Spring is a season of growth, transformation, and change. New buds on trees, a winter's thaw, new opportunities, and this spring more so than any other.
Life is moving too quickly for me right now and I don't know how to slow it down. It was just New Year's Day yesteray, and we were in Ella's mountain mists excitedly talking about the promises of the new year. Now, that new year is delivering, and it is a lot to digest, to take down all at once, like a spoonful of bad tasting medicine.
A few days ago, we learned all students would be allowed back on campus starting next week, three weeks earlier than anticipated. This is, of course, cause for celebration for many. Trepidation for others. Elise and I are somewhere in the middle.
We've spent most of the last year at the mercy of fickle government proclamations. Curfews imposed and lifted with little to no warning or explanation. A government announcement one day that a travel restriction would definitely not be imposed almost assuredly presaged the imposition of a travel restriction.
Red lines, thresholds, and tripwires trigger decisions. But none of these exist in the decision to bring the kids back to school, making the move -- though mostly welcome -- questionable. What's different now? Sri Lanka's vaccination program is slowly getting off the ground, but other than that nothing. Nothing has changed. Except we are less patient.
We've spent the last year practicing resilience, adapting to pandemic life. Others just wanted things to go back to normal. Maybe they pined for their old life. I never felt like that. Now, I feel those who never adapted to pandemic life are better positioned to return to post-pandemic life than those of us who may have kept living through the pandemic. Now, we have to re-learn the old way of doing things. That's okay. We can do that, too.
I drive Peter to school most mornings. I remember well a time my own dad drove me to school. It was a long time ago now but still a vivid memory. Maybe because he didn't do it that often (and we rode in his Porsche; just thinking about it, I can still smell the leather in the bucket seats). Will Peter have the same memory riding to school with me that I have of riding to school with my dad?
Elise asks me if I talk to him. I do, asking him what classes he has that day or, if on the drive back from school, how his day was, what he played in PE. In the morning, we listen to the Sean and Ray show on TNL, two Sri Lankan DJs with decidedly American accents. Often, Peter talks 'at' me, rather than 'to me, about Godzilla, dragons, Gundam, or kaiju. I only partially understand anything he says.
Likely soon, I'll be driving all three of them to school, at least for a little while. We remind ourselves to take it one day at a time. Sometimes, even that is too fast.
"If time were only part of the equation
Then you could draw the boundaries of our cage
You wouldn't pile another stone upon me
And I'd be happy just to watch you age
"But everything is in its own dominion
And waiting in the shallows as I do
Appeases me as water slowly trickles out
Which isn't nearly fast enough for you"
-- Tom Marshall and Ernest Anastasio (Phish)
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