Everyone who knows me knows I am a germaphobe and a clean freak, so needless to say Coronavirus is not sitting so well with me. Some of the tips to avoid the virus I had practiced prior to COVID-19; I wiped down grocery carts, I carried around wet wipes to “wash” my hands when I was in public places, especially after the gas station – you don’t know how many people have touched that pump! I always wiped down doorknobs, light switches, etc. especially when someone was sick in the house or when I was in a hotel. I washed my hands constantly and I don’t think I touched my face a lot but who knows – now it seems impossible not to! But even the most fanatic germaphobe needs to up their game during this time.
But becoming a better germaphobe hasn’t been the hard part. The hardest part has been the mess in my house that four people accumulate when in the same house 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the last month and a half! Currently our home consists of two working from home parents, a distance learning and bored teenager and a rambunctious and confused toddler. What used to be a one meal and one mess night Monday through Friday is now a three meal and constant mess all week! Dishes in the sink, clean dishes alongside the sink and a dishwasher full and ready to run. Bags of chips and empty drink bottles that for some reason never make it to the garbage. Nerf guns with battlefields not yet won, stuffed animal parties on the couch not ready to call it a night, an oven and hundreds of plastic food uneaten and a permanent tent set up – all in my living room. My coffee table is no longer a place to set down my coffee mug while relaxing but is now a Lego table with varying sizes and shapes of bricks, that would in pre-COVID time given me anxiety, has instead given me pride and joy.
I probably clean and pick up numerous times a day to just turnaround an hour later to see another mess; another dish in the sink, another snack bag, probably a sock or two, but I can’t bring myself to pick up the Lego table. The boys in my life have a real talent taking these bricks and creating ships, bridges and even animals! Building things with Legos is not my thing so I am always in awe of what they come up with and make. We lost any-and-all directions we may have gotten with a set a kid ago, so what they make is up to their imaginations. The first four weeks of quarantining I gave them a Lego challenge each day, mainly an activity for my husband and toddler to do together but it has become a great creative outlet for him and something to work on, on his own when mom and dad have to work – even the teenager sometimes joins in between video games. My four-year-old has never been one to sit down and color so this has been the one thing he can sit and do (for more than five minutes) that is creative. He has made castles, dragons, racecars and ships I could never think up and I have been so proud of him and his creations.
Like our Lego table that is strewn with bricks a colorful dragon can be created – something beautiful can emerge from this horror and our world can become a better place.
