Day 170-174: Giant Pompoms, Friendship, Gratitude

It's been a quiet week in Cedarville, my hometown. We are slowly getting the hang of remote learning, though between Google Classroom, Lincoln Learning, Zearn, McGraw Hill, and other websites we have to hop back and forth between, it's all a little confusing. Thank goodness Jeremy is taking that on, because it would hurt my head. 

I've been working steadily at my standing desk. The kids like to come into my office area and play now and then throughout the day. One day this week Jeremy was gone all day for meetings (held outdoors, masked), and I was trying to get work done, but Taiya and William decided they should make giant pompoms instead. See Exhibit A. 

Exhibit A: Pompom hair.

Some life lessons from giant-pompom-making:

1) Go ahead and try things even if you don't think they're going to work. (I didn't think this would work at all. It did.).

2) Go fluffy or go home. 

3) Is it a wig? A hat? A cheerleader pompom? A pillow? Yes. 

4) Do not save yarn on the off-chance you might need it someday. Embrace your inspiration and use it all up for no good reason! It's delightful!

5) When your child has an idea they want to try out, just go ahead and set your work aside for ten minutes and help them make it happen. 

6) Don't take yourself too seriously. (See Exhibit B). 

Exhibit B: Not taking myself too seriously.

Now to transition to something completely different... as you might imagine from my Day 169 post, I've been spending a lot of this week thinking about Kelsie, Megan, and the rest of their family. I couldn't write much on Monday. It was too raw. I had to give myself time to think about it to really articulate my feelings. 

Kelsie left behind a 3 year old daughter and a 5 year old daughter, to whom she was utterly devoted. This is heartbreaking and terrifying, as a mother of two young children. I have seen that no one is guaranteed a long life, even lovely people who love their children and would give anything to be here longer. This is a massively difficult reality to swallow. Mortality sucks. 

I don't want what I'm about to say sound heartless, but I think it's important to describe grief honestly: after I cried when I heard the news of her passing, I actually felt a weird sense of peace settle within me. Maybe it is because after three years of trying every treatment option, Kelsie was finally beyond suffering. She could finally rest easy. Grief is weird. I don't want to feel peace, it feels wrong somehow. But, I've learned over time to just take the feelings as they come. If peace follows tears, I will take it while it lasts. 

The best part of my week was talking to Megan on the phone (Saturday morning, Day 174). She is one of my oldest and very best friends, and we have been there for each other through so many amazing, exciting things and so many hard things. Elementary school, the horror that is puberty, high school, young adulthood, relationship troubles, job woes and successes, marriage, adult things like home-ownership, children. My kids absolutely adore Megan. (Side story: Megan came to visit in January for a long weekend, and before she got here Taiya said she wasn't going to talk to her because she was shy. By the end of the first day, she was talking Megan's ear off, demanding piggy-back rides, and pretty much decided Megan was the bees knees. Because she is.). I don't know what happens when you share everything with someone since childhood, but we have a friendship that feels as natural to me, and maybe even as understated, as breathing. It just is. It is a gift to have this kind of friendship. It helps so much in the messy, confusing, hard, weird times like grief, to have a safe place to just be yourself through it all.