As I write this, it’s not yet 7:00 am on Monday morning. I can see some light through the window as the sun is starting to rise over the Sandia Mountains. I have run, but not swum yet and, therefore, not showered. Normally, I run and then shower and start my day.
But Mondays have a new routine– for three weeks, Greg and I have been swimming at the gym four mornings a week at 6:30 am. However, on Mondays he teaches live remotely (or is that remotely live– or do we even know?!) so I go to the pool a bit later. It seems that 8:00 am is my new time although when it cools down, I’ll shift to more like 10:00 and swim in the warmth of the sun.
A sadness waves over me occasionally for my routines that have been disrupted and changed because of the pandemic. If Greg were at school teaching, I would swim later everyday. There’s a benefit that we get to go together four days a week, but I’m also still adjusting to running and swimming all in one shot rather than dividing them up into separate parts of the day.
The list is long of things that have changed: our favorite Vietnamese restaurant has closed, but she, thankfully, is waiting on her last inspections to open in a new location. I will miss the old location, not a great area of town, but as Greg said, “edgy.” Now she will be in something more like a strip mall of restaraurants, more central for people to find her and her wonderful food. I am happy for her. But I will miss the drive between church and her old location. Now it will be freeway to freeway.
In some ways our lives haven’t changed at Casa Solano mostly because I’ve worked at home the bulk of my career. However, what makes me unhappy are the changes that have been forced on me, like that I’m grounded for now from traveling. We can’t risk exposure for Greg as we await his return to the classroom. With so few hospital beds in the state, we also have to be cognizant of wondering “what if” one of us got sick. The flip side is that I don’t believe we will get sick, but I also don’t want to test that statement. So we aren’t traveling for now and instead focused on making home better and what projects travel sometimes puts a kink in.
There is a grief in all that we do when our routine changes, whether by choice or beyond our control. I have tried to embrace all these changes, but there have been many at once which makes it more challenging.
And somewhere deep inside of me, I do believe all will be great again. I hold onto that when the sadness blankets me as I watch things continue to change.