Pre-pandemic, things in my household were much more structured. Dinner was planned every night, each day went pretty much as expected, and we had activities or sports daily. But ever since 2020, each day is a crapshoot. Is daycare closed today due to exposure? How will my partner and I balance work while watching our baby? Will I feel comfortable sending my daughter to gymnastics again? I miss that structure and strive to get it back. How can I do it 2022, pandemic and all. —Meghan, 39, Maine Lauren Smith Brody: Oh, Meghan, I feel this. What I hear in your question about “structure” is that you miss really two things, 1) the busy-ness and, 2) the predictability of what life used to be like. I’ll start with the busy-ness. Here’s what I want you to do. Scroll back in your calendar—or your photo roll, whatever you’ve got—to December of 2019. Here, I’ll do it with you. For me, that month started off with: a book fair, networking coffee, networking lunch, holiday decorating event at school, piano lesson, tutor. Okay, I have to stop because that was all just one day, Monday, December 2. Yes, really, all one day. And that’s not even accounting for school drop-offs, laundry, or—ha!—my full-time paid job. View this post on Instagram
A post shared by PARADE (@parade.media) Now you’re probably expecting me to say next that it was all too much, and life is better now that it’s quieter. Ehhh. Not exactly. I miss the frenzy and the stress and thrill of cramming it all in. I miss running across town in rush hour traffic to decorate what we call the Great Hall at my kids’ school, and finding glitter in my plastic cup of wine, and that magical combination of adult friendships formed around our kids. That busy-ness—I realize now that I have time to stop and examine it—it made me feel useful and connected. Those are two feelings I’m able to find in other ways now. In fact, it was never about the things on that jam-packed calendar. It was about the feelings I got from them. So, my advice to you here is to ask yourself what feelings you got from all those activities—maybe you loved fostering responsibility in your kids with their sports, or you felt pride at gymnastics class when your daughter accomplished a new trick—and find other ways to grab those feelings now. The next piece of structure that you’re craving is predictability. Let’s get you some of that, too. I will pause to say that everything is the most unfair right now for parents of little kids, particularly the 19.7 million kids under 5 for whom there are still no vaccines. With school closures and extremely spotty childcare, any random Tuesday can send you right back to the emergency mode of March 2020. You have every right to be furious. Still, notice the little accidental rituals you and your family have created over this time. And cherish their predictability. Maybe you stay in PJs until lunch on Saturdays. That’s not lazy. That’s a cozy tradition. Maybe you have limited your bubble to a couple of other families….probably you know them better than any friends before. That’s not limited. That’s expansive. Maybe you have to work from home unexpectedly all week with a baby on your lap. Make a point of Baby Zoom Cameos daily and call them such. Maybe every time the school nurse emails, you and your husband scream into your pillows. It’ll be cathartic. Nurse Shauna = pillow scream. Is this answer perfect? No way. I wish you had paid family leave and three Mary Poppinses living in your attic to pop on down any time. I wish I could say that after this Covid variant, we’ll be all done and back to normal. But this right now’s normal, to your kids especially. And I’ll bet they love PJ Saturdays. Next, real moms discuss what streaming service is a must. As an entrepreneur who can’t quit journalism, Brody writes regularly about the intersection of business and motherhood for, among others, The New York Times, Slate, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Elle, and pens advice columns for Parade Media and the children’s brand Maisonette. Brody is on the board of the early education nonprofit Docs for Tots. A longtime leader in the women’s magazine industry, she was previously the executive editor of Glamour magazine. Raised in Ohio, Texas, and Georgia, she now lives in New York City with her husband, two sons, and rescue puppy.
