Hellobee

Well… life is… unexpected. As I’m sure all of us are feeling right now.

What keeps occurring to me is that I can’t imagine going through this quarantine last year instead of this year, when the daycare I got the kiddos into was a life-saver to me and my mental health. My childcare options kept falling through and the trauma I went through in the Bangkok Hospital system was still unknown to me and I was panicked and just so sad. I realized that my mind (or my body) was associating being trapped in those concrete walls of the hospital, being stuck in a 1.5 story midwest home with my children who took a lot of work to bundle up and walk around with (since I still wasn’t driving) and I couldn’t leave without. It was its own feeling of captivity and it kept triggering the trauma from the hospital.

I remember November was a huge turning point for me. I took a trip with my son and spent time with old friends in Minneapolis and I felt known and loved there. It really flipped a switch and I’m so grateful. I talked to my doctor and weaned off my anti-depressant and the lighter feeling persisted and my mental health and capacity has just kept growing. I’m not sure what happened to me, honestly. I don’t think it’s a good idea for most people to taper mental health medications after such a short time like I did, but I could tell that the initial peace I had after it built up enough was not the same as the peace I felt after my trip: it was more than that. And tapering worked.

When the coronavirus was becoming a little more on the national radar, we already had a trip and a bunch of Airbnbs booked in North Carolina for a vacation, and I was terrified that we’d have to stay stuck in our Midwest home while the rain, or snow, or slush came down for weeks of March and April and we all went crazy. Mr. Gumdrop had been working like crazy for a year and a half and my recovery was still weighing heavy on both of us; the vacation was so needed. We hadn’t had a break for two years, since my bleed. I know this seems small in light of a pandemic but it felt like if we couldn’t get a break – take a vacation, get out of town – then we would go nuts stuffed in our little house/home office with the wet gray skies above and no way to mentally detox. My parents were supposed to come meet us but the day before we left, Canada put out a recommendation for no travel outside of the country and theirs was a flight through some major hubs instead of a drive (like ours) so they had to cancel.

We miss them but we have been making it work. It has turned into a much longer trip than initially planned and because things were getting crazy right before we left, I was freaked out and insisted we bring our laptops just in case, so we can both continue to work remotely. Mine is much more low key than Mr. Gumdrop’s but it feels really good to have some work to do aside from childcare since that’s never been my goal. I tend to enjoy the kiddos more in smaller doses but the homeschooling and constant availability has been going pretty well actually. And we have been way out in the country since we canceled our in-town Airbnbs and have just been hibernating as a little family and going on remote hikes. We didn’t get the vacation-within-a-vacation we were hoping for (my parents were going to watch the kids while we had a getaway) but we are finding a rhythm.

So as it was becoming more obvious that returning to Michigan wasn’t going to be a good idea, Airbnb was tightening up restrictions. We still could have booked a place for a month or longer, but anything affordable was looking pretty limited. But we met this couple on a hike who turns out we have mutual friends with from Michigan… turns out they run a retreat center for missionaries on furlough and the campus is empty right now due to the virus, so they invited us to stay there! It’s pretty far outside of town which suits us well for this season of life and it’s pretty empty, with just the maintenance guy coming by. They offered us this three bedroom apartment attached to their chapel but when we saw the knockoff Airstream trailer down the hill on their property our eyes got big and we said, “can we stay there?” So we are getting a look at RV life without buying an RV and it’s super helpful to have this trial run at what a life like this would look like.

It also feels so freeing to me to be renting again instead of living in a house with a mortgage and a few cars (we definitely do have some of those things) but switching things up just feels so good for me, like we’re not tied to this format for the foreseeable future. That trigger of being trapped that started in the Bangkok hospital has been a persistent one for me.

We have someone connected to the church we’ve been going to in MI staying in our house too so that feels good, that we can be connecting others and sharing what we have in this time.

The original house that they offered us has been well-suited as Mr. Gumdrop’s home office up the hill, so thankfully he’s not trying to work from home while we live in a trailer on top of each other. We have room to spread out for sure. I set my daughter up to do Khan Academy lessons for preschool and my son is napping down the hill in the trailer and I’m in the “student lounge” within eyeshot of the trailer. It’s a rainy day, we haven’t had one of these for a while but we’ve found a decent rhythm and for that I’m grateful. We may still venture out this afternoon after Mr. Gumdrop winds down work and preschool and nap time wind down, but these kind of outings usually end up being driving around anyways since most things are closed. Sometimes we pick up take-out and eat it at the park, that has been a good time for us.

Is anyone else having a hard time with the lack of timeline to this whole virus thing? I am really struggling with that (not at all compared to the people with the virus I’m certain). But I will say, it has been hard for me to not know what the timeline of this thing is. When is it practical to return home? When can we start making friends around here? We are scouting this out for a future move — we just didn’t plan to make it just yet so this is such an odd scenario, being stuck in a beautiful place where we’d like to be long term, but with no timeline and no socialization. Selfishly, it’s comforting to know we’re not missing out on anything – all of our friends around the world are hunkered down as well so I’m grateful to be hibernating in a beautiful place where we can hike and breathe fresh air, for sure.