A Year Passes

Has it really been a year since the pandemic started? Has it really been a year since Hattie died?

I don’t feel this need to acknowledge that a year has passed so much as I can’t believe a year has passed.

Then I think about my first thoughts when the pandemic started and everything shut down. It was most important to me that I didn’t look back on it, also believing it would only last weeks if not a few months, feeling like I had wasted my time. I saw some people so angry they were paralyzed by it while others seemed to exhausted from the busy-ness of their lives and routines (mostly people with children), that when they ere given a chance to sit down, they realized they were too tired do to anything.

For me, I felt like it was an opportunity where, because I couldn’t go anywhere or have dinner parties, that I could work work work. I could sew and write and create. I also thought there were some house projects that should have been completed, just maintenance stuff like touch-up painting.

So what have done in the past year? Well, I had hoped to have a manuscript completed and I did write, I wrote a lot, this past year, but, as Greg said, it wasn’t intensive writing. It was much more of a challenge to write with Greg around the corner teaching excitedly online (after all, you can’t be a quiet person and teach a foreign language– you need some pizzaz and be a little, well, nutty). It made it harder for me to focus when I was used to the quiet of the house. So I did write, I just didn’t complete one project and instead worked on several. It’s not really something I’m proud of, but if one thing doesn’t come together, I work on what is coming together so at least there are multiple baskets of eggs and things are in process.

The sewing, however, that’s where it was at. While I always have more things I want to do, the Chelle Summer closet is overflowing with items waiting to be sold and be enjoyed by someone. Many days, it was the thing I could do, I could create, I could sew. When I was upset with the world, I went and made something which helped me feel like I hadn’t wasted my day getting caught up in the anger of others.

The house painting didn’t happen, but I suppose you can’t have everything. The reality is that I can at least walk away from the past year knowing that I was as productive as possible and that, hopefully, as things open up, the items I made will find new homes in the coming future days. And I know that my sewing skills made a huge leap forward, too. And, while this wasn’t the year I wanted to have, it was a year that I can honestly say things did move forward. It’s just that sometimes they don’t move forward in the way we want or expect them too.