Balance

I would say that as a mother it’s impossible to maintain a balance all the time. But really as a person it is impossible to maintain a balance. It’s a lot of give and take every day. Days bleed into each other and turn into weeks and morph into months. The craziness of life takes over quickly and without hesitation. It is something I personally am not good at figuring out. Then an event like no other I have ever seen hit, COVID-19. Balance wasthe first thing to go, followed shortly by my sanity. All four of my kids all go to public school. Their lives were thrown into chaos and unknown. Their sports season: cancelled. School: cancelled. Leaving the house: nope.

We have lived highly active and out-of-the-house style lives. Weekends are filled with soccer and baseball, birthday parties, neighborhood gatherings, chores, and homework. The chaos works for us all. We balanced it out by eating dinner together every night we are home, it’s not optional. We try to balance out the crazy by keeping evenings or the rare free weekend cleared and stay home. It is crazy but it worked for us. It wasn’t always balanced. The unbalance was part of the balance because overall the unbalanced nature of our lives fed the vastly different people we have living in our home.

Now, everyone has the same schedule, and everything is out-of-whack. The extroverted people aren’t getting enough of their out-of-the-house time. The introverts have people around them all the time. The people that like schedules have no schedule. All the days feel like each other. School wasn't really school because this isn’t public school but it’s certainly not real homeschool either. A friend who homeschools says we were “crisis schooling” and I agree. There are no parties or sports. Not even a dinner out or errand running as a family. Our unbalanced balance is off, and I cannot fix it. I’ll keep looking for it because I am the mom and it is part of what I do.