live, to have woods right out the front door and mountains within sight.

And I’ve been grateful since the end of that summer to have my kids (mostly) back in school. I’m still not used to seeing them walk out the schoolroom door with masks over their faces – and I probably never will be – but I’m so thankful that they are IN school, that those masked faces are with other masked faces. Learning together, rather than in the isolation of a quiet bedroom, looking through a screen.

I’m thankful that educators and coaches and parents and health care providers have figured out how to mitigate the dangers of the virus so that my children can be in school and play sports – even if it looks different. I’m thankful that we have been skiing through the winter. I’m thankful that my work – and my husband’s – has continued through this, even while I’m so, so, so tired of meetings on a screen. I’m thankful that so much of our family lives within a couple of miles of us.

I know we have been fortunate in a year so devastating to so many.

But I miss a lot of things, too. I miss hugging my friends. (So much!) I miss big family dinners, with three generations of McCarthys and McPhauls gathered together, sharing new stories and old. I miss planning trips to other places. I miss talking to people and being able to see their whole faces. I miss collaborating with colleagues through in-person meetings, or just a quick walk across the hallway to someone else’s office space.

I’m tired of reminding my kids to grab a mask on their way out the door – to anywhere. And of checking the state’s Covid map and numbers. Every. Single. Day. I’m tired of worrying every time I feel a tickle in my throat – or when someone sniffles next to me in some public, socially-distanced space.

If the past year has taught me anything, it’s to try to take things, as much as possible, day by day. To not plan too far in advance, at least for now. But that is not my nature. So many times over the last 12 months, I have thought things would be back on the road to “normal” by next week, or next month, or two seasons for now.

Last week, my parents got their second doses of the vaccine. A little girl in the classroom where my mother was substitute teaching asked if that meant she could hug my mom the next time she came in – like she used to. We’re not quite there yet. But I think – really, this time – normal just may be on the horizon.

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's March 11, 2021 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record. 

A Gardening Spring

One silver lining of the Spring of 2020 for my family has been the rediscovery of weekends at home. Normally, we’d have shifted gears straight from ski season into spring soccer season. This year, our ski season ended abruptly, like so many other things, in mid-March, and COVID-19 erased soccer season outright. This spring, our family time has shifted to the gardens.

When my husband (before he was my husband) and I moved into this house nearly 16 years ago, there was a large garden out front: a mishmash of perennials, varied and sprawling ground cover, and a few veggies growing in the midst of the flowers. Behind the garden was a wild rugosa hedge, a fragrant section of which continues to thrive in unordered beauty along the curved edge of our driveway. Beyond the rugosa was a field.

The spring after this became home, we dug out most of the rose hedge, turned the field into a lawn to hold the tent for our wedding reception, and redesigned much of the perennial garden out front. For several years after that, we managed to hold the weeds at bay, adding mulch to help in the fight every couple of years. But the weeds, as weeds are wont to do, gradually took over.

As the kids grew, so did our weekend (and weekday, after school, after work) obligations. Last spring, I barely got around to planting the vegetable gardens. One end of the big garden, left completely untended, grew the best crop of weeds I’ve ever seen. Meanwhile, the perennial bed took on a decidedly jungle-like persona.

Sometimes, the best thing to do is rip something bare and rebuild from the roots up. This spring, we found ourselves with the time to start over. Instead of lacing up soccer cleats on weekend days, the kids grabbed shovels and rakes. Like kids everywhere, mine are not always thrilled to be tasked with chores, but this project – for whatever reason – they got behind.

We spent a few weeks, little by little, uprooting the perennials worth keeping. Some we stashed at the edge of the yard to replant in the revamped – and much smaller – garden. Others we gave away to friends, neighbors, and family members. The rest – the ones so infiltrated by weeds they seemed a lost cause – were hauled to the edge of the woods, where they’re now growing in a heaping hodgepodge.

The littlest among us proved to be the best shovel jumper, using mighty leaps to split sprawling perennials into moveable size. My son climbed into the role of tractor operator, maneuvering between garden wall and granite posts to gather and discard loads of muddy root balls and rocks, and later to drop piles of loam for spreading. My older daughter rescued a piece of baptisia – banned from the restored garden for its propensity to spread by way of thick, snaking roots – and rehomed it to the edge of the yard, where its purple blooms seem happy enough.

