“I wish it need not have happened in my time”, said Frodo.

“So do I”, said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

J.R.R. Tolkein

 

These are the words I’ve been living by to make this quarantine an overwhelmingly positive experience for my family.

We’ve got this no matter what fashion it takes us to get through all of this. We have got this and good riddance to all the expectations of what we could be doing with this time, all we should be doing is whatever we can to fill our hearts.

 

While a part of me feels overwhelmed I’ve found my coping mechanism by doing away with strict to-do-lists that I usually adhere to get multiple things done. While some families need a strict structure to rein things the exact opposite has worked for me. I’ve switched off the hundreds alarms and started going with the flow. 

 

My kids have more empathy now, they enjoy family connection, they can be more creative and can entertain themselves. They love to read and express themselves in writing. They enjoy the simple things, like sitting near a window in the quiet or playing with their own shadows. They notice the birds and the flowers in the trees and the sudden showers of rain. They are learning to cook and organising their space and helping in keeping a home well run. They are learning to live with less. They are finding the good to share in the small delights of everyday. They find the wonder and the marvel in an ordinary day, they listen more deeply and think differently.  They are dreaming new images, making new choices and creating a new way of being.

 

Our artistic sessions extend to hours. We laugh at the most ridiculous of things. We eat just a couple of more slices of the freshly baked chocolate cake that we've been baking so frequently, relishing them for who knows when we can bake together again.

We watch a concoction of movies, from my childhood to those that will define theirs. We sweat it out together by playing badminton or cycling around the building, things we never find time for in our fast paced lives. 

 

There have been extra tears and extra cuddles, extra tantrums and extra love. Absurd times do call for absurd amounts of love. We are like trees right now, grounded in place, unable to reach out or move around, yet deeply connected and sharing our love over the distances with our loved ones- love that shines and radiates out of the very root of our being.

 

This season has been shaping us, the way storms do to saplings. What if among these children, a great leader emerges who had the benefit of a slower pace and a simpler life to truly learn what matters in life.

 

I sigh in relief at having navigated yet another day in the lockdown, as I hold them close, having made happy memories with my kids.

 

And when this time is gone, together we will share the light and the love like a tender violet flowering impossibly up within a memory, we were born to carry.