Together, the five of us dug and shoveled and raked. Once everything was out, we started reassembling the pieces we wanted to keep. Into the newly weed-less dirt we planted astilbes and day lilies, hostas and lady’s mantle, black-eyed Susan and flag iris and moonbeam coreopsis. We spread grass seed and straw mulch onto the unplanted area.

Our gardening efforts have not been restricted to flowers. The veggie beds, too, have had a small overhaul. On Memorial Day, when we would normally be at a soccer tournament far from home, the kids helped my dad fashion two long raised beds, upcycling the thick boards from our old, homemade swing set, which we took down years ago. These are placed into the big garden out back and have since been planted with carrots and beans, tomatoes, lettuce, and some zinnia seeds for good measure. Elsewhere, zucchini and cucumbers, peas and beets, celery, and a variety of peppers – from sweet to spicy – are tucked into the soil.

Planting vegetables when the memory of winter is still fresh always feels like hope to me – hope that the last bits of snow will melt and the days will grow warm again, hope that tiny seeds will transform into green stalks, and that the future will hold a plethora of colors and flavors.

As nice as it’s been this spring to turn our efforts to the gardens, to have time to sow seeds and consider the placement of perennials, there’s a different sense of hope now. Hope that next year, we’ll have a little less time for gardening – because we’ll be back to busy weekends – but that we’ll remember to slow down, pull a few weeds, plant a few seeds, and stop to smell the blooms of the old rosa rugosa.

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's June 12, 2020 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record. 

Day by day

A while back, after I mentioned feeling overwhelmed by deadlines and other duties, my friend Amy loaned me an Anne Lamott book titled “Bird by Bird.” Lamott’s title is a nod to a childhood memory and a reminder to writers – to all of us, really – to tackle projects one step at a time: bird by bird. To not get overwhelmed by the whole, big picture, but to focus on each detail along the way.

I think a lot of people right now are feeling the crush of many things piling up, many unfamiliar responsibilities taken on necessarily and sometimes reluctantly, and the vastness of the unknown. While I am grateful that my now-schooling-at-home children are old enough to do much of their work without constant guidance from me, and that I have a job that allows me to work remotely, and a house large enough that we can spread out to our own work spaces – well, it’s still a lot to adjust to.

My mantra has become not bird by bird, but day by day. One day at a time. Because none of us knows how long we will remain in this weird limbo of staying mostly at home, trying to help teachers teach kids who are no longer allowed into the classroom, learning how to meet virtually with colleagues to carry on working, missing friends we won’t be able to gather with for who-knows-how-long.

I’ve taken to going for a walk every day with the dog and whichever of the kids wants to tag along. I go through our woods (another thing for which I am thankful, especially now) or along the backroads near home.

Sometimes my parents will come, too, and we’ll walk along together, a safe distance apart from each other. Sometimes my son brings a football to toss back and forth along the way. During a walk last week, I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. Instead of exchanging a hug as we normally would have, we stood several feet apart and talked for a few minutes.

It was odd. Lots of things are odd now. The weirdness of nearly everything these days can be unsettling. In fact, I feel more unsettled than settled most days. I know I am not the only one.

We rarely leave the house other than by foot (or, occasionally, bike) these days, and it feels strange when we are in the car. A trip to the post office to collect the mail involves holding my breath before I step through the door, and quick hellos or distant waves rather than the normal catching up with neighbors. Grocery shopping, not my favorite task even before social distancing, is both awkward and worrying. We shoppers move along quickly and try to leave room, but there is only so much space for all of us to occupy.

And if someone accidentally sneezes in social distancing public, you can see everyone become immediately more tense.

My kids miss school and their friends and teachers – and the comfort of a familiar routine. Even with the extraordinary care and effort their teachers have put into it, having to all of a sudden do school remotely is stressful and confusing. Each of my children has had moments these last few weeks when they have become overwhelmed by the tasks at hand and by the strangeness of now.

All I can tell them is to tackle one task at a time, then move on to the next one. It’s what I’m telling myself, too. One thing at a time. One step at a time. Deep breaths as needed. All we can do is make our way through this day by day. 

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's April 3, 2020 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record.